The Protagonists In Fitzgerald's The Rich Boy

The protagonists in Fitzgerald’s novels, like The Great Gatsby, Winter Dreams and The Side of Paradise, usually bear a resemblance for being wealthy and owning high social status, meanwhile, they are doomed to be troubled by and end in melancholy and emptiness. Having much in common with novels mentioned above, The Rich Boy is regarded as a typical Fitzgerald’s story about a sad rich guy, illustrating the relation between one’s economic achievement and his personal tragedy, whereas, it is also argued that the protagonist, Anson’s disorder is not due to wealth, but more like “a kind of undergraduate melancholia” (Macauley 667). Thus, this essay will explain that the wealth as the root cause of the rich’s tragedy is the main theme of the story by illustrating literary techniques employed by Fitzgerald. Characterization and plots will firstly be analyzed, with the focus on the protagonist Anson to see how they contributes to the establishment of Fitzgerald’s argument about rich and tragedy; then it will move to discuss how the omniscient, third-person narratives further develop this main theme.
The protagonist stands out for his superiority, which in the words of Fitzgerald is that the very rich “think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we” (152), i.e. it is resulted from his richness and the circumstances he live, where he is always spoiled, flattered, treated as the center and forgiven for his wrong doings. Anson Hunter is born in a wealthy family with rights of succession, which roots a sense of superiority deeply in

Anson, as the protagonist, is depicted most carefully with characteristics of superiority and immaturity. Both of them are resulted from his richness and lead to his loneliness and emptiness at the end. Narratives of the story consisting of omniscient and the third person with limitations contributes to revealing this theme