Essay On Fitzgerald's First Love In The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, his characters, parallel his life at many points following the old advice of “write what you know,” to a T. Yet, most of the characters are not a constant, as they represent some aspects and perspectives on him, to bring a more realistic feel to the novel and create something that he felt was his own, hence “all my characters are Scott Fitzgerald.” The Great Gatsby’s plot centers largely around Jay Gatsby’s life and romantic pursuits of Daisy Buchanan. Princeton University’s Merdell Nodan’s 1978 analysis wrote that Daisy’s character is in reference to Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King, a Chicagoan socialite, who he, in a slight obsession or hard infatuation, wrote letters two and remained steadfast in his feelings despite her father’s society brought disapproval. The fact that Fitzgerald’s first love is represented as Gatsby’s first love serves as some evidence for Gatsby being the literary embodiment of the young romantic Fitzgerald, or at least within depthening Fitzgerald’s life’s involvement in the novel.

The second piece of evidence in telling that Gatsby is in part Fitzgerald is Daisy’s disenchantment with him after

Fitzgerald uses his characters, Nick and Gatsby to display the duality of his nature, that was complicated by his newfound wealth. In University of Manchester’s Laura E.B. Key’s book “A Love-Hate Relationship”: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Money Management, Fitzgerald found himself at odds with his new lifestyle, and while he was able to display all the glamour of the upper class, much like Gatsby would with his million dollar mansion and opulent parties, Fitzgerald felt a moral disgust in the materialism. This disgust in the character meant to just have huge opulent displays is seen within Nick as for him “he [Gatsby] represents everything that I have unaffected scorn,” so as the moral part of Fitzgerald, he feels the deep hate for the money and the role he is playing in society