$Unique_ID{bob01250} $Pretitle{} $Title{Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald Critical Comment, This Side Of Paradise} $Subtitle{} $Author{Fitzgerald, F. Scott} $Affiliation{Associate Professor Of English, Simon Fraser University} $Subject{amory fitzgerald rather own reality itself blaine love paradise side hear audio hear sound see pictures see figures } $Date{} $Log{Hear Amory: His Glory*68390006.aud See Amory*0125001.scf } Title: Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald Book: This Side of Paradise Author: Fitzgerald, F. Scott Critic: Cooperman, Stanley Affiliation: Associate Professor Of English, Simon Fraser University Critical Comment, This Side Of Paradise Book I Many critics have complained, with justice, that a great flaw in This Side of Paradise (aside from its loose, rambling structure) is the fact that the author seems uncertain as to his own attitude. He mocks the romantic delusions or emotional melodrama of his "little rich boy," Amory Blaine, while too often he shares, or seems to share, in the delusions themselves. There is, in short, a kind of "smart" pseudo-sophistication imbedded within the narrative itself-a series of "clever comments" inserted for the sake of the cleverness rather than for any aesthetic purpose. And one result of this aesthetic self-indulgence is that the reader may find it difficult to take either Amory or his adventures with any degree of seriousness at all. Indeed, one feels as though the author himself were doing what Amory does during the course of the narrative: he merely holds the posture of writing about what actually is a very slight matter. Gesture Without Substance. The need for some sort of imposing or melodramatic gesture is, of course, one of the chief qualities of Amory Blaine as an adolescent. That neither Amory nor his creator-F. Scott Fitzgerald-ever grew out of this need, is a fact that readers of Fitzgerald's works have recognized as central to the direction of his life and career. For Amory, at any rate, and for his mother Beatrice Blaine as well, the posture of reality all too often replaces reality itself, while gesture stands as a substitute for emotional commitment. A woman of inherited wealth, Beatrice Blaine is a lovely, charming, superficial, childlike woman who maintains the posture of romance, a mere surface superimposed upon an essentially frigid or infantile refusal to commit herself to anything at all. She is, of course, the prototype for what has come to be known as the "Fitzgerald Woman" - an "enchanting" but essentially parasitic femme fatale whom Fitzgerald the author used so often for his books, and whom (in the person of Zelda) Fitzgerald the man finally married. The 'Momma's Boy.' Beatrice's attitude toward the Church, for example, is typical of her attitude toward all emotional commitments. "She had once been a Catholic," we are told, "but discovering that the Priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in the process of either losing or regaining faith in the Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude. . . . Next to doctors, priests were her favorite sport." The effect, of course, is that of a woman for whom all action is a matter of calculated performance. Her very marriage to the weak and "ineffectual" (though rather literary and "romantic") Stephen Blaine, Amory's father, was a similar "sport": having married the all but invisible Mr. Blaine, Beatrice is subsequently rather astonished at actually becoming pregnant, and makes of Amory himself a perpetual toy of whatever fashionable manner she currently approves. That Amory, indeed, falls into a posture of play-acting whenever he is with Beatrice, is itself an indication of her "charm" - and her lack of substance. The first chapter of This Side of Paradise is a very important one because it includes many themes which Fitzgerald repeats and amplifies throughout the rest of the novel. Amory, for example, from the very beginning of the book-especially during his early adolescence in Minneapolis and his four years at St. Regis' Academy in Connecticut-is precocious, "romantic," and literally stuffed with gestures that come both from his own rather exotic reading, and from the rootless globe-trotting of his mother. The very title of the chapter ("Amory, Son of Beatrice") is both a parody of Epic genealogy, and clear indication that Amory is a "momma's boy" in a very profound sense of the term. Amory himself, with his long-lashed and unusual green eyes, with his calculated "charm," and his immense, though vague conviction of his own "superiority," from the very beginning relates to all aspects of reality through a veil of deliberate posturing. Anything too "real," indeed, alarms rather than interests him: while playing a romantic scene with Myra St. Clair, for example, he is enchanted with the young girl until he actually kisses her. And then occurs an abrupt change from "romantic" mood ("their lips brushed like wild flowers in the wind," writes Fitzgerald) to one of actual repugnance: Amory, having touched the actual flesh of the girl, feels merely a "sudden revulsion . . . disgust, loathing of the entire incident." The Ideal Of Romance. It is not the actual "kiss" which Amory desires (just as, later in his life, it is not sex itself which he wants), but rather it is the idea of being able to kiss the girl that intrigues him. He is, in short, perpetually fascinated with some imagined and usually baroque shadow of Grand Romance. And this Romance-whether of love, or "success," or "social justice," or "art" or "intellectual pursuits," or "religion" - simply collapses at any touch of sordid reality. Amory Blaine, kissing Myra in the first chapter of This Side of Paradise, or desperately regurgitating slogans of political radicalism in the last chapter of the book, conveys the same sense of lack of substance: if, as the critic Edmund Wilson suggests, Amory's "revolt" at the end of the novel is a rebellion directed at nothing and one that goes nowhere, it is also true that his emotions are generally in the same condition. For Amory Blaine, in short, any sort of actual consummation is necessarily sordid, somehow unsatisfying, always incomplete, and for this reason his career becomes a series of gestures which are aimed at appearance rather than at achievement. The achievement, indeed, is itself the deadliest "failure" of all: so long as Amory can suffer the pangs of "Great Love" without actually getting the girl, so long as he is prevented from actually achieving reality (prevented, preferably, by some sort of conditions which are themselves melodramatic-lack of money, perhaps, or Noble Sacrifice of some sort, or a "fine" reservation of conscience, or the invasion of previously Sacred Traditions by barbarian hordes with alien names), he can take a certain amount of pleasure from failure itself. Failure As A Theme. Failure emerges as a basic theme of This Side of Paradise - and of Fitzgerald's work as a whole. Inevitably, such failure marks the career of a "superior" person who, unable to cope with the demands of that reality which his own actions have created, falls back upon some Thwarted Dream of Beauty (either of moral value or Grand Passion) and so redeems the failure itself. The advantage, of course, is that failure permits the protagonist to maintain his "superiority" unchallenged by the demands of achievement. The burdens of reality, after all, are multiplied rather than lightened by the consummation of one's desire. It is always more difficult to maintain a happy marriage than to marry one's Golden Girl; it is more difficult to offer creative leadership than to acquired a status of political importance; it is more difficult to become a poet than to have a Poetic Soul; it is more difficult to live with the healthy woman one has created from a beautiful neurotic, than to make the "cure" itself. There is, in short, a certain fascination with what might be called the comforts of failure (or inability to cope with success) common to books like Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, and This Side of Paradise; in each case, Fitzgerald gives us a protagonist for whom consummation itself becomes destructive - an individual who in some way cannot commit himself totally to the reality of his own desires. Amory Blaine, certainly, in his career up until the time he enters Princeton (Chapter I of This Side of Paradise carries us through Amory's 18th year), never seems quite "at home" even-or especially-when he does succeed in achieving a particular desire. Dreaming of "romance," he despises the flesh when it is finally offered to him. Obsessed with social success, and "showing off" either in the classroom or on the football field in order to achieve it, he seems almost determined to ruin the success itself, and acts in such a way as to alienate precisely those whom he has been trying so desperately to impress. Possessed of a fine intellect, he concentrates this intellect "on matters of popularity, a university social system, as represented by Biltmore teas and Hot Springs golf links." Futility And Desire. The paradox of Amory Blaine, indeed, is the paradox of Fitzgerald himself. There is a group of opposing powers which, struggling in the same individual, produces a high pitch of frenzied activity leading, finally, to self-neutralization, or self-immolation, and so producing nothing at all: a kind of ineffectuality created not by lack of power, but rather by the multi-directional proliferation of power in terms of romance and perpetual "desire." Amory senses this fatal "propensity toward failure" in himself. Speaking to a companion during his last year at St. Regis', he attempts to differentiate between the "philosophers" and the "slickers" of the campus world-which is, of course, a microcosm of the American world itself. The "slickers" are those individuals whose brilliance is concentrated solely on social (and therefore material) "success": they are the perpetual "in" people, the skilled "Big Men on Campus" who instinctively "know who to know," who concentrate their powers and make their emotions, their talents, their resources into effective and well-sharpened instruments of their will. The "philosophers," on the other hand, are those who pursue their own course independently of the rewards - and the demands - of "Society" itself. And it is significant to note that Amory remarks that there is, in his own personality, much of both the "slicker" and the "philosopher." Amory Blaine, indeed, who even as a youth "wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory," was too much of a "slicker" to commit himself to his intellectual pursuits and aesthetic sensitivities; and too much of a "philosopher" to become a wholly successful "slicker." And this tension, so basic to F. Scott Fitzgerald's own life, is the central tension of Amory Blaine. [Hear Amory: His Glory] ... wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory ... Amory At Princeton. Even at Princeton, Amory's schizophrenic ambitions tend to dilute and weaken whatever intellectual power he possesses. He loves and is awed by all things Princetonian-especially the traditions, the self-assurance, the air of "good breeding" that seem as much a part of campus environment as are the lecture halls and athletic fields. But the Princeton "atmosphere" rests on a foundation of intense social competition; Amory, indeed, discovers all too rapidly a pecking-order of prestige and power. It is, Fitzgerald tells us, a "breathless social system, that worship, seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey 'Big Man.'" Amory, of course, is fascinated with all the jockeying for "position." In a world composed of the "ins" and the "outs," he determines to achieve status at all costs, and to this end will use every talent at his disposal-whether it be a talent for "correct" dress, a talent for football, or a talent for writing. Each of these things, in short-the important along with the trivial-becomes little more than a method of achieving "success." For Amory Blaine, however, "success" is defined simply by the standards of the most powerful of those already established; lacking the kind of identity and will which enable young men like Burne Holiday to set the pattern for others, or to ignore all patterns in pursuit of goals shaped by personal rather than "social" goals, Amory simply drifts into "success" and, with an equal lack of conviction, drifts into failure as well. Romance' And Love. Even his relationships with women are defined by characteristic posturing. Isabelle Borge, for example, with whom he carries on a largely verbal "affair" and to whom he sends long and "rapturous" letters, is simply an image or dream-audience reflecting Amory's own narcissistic performances; their "love" is absurd because it is not real and cannot become real on the terms which Amory himself sets for it. The power of sex, indeed, offends him while it attracts; obsessed with guilt produced by his own emotions, Amory must either turn the emotions into Romantic Love derived from adolescent vapourings, or "worship" their object (as he worships Clara Page) until reality in some way becomes purer than its own existence. It is Clara Page, who-refusing to be turned into an object by Amory's emotional unreality-defines what is, perhaps, his essential weakness, and the weakness of the Fitzgerald Hero as a type. "You lack judgment," says Clara, "the judgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play you false, given half a chance." For Clara perceives that Amory Blaine does not simply oppose reality with his own Idealism, but rather confuses one with the other, so that reality is virtually reshaped according to a dream-image that will be "spoiled" by any sort of real consummation. The result, inevitably, is a continual disaffection with reality, together with an equally persistent dissatisfaction with the Ideal. Unwilling or unable to sacrifice "real" success by committing himself fully to an ideal, and unwilling to sacrifice his Ideals or Dream-roles by committing himself totally to the real world, Amory fluctuates between both, and finally can identify neither. And so he is left without emotional or intellectual direction-until the war provides at least a temporary solution by eliminating the need for any commitment whatever. [See Amory: Amory has the appearance of success with no commitment.] Book II Although The Great Crusade served to provide Amory Blaine, and thousands of young gentlemen like him, with the illusion of purpose and Noble Cause, it was not long before the excitement generated by the Crusade itself settled down into The Great Hangover; by the end of the twenties, indeed, when Depression replaced both The New Sophistication and speak-easy Prohibition, the "fresh" vintage of the postwar years had turned into vinegar. Meanwhile, however, America-which had entered the war as though it were a Crusade-entered the years of peace expecting a Party. After The War. The twenties, in short, were indeed remarkable, colorful, and schizophrenic years, and Book II of This Side of Paradise captures much of the essential quality of this memorable period. Along with political and social "disillusion" there was hope for some sort of "revolution" in politics, in the arts, and in moral codes; a romantic "pessimism" was combined with an equally romantic optimism, and both were infused with a pseudo-sophistication and "smartness" which themselves were grounded upon political and moral innocence. The progress of Amory Blaine through his "Great Love" for Rosalind Connage - another Fitzgerald "Golden Girl" - and his subsequent despair, melodramatic posturing, wild dreams of expiation and/or radicalism, is itself the profile of an age. Rosalind herself, of course, is a vital element in this progress; a symbol of everything "beautiful" and "charming" and ultimately destructive in American values, she, like Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night, is a creature of impulse rather than choice, and of sentiment rather than emotion; at once goddess and child, she destroys those who worship her and exploits those who love her. Rosalind: The 'Vampire.' Rosalind (whom Amory meets at the home of his Princeton friend, Alec Connage) is indeed the embodiment of the femme fatale of the Twenties-the "vampire" or Vamp who uses sex as a weapon, and "love" as an instrument of her own will, or rather, her own impulse. Lovely, spoiled, charming, "boyish" and yet womanly, she is-as Fitzgerald remarks-a "delicious" creature who somehow embarks upon Love as though it were a battle campaign, with the hapless male the only object worth pillaging. Rosalind is one of a long series of Fitzgerald females, all of whom possess the charm, the lack of substance, and (ultimately) the destructiveness of poisoned lollypops. There is indeed, Fitzgerald tells us, a great personal magnetism to this Golden Girl: "Her fresh enthusiasm," he says, "her will to grow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance, her courage and fundamental honesty-these things are not spoiled." The very qualities which do make Rosalind so attractive, however, while they have not yet been "spoiled," are postulated upon a worship of false values and illusions, as though life itself were a series of "coming out" parties or masquerade balls. And it is this quality of non-reality defined by Cecelia, Rosalind's younger sister, when she remarks that for Rosalind all actions are merely roles to be played in a melodrama of her own invention. Baubles And Toys. The point is that Rosalind never does "think" about money; she simply uses it-it is, necessarily, always there, hers by right and nature. "Thinking" about money would be sordid; she is not "interested" in money-merely in the baubles and pretty "toys" and charming willfulness that money itself makes possible. And her attitude toward money, furthermore, very much resembles her attitude toward "love" as well; Rosalind (like "the Fitzgerald Woman" in general) is not especially interested in passion, but rather in the tribute and sentiment she can exact by means of "winning" in the game of love, a "game" in which actual emotion is both distrusted and despised. One of Rosalind's own remarks is, perhaps, the fullest revelation of her character - and one of the most remarkable lines in the book. Reproaching Amory for being rather too solemn in his protestations of love, she remarks: "I want sentiment, real sentiment - and I never find it." In this line, indeed, is summed up all the beautiful and lost and dreaming idealists of Fitzgerald's works. For what Rosalind demands is that "sentiment" in some way be made "real." By definition, of course, sentiment is the very antithesis of reality, and it is this confusion between sentiment and emotion, between "wish" and reality, that defines not only Rosalind, but the other Fitzgerald "Golden Girls" and the hapless men who become their lovers - and their victims. That Amory himself shares rather than opposes Rosalind's "romanticism" is precisely why he can be so deeply hurt by her. For Amory too, the wish is - or should be - the father of reality. For Amory too there is a vision of "love" without flesh, of "wealth" without work; even in his attitude toward literature, for example, he admits that he cannot write because when he does try to write stories he is "distracted" both by the fear that he is "missing" life, and by an imaginative self-indulgence in fantasies and glories to be made possible by the writing itself. The Enjoyment Of Failure. Even in his despair, however, Amory is, in a sense, enjoying the melodrama of his own failure; his "loss," in other words, becomes simply one more possibility for vicarious experience: that is, experience without the demands and the sordid efforts which would be made necessary by consummation, and by reality. It is for this reason that he retreats so rapidly from Eleanor Savage, the girl he meets six months after the break with Rosalind. Eleanor makes the fatal mistake of demonstrating that she is a real human being possessed of real struggles and real spiritual substance; Amory "loves" her only so long as they can enjoy an "enchanted" summer - and at the first hint of reality, he runs from her like a panic-stricken adolescent. Even his "sacrifice" for Alec Connage is based upon this fatal appetite for vicarious "experience" which is no experience ateall: having taken Alec's place and been apprehended by hotel detectives to avoid a scandal which would hurt Alec's family, Amory searches-with great fascination-for the newspaper account of his own "disgrace." Once again he has managed to acquire a secondhand "reality" through a posture or role. By the end of the novel, it is clear that the "failure" of Amory Blaine, like his hopes and dreams, must be considered one more gesture among many. His radical "philosophy" expounded in the last scene, his "love" and his "suffering," all have a peculiarly unfocused quality, as though his convictions, like his emotions, lack any cause or object, and for this reason exist merely for their own expression. It is precisely this lack of focus, however-this lack of emotional no less than intellectual substance-which is indeed so characteristic of the America which F. Scott Fitzgerald saw developing. Idealism without ideals; rhetoric without conviction; "love" without emotion-it is all there; and in Amory's final statement of "prophecy" or vision, there is the raw material from which Fitzgerald was to shape some of his finest work. Character Analyses, This Side Of Paradise Amory Blaine: The central protagonist of This Side of Paradise, Amory incorporates many of the qualities associated with the "Fitzgerald Hero" - and indeed, with F. Scott Fitzgerald himself. Although possessed of a "good intellect" and great personal sensitivity, Amory is torn between his desire for Ideal values, and his worship of social success. Too often, indeed, Amory's dreams seem to absorb the real world, so that reality itself becomes, for him, little more than a means of achieving some vaguely imagined "ecstasy" of social "importance," or "love," or "sacrifice." Amory, in short, is weakened rather than strengthened by his "Ideals" because the ideals themselves are grounded upon a kind of romantic inability to cope with the challenge of reality-the demands which are inevitably a part of the consummation of one's desires. For this reason he is attracted by the desire rather by its achievement; a boy for whom life tends to be a series of gestures or sentiments, he becomes a man for whom actual emotion, or commitment, is a source of danger rather than gratification. Amory, in short, "takes up" various roles, or appearances, but remains unwilling to fulfill the real demands created by the roles themselves. In a basic sense, he relates to all action-his writing, his "love affairs," even his failures-as though they were elements in a melodrama of his own creation. Whether at St. Regis' Academy, or at Princeton, or during his essentially futile career after the war (when he falls in love with Rosalind Connage), Amory is unable to commit himself fully to any direction at all, and so dissipates his emotional and intellectual energy without "arriving" at a goal. A romantic who insists upon transmuting reality into the terms of his own romance, Amory confuses desire with reality, and so is unable to achieve satisfaction with the one, and remains unable to master the other. Beatrice Blaine: Amory's mother, the first of a long line of "Fitzgerald women." Having inherited considerable wealth, Beatrice is a lovely, charming, superficial, childlike woman who maintains the posture of romance, a mere surface super-imposed upon an essentially frigid or infantile refusal to commit herself to anything at all. She is, in short, the "enchanting" but essentially parasitic femme fatale whom Fitzgerald the author used so often in his books, and whom (in the person of Zelda) Fitzgerald the man finally married. Essay Questions And Answers, This Side Of Paradise 1. Who are the three "Fitzgerald Women" in This Side of Paradise? Answer: The "Fitzgerald Woman" refers to a type of lovely, charming, childlike, and essentially parasitic "Golden Girl" that Fitzgerald used for many of his works. Infatuated with the idea of "romance" and exploiting rather than using her man, the "Fitzgerald Woman" is a creature whose lack of personal responsibility is based upon a view of life as a "party," a view of love as mere gesture, and an inability to cope with real emotion or real problems. Acting a series of "roles" in place of true commitment to anything or anyone, the "Golden Girl" nevertheless uses men and "ideas" as instruments to secure admiration, to achieve personal freedom from "sordid details," and to maintain her own position of freedom to indulge her own impulses. In This Side of Paradise, the three women who fall into this "type," are Beatrice Blaine, Amory's mother; Isabel Borge, his first "serious" love (whom he met while at Princeton), and Rosalind Connage, the sister of a Princeton friend, who shared a Grand Passion with Amory after the war. Beatrice-who shaped much of Amory's character-is a person for whom all commitments are essentially impulses calculated to gain attention and a kind of spurious excitement; Isabel is a "speed" whose facade of romantic posturing covers (as it does with most of the "Fitzgerald Women") an essential emotional frigidity; and Rosalind is an "expensive proposition" whose "romance" is itself based upon romantic gestures, and freedom from all true responsibility or emotion. 2. In what way does Amory's Princeton experience define his basic character - and the weakness of what has come to be known as the "Fitzgerald Hero"? Answer: During his career at Princeton (and even earlier, during his school days at St. Regis'), Amory demonstrates the lack of focus, the lack of emotional and intellectual direction which, together with a pervading "romantic" view of reality, virtually insures the kind of "failure" so often associated with Fitzgerald's central protagonists. Viewing life as a kind of melodrama, or series of mere "roles," Amory is unable to commit himself fully to any single goal or standard of values; his very talents, whether for football or literature, become means rather than ends, a method of securing public approval and "position." Amory, in short, is attracted by - and ultimately defines life as - the appearance of "success," rather than its substance; lacking any true commitment even to his own avowed purposes, he tends to fear the demands and the challenges of any true consummation, and dilutes his own powers by a vacillating and "dreamy" confusion between desire and reality. 3. What are the main structural difficulties of This Side of Paradise? Answer: This Side of Paradise is a very loosely constructed novel, actually a series of episodes rather than a carefully worked narrative. Continuity is provided by the figure and the "education" (or rather, the development) of Amory Blaine; it is his various crises, moral revelations, and insecurities which "tie up" the structure of the book, and also serve as a kind of dramatization of the aimless "war generation" as a whole. A serious problem, however, is the fact that Fitzgerald often seems uncertain as to his own attitude toward Amory and the people surrounding him; he mocks the romantic delusions or emotional melodrama of his "little rich boy" (Amory), while too often he shares, or seems to share, in the delusions themselves. There is, in short, a kind of self-indulgence in the narrative itself, a "smart" pseudo-sophistication which often serves no aesthetic purpose, and is actually distracting to the reader. And yet it is also true that this quality, itself so distracting, was characteristic of the Twenties as a period - and in this sense, the very lack of narrative focus of This Side of Paradise can be viewed as serving a dramatic purpose. 4. Why is Amory Blaine's concept of "success" (like that of other Fitzgerald Heroes) often considered representative of basic patterns within American culture? Answer: Amory's concept of "success" is itself a kind of vaguely glowing "Ideal" whose basis is romance rather than reality. Almost pathetically concerned with "belonging" to whatever sources of power happen to be in control of his environment at a particular time, Amory is at the same time scornful of those whose sole motivation is social approval. It is this tension-the tension between his desire to "belong" and his desire to be "himself" (or, as he puts it, to be a "personage" rather than a mere "personality"), that causes much of Amory's difficulty in fully committing himself to anything at all. "Success" itself, furthermore, for Amory Blaine, is largely a matter of achieving some vaguely defined "happiness" without the demands and the sordid details of reality. Unwilling to risk social "failure" on one hand, and fearful of concentrating on actual work for the sake of the work itself, Amory is left floundering in a never-never land of feverish dreams, shadowy guilts, and glowing desires. Material success, in short, is always subordinated to some "dream of ecstasy" - while the dream, purged of all commitment, results in an emotional vacuum and perpetual ache of disaffection.