Breaking Down Fitzgerald. Helen M. Turner

Breaking Down Fitzgerald: Introduction

      This guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald has three key purposes. The first is to explore his most famous and most widely studied novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Detailed consideration is given to the novel's composition, motifs, themes, and characters. The second purpose is to engage with other aspects of Fitzgerald's life and work. By contextualizing the text in this manner, students will deepen their understanding and appreciation of the novel. The third goal of this guide is to garner wider interest in Fitzgerald. The majority of students encounter the author for the first time through his most famous novel, but unfortunately, this can also be where engagement with Fitzgerald ends. However, he was a writer for a period of more than twenty years, and during that time he wrote three additional complete novels and an unfinished one, close to two hundred short stories, as well as dozens of essays and magazine articles.

      The structure of the book is as follows:

      At the end of each chapter are details for further reading but also further viewing and listening, which opens up Fitzgerald's work and world through a variety of resources in different media.

      Before turning attention to the man and his work, it is worth pondering the question: why Fitzgerald? In recent decades there has been a reconsideration of the literary canon. Who is included in the western literary tradition, who has been excluded and—importantly—why? Traditionally it has privileged the narratives of dead white men at the expense of the voices of others. So, does this particular dead white man have something valuable to tell the modern reader? Some of the attitudes he expresses in his fiction and in personal correspondence seem out of step with contemporary values. His depiction of race, gender, and sexuality can at times rely on crude stereotypes. For example, it is impossible to see Meyer Wolfshiem as anything other than a caricature of anti‐Semitic tropes. Many critics have raised concerns about Fitzgerald's depiction of women as they are simultaneously infantilized and held responsible for the frustrations and disappointments of men. His descriptions of black people lack depth and agency.

      However, through a close reading of his work, it is possible to see that Fitzgerald's response to a changing world is complex. He inherited the beliefs and attitudes of a Victorian world. However, in the aftermath of the First World War, assumptions about gender, race, and sexuality that previously appeared “correct” or “normal” were brought into question. In his work it is evident that he is wrestling with these changing attitudes, creating ambivalence and at times apparent agreement with both progressive and reactionary views. His description of “three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl” that made Nick laugh “aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled towards us in haughty rivalry” (Fitzgerald 2019, p. 83) is countered with Nick's recognition of there being “something pathetic in his [Tom's] concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more” as Tom attempts to explain his racist theories regarding the collapse of civilization (p. 17).

Fitzgerald was living in a frantic, changing world: a world contending with the aftermath of war, changing social relationships between men and women, bans on alcohol and illicit boozing, new media and entertainment, and a flu pandemic that killed millions. In many respects, it was a time not unlike our own where certainty seems like a concept that will never return. People are bombarded with contrary attitudes and opinions toward sexuality, gender identity, climate change, and public health. There is something familiar in Fitzgerald's life and work in terms of mood if not in the exact detail. He explores the anxieties and excitement of change that we can all understand. He certainly does have something to tell the modern reader.