This Side of Paradise by Scott Fitzgerald, Essay Example

The novel’s main character is named Amory Blaine, who is has spent is life as surrounded by wealth, riches, while his aristocratic parents afforded every spoil of luxury, comfort and a first class education. It was clear from the start of the novel that Beatrice his mother was the person that groomed Amory in her likeness (Fitzgerald 3).The first impression of Amory shared in the book was a young man with wealth walking through life with all these fascinating tales and American college life’s conquest. The book description summarizes Amory Blaine as a privilege aristocrat’s childhood years through adulthood, which chronicles Amory’s intellectual accolades such as Mozart and Beethoven and moral growth (Fitzgerald 4). The education of Amory Blaine was not just morality and intellectual triumph but four themes of love, relationships, and romance. Amory never received love from his parents, which is common because some rich parents believe they can buy love. This does not mean they did not love Amory consequently, it means showing love was not a major relationship factor in the Blaine household. The best example of a parent not showing love is a child’s birthday is a special occasion to a child because it is the day your parents show some love. In addition, every child is exciting because this is the one-day they get to spend with their parents. However, the rich and wealthy are more concerned with traveling to Europe so they have the butler spend time with the child on her birthday. To support this point, Amory’s mother relationship was distance because she would send Amory away to expensive boarding schools or prep schools instead of loving Amory at home during his adolescent years. This lack of love is very apparent because Amory mother was more interested in teaching Amory French literature, art, and paintings at the age of five. The only thing Amory really received from his mother was her romanticism of living a rich life. In a deeper analysis of the Amory character, he was a young man wanting to experience a life of romance, seeking close relationships and to find love.

Amory wears his wealth very well with all the same characteristics of his rich parents. He is arrogant, shallow, selfish, and overbearing while believing the world owes him something because of his wealthy upbringing and Princeton education (New York Times 1). Nevertheless, it very clear to see that Amory is lonely seeking for someone to love him because his aristocratic parents used their wealth to raise their child rather than love. Amory puts on this brave face of brash, egotistical and heartless because being detached is what his family has taught him to use like a knife. It was clear from the first chapter that Amory’s mother Beatrice was responsible for developing his arrogant character. It was evident that Beatrice molded her son in her likeness while affording her only son every lavish gift she could find, to ensure her son enjoyed the Roman heritage of wealth. In every sense of this saying” The apple does not fall far from the tree “because Amory has been molded and groomed mirroring all his mother’s wealthy Roman attributes. This rich upbringing contributed to Amory disillusions about life because he struggle fitting into his Princeton environment. Amory believed his father was royalty at the top of the elite of the elite. However, soon he found that he was not in the elite class at Princeton. This was the first time that Amory learned that at Princeton, the elite and power belong to those that had money but also those that excelled in athletics, thus his lack of athletic abilities put him in the lower classes (Fitzgerald 8).

Amory became more determine to fit into the world of meaningless sex with love without any resemblance of the romantic life his mother lived. His mother grew up with Roman wealth that demanded educational excellence and learning all the finest etiquettes including required by the rich. All the romantic way of live he was learned from his mother, who was raised in a rich Roman family that made sure she had every type of culture in life such Beethoven and Mozart (Gutenberg 1). Amory mother’s upbringing has a history of a childhood without love and but plenty of romanticism. Amory mother believe that living life with extravagances, style, travel to romantic locations was love. Beatrice embedded into her son the life of the wealthy is romantic with the best clothes, the finest dining, the best education along with all the spoils in life.

It is easy to follow the mundane life in the eyes of Amory because he felt life was boring because his life was pre planned regardless of his personal likes. His parents chose the each step of Amory life such as his mother feed him literary books and French painting history at the age to ten to prepare Amory for the family’s college choice Princeton (Gutenberg 2). The book presented Amory as a young man that pretended to fall in love to adapt to the elite rituals on campus of his peers. However, Amory was crushed two times in his life with his first love and the women he wanted to marry but married another because he was wealthy. This speaks to the romance and love that Amory pretends to seek with Isabelle because he was is trying to break in the upper echelon of the rich students. Amory learned at this point that you can never control love and what the heart wants. Isabelle Borges became Amory first taste of love, which his heart has been wanting to experience since his childhood. In the end, it was Amory egotistical attitude that doomed the relationship but it was the first love that provided a small resemblance of romance that Amory wanted in his life.

This analysis of Amory wanting romance can be explained by his mother who truly had a romantic Roman life which traveling to different places, learning the best of Mozart, exhilarating locations in the world which means she passed on the romantic yearning to Amory. This romantic yearning by Amory was apparent is his love affair with Rosalind Connage. She was woman that Amory found romance and love he was seeking life, consequently the relationship was broken off because Rosalind chose wealth over love. The romance yearning by Amory is supported in chapter 1 as the author describes the relationship between Rosalind and Amory. The love between Amory and Rosalind transpire quickly as they fell in love romantically in love while Amory felt he finally found that romantic life (Gutenberg 10). In the book, the relationship with Eleanor Savage shows that Amory was seeking the love he did not received from his mother and longing to share the love of literature and romance inherited from his mother. Eleanor was a young student from France that represented everything about love to Amory. She was pretty, affluent in French, love literature and well rounded. He finally found that gap in his life of love, which Eleanor filled but the romance and love ended after a horse fell over a cliff (Quizlet 3). This is the third time Amory is jaded by love that ends in dismay while Amory continues to find that elusive mix of love and romanticism in his life.

The secondary theme of” This side of paradise” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the relationships of Amory from youth to an adult. The relationships between Amory and his mother Beatrice define all other relationships in Amory’s life. The aristocratic life embedded by his parents and the ambition to succeed end up costing Amory important relationships in his life. Amory clearly missed that male relationship with his father because he developed a strong bond with the clergyman Darcy. Clergy Darcy became one his closest friends, confidant, and father like figure (Fitzgerald 6). This was very evident because most of the men relationships in Amory life reflected his longing to be close to his own father. The hidden meaning in the relationship with the Clergy Darcy means Amory was searching for the meaning of love, life, and death. This character theory is supported by the fact that Amory was seeking god for the answers using Clergy Darcy advice to helping with these difficult reasons in life such as death. Dick Humbird was a critical friend in Amory’s life because he came from the generation’s new money and he had the same beliefs as Amory. However, the friendship was cut short because Dick dies. Another close friend Amory was Kerry Holiday who went to France and died in the war. These deaths support the theory and the importance of the relationship with Clergy Darcy. It clear that his mother’s death and friend Jesse was defining moments in is life. The moments after the death of Jesse, Amory decided to walk to Princeton in an attempt to find himself. It was clear with each step Amory began to understand others walk in life including finally understanding the plight of the poor.

Conclusion

The book did an excellent job of utilizing rich themes and sub plots about the made Amory life interesting and believable. The aristocratic lifestyles rang true including the experiences at Princeton and the elite preparatory schools Amory attended during his youth. The parents influence was apparent guiding Amory to WWI to show his manhood. Amory experience love, romance, important relationships, and death that molded him from youth to adulthood. Amory brush with love and romance define this life while providing scars that would stay with me during his entire life. The relationships that Amory developed with his parents, friends, family, and students at Princeton clearly gave his a library of knowledge on his way to understanding self. The love in his life gave meaning to what he was missing from his mother however, he continued to purse that love of literature, a romantic life and close relationships to help him find his own voice and options. The loves his lost made a lasting impression on Amory that help developed that tough exterior and brash attitude towards anyone he felt was below his elite status in life. It was a moment of enlightenment that started to charge Amory thinking when he realized that at Princeton he was not in the top of the elite thus considered poor to the filthy rich. It was Amory/s final walk and conversations along the way to Princeton that Amory finally realize things about himself that was self-discovery. Amory found that the journey was not the end of the chapter in his life but the beginning of moving to a next level of wisdom. It was clear in the end of the walk to Princeton that Amory finally found his own voice, not his mother’s voice, not his father’s voice, not his college fiends voice but the true voice of Amory. The education of Amory started at the same place that molded his character.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York. Charles Scribner.1919. Print

Gutenberg Project. The Project Gutenberg EBook of This Side of Paradise: F. Scott Fitzgerald.2014. Web 18 Jan.2015

Quizlet. Eleanor Savage: This Side of Paradise: Character. Jazz Age Midterm 2015. Web Jan. 2015

The New York Times. With College Men: The New Times on the Web. 1998. Web 18 Jan. 2015