Francis Scott Fitzgerald Essay -- essays research papers

Francis Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald is known as one of the most importantAmerican writers of his time. He wrote about the troubling time period in whichhe lived known as the Jazz Age. During this era people were either rich ordreamt of enormous wealth. Fitzgerald fell into the trap of wanting to be wealthy,and suffered great personal anguish because of these driving forces. I havechosen to write a term motif on F.Scott Fitzgerald. The goal of thispresentation is to show F. Scott Fitzgeralds life through his defeats andtriumphs and how these situations affected his life as a writer.Fitzgeralds life started in the Midwestern part of the unify States.On September 24, 1896, he was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. F. ScottFitzgerald was of Irish heritage on both sides and was distantly related toFrancis Scott Key, for whom he is named, and to Maryland aristocracy. Hisparents, Edward Fitzgerald of the Glen Mary recruit near Rockville, Maryland andMary McQuillan of St. Pau l wed February 13, 1890 in Washington, D.C. Fitzgeralds maternal grandfather was a very successful wholesale merchant. Hisgrandfathers early expiry and his fathers inability to keep a job, forced thefamily to be extremely dependent on the wealth of his grandfathers estate.Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy as a child. In 1911 he entered theNewman School in Hackensack, NJ. Growing up with a father who was out of rickand who relied on his wifes inheritance gave Fitzgerald a mixed feeling of guiltiness and shame and yet he felt love for both his parents. These innerconflicts in his early life could have contributed to his inability to managehis finances, along with his constant obsession of gaining extreme wealth.Fitzgerald later went to Princeton University, where writing andfootball were his main interests. It was there that he met friends EdmundWilson and John Peale Bishop. Fitzgerald was too small to play football so hejoined a fraternity called the triangle club, the seco nd most prestigious clicheon campus, football being first. After Princeton, Fitzgerald was quoted assaying to a friend I want to be the greatest writer who ever lived dont you(Bruccoli, 1981). In 1917, Fitzgerald joined the army and prepared to fight inWorld contend I. It was soon after his mobilization that he sold his fir... ... ceaselessly into the past (GrolierEncyclopedia, 1993). Showing his failed attempts to reach back into the pastmade him into someone who felt he had no control upon his destiny, because itcould never be as successful as his past. He did know that his work would havea permanent claim upon the American Literary World.Fitzgeralds life mirrored his novels. His live was filled love andtragedy. He pursued his dreams, and in real life, often lived those dreams. Helonged to capture his youth and its purity. He produced thousands of shortstories, often times to support their frivolous lifestyles as well as to telltheir stories. Many scholars have critiqued his wor k and their desire tointerpret Fitzgeralds work line the shelves of libraries. The Great Gatsby isa Great American Classic in which hundreds of thousands of copies are sold eachyear to high school and college students every where. a good deal of his work has beentranslated into 35 languages. Its ironic that more of Fitzgeralds books aresold every year than were sold during his lifetime. Sometimes it takes morethan a lifetime to reach your goals and Fitzgerald embed a way to accomplish hisgoals without living forever.