Nick Carraway And Jay Gatsby

Superior Essays
In the novel “The Great Gatsby” the author F. Scott Fitzgerald establishes a vision of how he sees himself through the characters and scenarios created and used in the novel. The two characters that he used are Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald used two characters because he has had two different personalities throughout his life. As a young man Fitzgerald was reserved and quiet. As he aged he became more well known and outspoken. Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby from the novel “The Great Gatsby” symbolize the Yin and Yang of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. In the novel, Fitzgerald portrayed Nick and Jay as if they were Yin and Yang. "Yin, the darker element, is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds …show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald came up in a very prominent neighborhood on the outskirts of the higher upper class citizens neighborhood. Fitzgerald 's family 's wealth allowed him to go to St. Paul Academy, a private school, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. At the age of 13, Fitzgerald had one of his mystery stories published in the school newspaper. Little did he know that his later writings would go down in fame. At the age of 15, Fitzgerald started attending Newman School, a very high ranking, prestigious Catholic school. Fitzgerald graduated from Newman School in 1913 and enrolled at Princeton University in New Jersey. While attending Princeton, he wrote for Princeton 's Triangle Club musicals, articles for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and stories for Nassau Literary Magazine. Writing Fitzgerald to struggle with college so heavily that he dropped out and joined the United States Army. His acute fear of dying in the war is the motivation behind “The Romantic Egotist”. The publisher Charles Scribner 's Sons rejected his novel, but encouraged him to submit more writings to them in the future. Fitzgerald was a second lieutenant in the infantry. He was stationed at Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery is where he met Zelda Sayre the woman that he came to love until death. Zelda was the daughter of an …show more content…
Fitzgerald and Zelda were married within a week after the publication of the novel. Fitzgerald’s next novel “The Beautiful and the Damned” is about a young man and his wife, who gradually age into their middle age’s while they wait for the husband to inherit a large fortune. The downside of this novel is that they receive the inheritance too late. To remove themselves from the presence of the death, the Fitzgerald’s moved in 1924 to the Riviera where they joined a group a rich Americans that were dominated by Gerald and Sara Murphy. In “Tender is the Night” he described the group and he modeled the hero in the book after Gerald Murphy. Even though Fitzgerald was writing so much he was still being judged by the literary community because of his on going alcoholism. The Fitzgeralds moved to France because of financial struggles and it was there that he wrote his most successful novel “The Great Gatsby”. “The Great Gatsby” is a book about the American Dream, love, hopes, and death. The next year he released several short stories titled “All The Sad Young Men” the short stories were the last productive things that he did with his life before he slipped away into deep alcoholism. While Fitzgerald was being an alcoholic Zelda suffered from two mental breakdowns that were unrepairable. Fitzgerald was in so much grief his alcoholism progressed even more.

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