This Side of Paradise is the 1920 debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is a handsome middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition. Fitzgerald, who took inspiration for the title from a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, spent years revising the novel before Charles Scribner's Sons accepted it for publication.
Following its publication in March 1920, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed it as an outstanding debut novel. The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies. Although the book neither became one of the ten best-selling novels of the year nor made him wealthy, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name overnight. His newfound fame enabled him to earn higher rates for his short stories, and his improved financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him. His novel became especially popular among young Americans, and the press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt".
Although Fitzgerald wrote the novel about the youth culture of 1910s America, the work became popularly and inaccurately associated with the carefree social milieu of post-war 1920s America, and social commentators touted Fitzgerald as the first writer to turn the national spotlight on the younger Jazz Age generation, particularly their flappers. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Ernest Hemingway and Fitzgerald belonged, the Jazz Age generation were younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and mostly untouched by the conflict's horrors. Fitzgerald's novel riveted the nation's attention on the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked debate over their perceived immorality.
The novel created the widespread perception of Fitzgerald as a libertine chronicler of rebellious youth and proselytizer of Jazz Age hedonism which led reactionary societal figures to denounce the author and his work. These detractors regarded him as the outstanding aggressor in the rebellion of "flaming youth" against the traditional values of the "old guard". When Fitzgerald died in 1940, many social conservatives rejoiced. Due to this perception of Fitzgerald and his works, the Baltimore Diocese refused his family permission to bury him at St. Mary's Church in Rockville, Maryland.
Plot summary
Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, believes that he has a great destiny, but the precise nature of this destiny eludes him. He attends a preparatory school where he becomes a football quarterback. He grows estranged from his eccentric mother Beatrice Blaine and becomes the protégé of Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a Catholic priest. During his sophomore year at Princeton, he returns to Minneapolis over Christmas break and falls in love with Isabelle Borgé, a wealthy debutante whom he first met as a boy. Amory and Isabelle embark upon a romance.
While at Princeton, Amory deluges Isabelle with letters, but she becomes disenchanted with him due to his criticism, and they break up on Long Island. Following their separation, Amory accompanies a Princeton classmate to an apartment occupied by two New York showgirls of easy virtue. He considers staying the night with the showgirls, but his conscience and an apparition compel him to leave. After four years at Princeton,: Fitzgerald writes that early April of their final year has passed, "this was the last spring" at Princeton, and they have "raked the universe over the coals for four years". he enlists in the United States Army amid World War I. He ships overseas to serve in the muddy trenches of the Western front. While overseas, his mother Beatrice dies, and most of his family's wealth disappears due to a series of failed investments.
After the armistice with Imperial Germany in November 1918, Amory settles in New York City amid the flowering of the Jazz Age. Rebounding from Isabelle, he becomes infatuated with Rosalind Connage, a cruel and narcissistic flapper. Desperate for a job, Amory obtains employment with an advertising agency but detests the work. His relationship with Rosalind deteriorates as she prefers a rival suitor, Dawson Ryder, a man of wealth and status. Rejected by Rosalind due to his lack of financial prospects, Amory quits his advertising job and goes on a drinking binge until the start of prohibition in the United States.
When Amory travels to visit an uncle in Maryland, he meets Eleanor Savage, a beautiful and reckless atheist. Eleanor chafes under the religious conformity and gender limitations imposed on her by contemporary society in Wilsonian America. Amory and Eleanor spend a lazy summer conversing about love. On their final night together before Amory returns to New York City, Eleanor attempts suicide by riding her horse over a cliff in order to prove her disbelief in any deity. At the last moment, she leaps to safety as her horse plummets over the precipice, and Amory realizes that he does not love her.
Returning to New York City, Amory learns of Rosalind's engagement to his wealthy rival Dawson Ryder, and he declares that Rosalind is now dead to him. The death of his beloved mentor, Monsignor Darcy, further dispirits him. Homeless, Amory wanders from New York City to his alma mater Princeton. Accepting a car ride from a wealthy upper-class man driven by his working-class chauffeur in a Locomobile, Amory speaks out in favor of socialism in the United States—although he admits he is still formulating his thoughts as he is talking.
While riding in the Locomobile, Amory continues his argument about their time's societal ills and articulates his disillusionment with the current historical era. He announces his hope to stand alongside those in the younger generation and to bring forth a new age in America. Both the upper-class and working-class men in the car denounce his views, but when Amory discovers that the upper-class man is the father of a Princeton classmate who died in World War I, they reconcile. Amory parts ways with his travel companions, and the upper-class man tells him: "Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories."
Approaching Princeton, Amory recognizes his selfishness as well as his overindulgence in drink and beauty. He realizes that he must transcend these flaws to become a better man. Wandering through a graveyard at twilight, he reflects upon his inevitable mortality and finds solace in the fact that future generations may one day ponder his life. He thinks of the next generation—inheriting disillusionment and a loss of faith, yet still chasing love and success. After midnight, he stands alone gazing at Princeton's gothic towers and feels a newfound freedom. He stretches out his arms and proclaims, "I know myself . . . but that is all."
Characters
Fitzgerald based most of the novel's characters on persons from his life, although he often created composites and imbued his female characters with his own personality traits and thoughts.
Amory Blaine a handsome and egocentric young man, who has a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. Originally from the Midwest, he attends Princeton and later fights in World War I. Ambitious in a undefined way "I was planning to be such an important finger" , he is compared to "Narcissus", is "completely lacking in all human sympathy", "cynical" , and has a "tendency to pose". Amory spends much of his first two years at Princeton in a pursuit of a prestigious "club" (fraternity) membership. Courses do not interest him, except the "melancholy hexameters" and the "rigid clarity in solid geometry" . At the end of the sophomore year he is "conditioned" and fails in the fall an important exam on "conic sections" , which prevents his original plan "to be one of the gods of the class" .
Fitzgerald based the character on an idealized version of himself and his disappointing romantic relationships.: "Amory Blaine is a rather idealized Fitzgerald". The name "Amory" derives from Fitzgerald's football hero at Princeton, Hobart Amory Baker.: "Fitzgerald called Hobart Amory Hare (Hobey) Baker 'an ideal worthy of everything in my enthusiastic imagination' and named the protagonist of his novel This Side of Paradise Amory in his honor".
Isabelle Borgéa wealthy and shallow debutante who is Amory's first love. Amory wonders whether she may "prove not too exotic a bloom" , but he believes she is too beautiful to pass and starts a long-distance relationship, fueled by long love letters "in an eternal monotone" that required two "bulky envelopes". He then discovers that he has no real affection for her and that the liaison is only a pretense in a struggle for power "She mustn't lose the leadership a bit."
Ginevra King, a socialite upon whom Fitzgerald developed a life-long romantic obsession, inspired the character. Like Amory and Isabelle, an 18-year-old Fitzgerald fell in love with a 16-year-old King on Christmas break in Saint Paul, Minnesota, during his sophomore year at Princeton, and their relationship ended in a similar fashion. Rumors circulated that Ginevra had kissed dozens of boys, all of whom fell in love with her. "I was too thoughtless in those days," Ginevra recalled, "and too much in love with love to think of consequences." Until his death, Fitzgerald remained forever in love with King and "could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".: "Ginevra gave substance to an ideal Fitzgerald would cling to for a lifetime; to the end of his days, the thought of her could bring tears to his eyes."
Rosalind Connagea cruel and selfish flapper whom Amory romances. Amory has real affection for her (unlike for Isabelle). She cultivates expensive habits "I don't even do my own hair, usually.", is uninterested in family or children "I want to worry whether my legs will get slick and brown when I swim in the summer." , and sets her own price "Fifty-one shares, name, good- will, and everything goes at $25,000 a year.".
Fitzgerald based Rosalind on 18-year-old Zelda Sayre and, to a lesser extent, on the fictional character of Beatrice Normandy in H. G. Wells' 1909 novel Tono-Bungay.: "Rosalind is a combination of Zelda and Beatrice Normandy from Tono-Bungay." Mirroring Rosalind's materialistic relationship with Amory, Sayre ended her engagement with Fitzgerald due to his inability to support her privileged lifestyle as an idle Southern belle of Montgomery's country club set. She resumed their engagement on the condition that he would provide her with luxury.
Eleanor Savagea beautiful and reckless atheist whom Amory meets in a haystack in rural Maryland. She is exiled to rural MD by her Baltimore family and of "Bohemian naughtiness", "Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is" , she resents being "tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony". Amory and Eleanor recite Poe and Verlaine to each other, yet part "hating each other with a bitter sadness".