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An American Dream

F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream

In this essay I plan to discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald and how his life influenced his writings.

I am going to show how his life was connected to his fiction. Also I am going to talk

about Fitzgerald's main thematic issue in my favorite novel he wrote "The Great

Gatsby".

Fitzgerald was a writer during the roaring 20's. This period was also known as the

Jazz Age. The 1920's marked the high point of F. Scott Fitzgerald career he published

most all of his novels during this time. His novels and short stories "chronicled changing

social attitudes" during the 1920's (Fitzgerald 1).

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul Minnesota. He was a

product of two "divergent traditions". His father was a southern gentlemen and his

mother's family in Fitzgerald's words "straight 1850 potato famine Irish"(Biography2).

His father was a salesman for Procter and Gamble. His mother also inherited money

from her father who was a successful wholesale grocer. Fitzgerald was raised in a

moderately wealthy family. The way Fitzgerald spoke about his childhood and early life

you would have thought differently. For instance at the beginning of one of Fitzgerald's

stories he wrote the rich "are different form you and me"(F. Scott1). He depicts this

world of the rich in novels such as "The Beautiful and Damned" and also "The Great

Gatsby". Fitzgerald in his early life was probably compared to Nick Carraway in wealth.

Fitzgerald family certainly not as rich as Gatsby or Tom Buchanan, but he did have more

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money than the average person. One of the reasons is the everyday person certainly does

not have the funding for Princeton University which Fitzgerald entered in 1913.

Fitzgerald...