S -7 jTRUCTUD TLlJITIC L DEVELL7T IN TX' 50FL QjF 2. z30TT FITZ~GXRiLD Presi'ted to t +e .r&Gute Cou1ci of the '.orth Texas t te Teacners CoLLeje in >artiai FUL il uln ote Ui:ve.;'enI"t s For ti (, L)egree of ILOSTERROT By Si'ney L. Burks, B.A. San ,ngelo, Texas iugust, 1948 I5b8376 L07ETS Chapter Page I. IKTRODUCTIOU AD LMETlOD . II. THIS SIDE O- PA RADISE . 9 H-istorica l Background The Structure of This Side of Iaradise The Thergence of itzgerald t s arly Themes The Emergence o the 2itzgerald Hero The Socio-hist orica1 Talue of This Side of Paradise Int-erest in This Side of Paradise III. THE BEAUTIFUL AiD D21IED. 26 Historic 1 Background The Structure of The Beautiful and Damned Development in Theme and Characterization from This Side of Paradise to The Beautiful and D amned Interest in Te B3eautiful and Damned IV. THE GREA4T aATSl-BY. 0 .. 0 . -. b..0..0. 43 Historical Background The Structure of The Great Gatsby The The3atic c4secu of The Great Gatshy Development o1 Theres and Character- ization from The Beautiful and Damned to Tlhe Great Ga sby V. ITElDER IS THE ]AIGHT 0 .. 0 9 .. .. .. 67 Jistorical Background The Structure of Tender is the i Interest in Tender Is the it iii Oha peter ia-ge Vi. T AF LA$T TYYON . - - - - - 85 ''istorical Background Structural and Thematic Aspects of The LastTycoon VII. TEi A THORITY OF FA ILU . - -93 BIB LIO CRAPIHY. .-------- 1G0 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 4Ai JMET1EQD Given a proper understanding of Fitzgerald's themes, the structure of his novels is available to anyone with sufficient interest, industry, and critical equipment to understand it. But because there is always an interaction between the structure of a novel and its meaning, they have to be studied together for either to be understood. I have attenp.el to exAmine the structure of i'itzgeraldIs four novels, and the fragment of a novel which was published after his death as The ast T on,vwith sufficient care to dis- cover the meaning of the individual works and also the large implications of IitzgeraldIs work as a whole, the element which Henry James called "the figure in the carpet. In analyzing the novels, I have paid particular attention to .itzgeraLd's development in artistry, making extensive use of his note-books and certain of his autobiographical writings, and o.? a number of the short stories which are directly con- nected with the novels. Since iitzgerald's work is uneven in quality, critical labor upon it should be Cirected largely toward elucidating such themes and other aspects of his work as seem to be of 1 taost enduring value and iraportnce; but before this can be attemripteid, a number of obstacles, of greater or lesser im- portance, imust be removed. iitz.'erald lived and wrote at that Particular time during the twentieth century in which a remarkable change in American manners Cnd maoral attitudes was taking place; and Fitzgelald was acutely aware of the change. It iad a direct and penetrating influence upon his writing, and it well iuay be that it wrecked his life and talent. Tne ties were turbulent, and they are still fas- cinating to tnose interested in social growth and development. Alt nough it would be disastrous to attempt to divorce crit- icisaf from the society wita wich it &eals, yet the literary critic who is preoccupied wita the sociAl fabric tends irresistibly to -ove rather away frolu tuan towards the work of art wdich occasions ais criticism. However interesting social development s nay be, .e ;aust not allow those of the third decade of the century to obscure our understanding of one of the iost perplexing, and at his best one of the finest, of its writers. It is an ordinary procedure in literary criticism to explain the failings of a writer by ascribing taem to the age in which he lived rather than to somae flaw in his own artistic vision. In .just such a malner Pope explains Shakespeare's failures and vulgarity. It is true, we believe, that no writer can disregard his own tire; and certainly the greatest writers have bee- profoundly "of their times"; but we will attempt, 3 In tne present stud, to un r.erstand whtever pheno;eia we nay find, whether Liey be of per21anent or mo enitary interest, il teras cf 1itzgerfld's own d p t d artistry. One of the m ost a noying difficulties in tte ptin to a-,rive at n int el1i ible i nterretation of Yitz raid's work is thAt he has been known by a nber ofts ich grew out of liIted aind se iai truths and later to be , understood as eriztion..ict0nt T_sItz .1a been ta ed "tlie laureate of the Jazz :e."M The phrase, if it .ieas anytin, ans tLat Is some v< itz erald e>- pressea crtzin. iaeasaear,-iO67 ua a tiaoues wnI:n ai( tia ght important . m in tihe phrase, there is rh,: 4 n cbixue re c t 1ion f one of the InortaI cuLii1s of IIs best work. hi.s historical objectivity. T1is sa1, although it is the o t ccmon, Is by no :euns the only cne of its kind. LUalforc3J.Luccock has dubbed PitzgoraJ9 the "god-father of the highball schoOl of fIction" ; but his suamary dismissal of ]iT jtzgeraId as a serious author is weakened by lis cerfunctory :isreadinp of T"is ide of Iaradise and The iBeautifuL and Dauned, and his apparsnt nora nce of the rest of work. 1 Ouch eeithets etzterald's damning themselves by their very aphoristic cleverness, be- tray a serious critical conf sion: thnt of aistakilg the social Yatrix wdich an author %Lploys or describes for his iford . Luccoco, fteLorajr7 nierican Literature anda zR 2ion p. 143-145. 4 ideas. x novelist cannot be evaluated in accordance rierely with the social element he describes. L-i.tzger-ld, with his attachment to the social development of his tine, his almost .orbid dwelling upon glamour in its various manifestations and consequences, his lists of popular dance tunes, Is often dismissed as unworthy of serious treatment. But, as Lionel Trillin 6 has said, quoting the title of one of Yeats' books, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, "The phrase front eats, the connection of the 'dreams' with the 'responsibility' reminds us that we must guard against dismissing, with easy words about immaturity, xitzgerald's preoccupation with the bright charm of his youth; for Yeats himself, a wiser man and wholly fulfilled, kept to the last of his old age his connection with his vanity of youth. A writer's days must be 'bound each to each' by his sense of life, and fitzgerald the undergraduate was the father of the best in the man and the novelist." And, further, "The novelist of a certain kind, if he io to write about social life, must always risk a certain ambiguity in his social attitudes. The novel took its rise from a sense of a disrupted society and from the inter-pene- tration of classes, and the novelist must still live by his sense of class differences, and must be absorbed by them, as Iitzgercld was, even though he despise them, as itzgerald did." 2 The same contemptuous view is held by Oscar argill, Lionel Lrilling, "F. Scott itzgerald," New Reublic, Vol. 104, t1949) P. 183. 5 wNo, aqain, fails to support his remarks with evidence from FitzPerald' work; and his remarks about Fitz7rald's liter- ary relate onshij ps are unitelligible. In his charter entitled t " The Friitivists," Cargill states that iitzgerald was i- fluenced by Joyce*. 3 Vli the ost superficial exhalation of Fitzg-erald's work reveals that rAs influences were all of a traditional sort; and his only siilarity to Joyce is to be found in a single short story, "absolution," waich, it is true, has a number of things in cowmon vith Joyce's profound story "The isters." But as for an influence, there is no evi- dence, either in Fitzgerald's private papers or in nis work, that one exists. CargPillakes no pretense of supporting is statement; it is :ade prec.umaably because he vishes to consider Joyce in the following paragraph and thinks the remark an interesting transition. These two critics are only representative; ,ost of what Ias been written about Fitzgerald is of the same quality. recently, it is true, Fitz-eraIld's work has ha the benefit of examinaton by competent and thorough scholars and critics, John elrryan, rthiur izener, ana Lionel Trillin- among t.-em. Eaven as ear y as l925, certain critic, suc &s duund LiLson, Tliot, and Gilbert 3eldes, understood and accurJtely described mis work. But th~e overwaelLinB proportion of areless and Unjustifiable descript ion and >neralizat ion about his work to the competent criticism of it justifies 30scar Cargill, Intellectual leri-ca, p. 346. careful analysis of his important works. The fact that, as John Dos Passos has said, Pitzgerald wrote not for highbrows or for lowbroxvs, but "for whoever had enough elementary know- ledge of English to read through a page of a novel" has probably prevented his work from receiving the serious attention it deserves. 4 Iethod One of the well-known shortcomings of modern criticism is the paucity of work in the field of the structure of the novel; it goes without saying that the definitive ;work on the subject has yet to be written. It has been necessary, there- fore, to derive most of the methods of analysis for the present study fromn the small number of inmnortant works obtainable.