Dangers Of Beauty In The Beautiful And Damned By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald showcases the luxurious and extravagant, but also careless lifestyle of elite citygoers during the 1920s. The book centers upon Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, who spend their time eagerly waiting for an inheritance, and searching for happiness amidst a life of reckless spending and partying. F. Scott Fitzgerald presents the ideas of beauty and exorbitant wealth in The Beautiful and Damned through Anthony and Gloria, who, obsessed with obtaining and maintaining these concepts, find themselves lost in a meaningless existence and an unhappy marriage. This ultimately serves as a warning to readers of the dangers of living a life of excess. From the beginning of the novel, Anthony and Gloria place

After auditioning, she received a letter from the producer, Jospeh Bloeckman, saying that he believed the role was meant for a younger woman. This letter, coincidentally received on her twenty-ninth birthday, sends Gloria into a spiral. She mourns her loss of beauty and her age, crying, “Oh, my pretty face! Oh, I don’t want to live without my pretty face! Oh, what’s happened?” (507). Gloria’s beauty was seen as her purpose, and was what she depended on for success and happiness, especially through her and Anthony’s financial troubles. This dependence on a transient idea was the reason why neither of them could ever find lasting happiness. With no money left, and waning beauty, Anthony and Gloria’s relationship was built on their initial attraction, and later the dreams they shared about a life with the inheritance. With this foundation weakening, their marriage became filled with constant turmoil, and the love that they once shared was no longer there. The strong emotions of love they had for each other were replaced with financial stress and resentment. Expand on

They placed their selfish desire for constant excitement above their marriage, and acted in ways that permanently damaged their relationship. Internally Anthony knew that he had wasted his life and was afraid because he realized that his life was significant and he could have done something meaningful with it, “There was, first of all, the sense of waste, always dormant in his heart, now awakened by the circumstances of his position. In his moments of insecurity he was haunted by the suggestion that life might be, after all, significant.” The more he thought that his life had been a waste, the more of a rabbit hole he went down, which led to his affair with Dorothy, whom he met while serving in World War I. Anthony was spiraling, and it started to affect his actions, “Anthony’s affair with Dorothy Raycroft was an inevitable result of his increasing carelessness about himself…The particular weakness he indulged on this occasion was his need for excitement and stimulus from without.” These quotes show that he lacked meaning and excitement in his life, and because he sought out instant gratification, he decided to have an affair in search of happiness, which he never permanently