The Great Gatsby Individualism Analysis

By the end of the First World War, the American novel had reached a new expressive self-sufficiency, eager and ready to absorb and project the complexity of American life. Scott Fitzgerald started writing when the young generation had just returned from the First World War. Distrustful of the past and disillusioned with culture and conventions, the young people had nothing to fall back upon except their own experience. Fitzgerald fixates on the relationship between individual and society as a tussle between the irreconcilable. Fitzgerald too agrees the same: "I am interested in the individual only in his relation to society” (Callahan 5). In the novel This Side of Paradise Amory, the protagonist of the novel, as an individual begins his quest

The modernization of society seemed to prize fame, wealth, and celebrity above all else. All this, combined with the breakdown in social ties created an empty self, shorn of social meaning. The decline in social norms that accompanied the modernization of society and the rise of individualism (with its focus on the self and inner feelings) also meant that the community and the family were no longer able to provide the same support for individuals as they once did. Many writers and intellectuals in the early 20th century hoped for the emergence of individualism instigated upon an understanding of the developing political and economic realities of the century. Freedom, they believed, requires more than a tyrannical assertion of the self. It also demands an intelligent and pragmatic understanding of the relationship between self and society. In This Side of Paradise Fitzgerald, says Sklar, “succeeded in creating a new definition of individualism in contrast to the individualism of the genteel tradition; and it led, neither to despair nor to rebellion, but to an even more responsible commitment to a social order.” Amory’s character is known for being quite self-centered and individualistic and the necessity to find individualism is to take away his

Narcissists never worry about valuing and caring of their relationships, so they tend to lack empathy and they have poor relationship skills. According to Aldridge John, F. Scott Fitzgerald's maiden novella, This Side of Paradise is his only romantic work, which treats transience and narcissism, neither of which can be found in his later sentimental works where protagonists reminisce about the past. Narcissists cannot acknowledge failure, even in a relationship. Often narcissists will tell everyone that their past failed relationships were not their fault. Importance of narcissism in romantic relationships has shed light on how relationships fail. The current research attempts to look into the failed relationships of Amory the protagonist of the