Gatsby’s Whimsical Character F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, New Jersey, to a middle class family in 1896. Fitzgerald attended private school in New Jersey as well as Princeton. Before he could graduate from Princeton, WWI had begun and Fitzgerald joins shortly after. When the war had ended, Fitzgerald attempted to become a newspaper reported but fell back to streetcar advertisements. He occupied this job for only three months and then returned to St. Paul to begin working on his first novel. The result was This Side of Paradise and Fitzgerald was made a celebrity by it. From this point on Fitzgerald was tempted by a life of glamour. He and his wife, Zelda, lived amongst the same type of people he criticized in his writings. Fitzgerald’s …show more content…
Gatsby’s expansive wealth places him on a high level in the eyes of his acquaintances. Gatsby throws lavish parties at his excessive mansion, drives expensive cars, and even has servants to assist him in daily life. All of these expenditures gives Nick Carraway the image that Gatsby well off in the world. For example, Gatsby throws numerous parties throughout the summer. Many of the attendees of the party just show up and are never formally invited by Gatsby himself. The whole mansion, servants and all, prepare all week for these parties. According to the narrator, “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemon arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves.” On the other hand, Gatsby’s wealth is ill-gotten. Nick hears multiple rumors that Gatsby ran illegal operations with Meyer Wolfshiem and Dan Cody and may have even killed a man. None of which Nick believes at first. The most expositor figure of Gatsby’s true wealth is Tom Buchanan. In the New York hotel room, Tom brings to light Gatsby’s true cause of prosperity. “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter,” Tom states boldly finally proving that Gatsby did not inherit it but assumed it through fraudulent