This Side of Paradise chronicles the lives of youths during the interwar period when materialism and liberal behavior reigned supreme. The 1920s have often been glamourized in literary works as an epoch of experimentation, mass consumption, and a new youth culture in which dating rituals changed as casual kissing, petting, and drinking emerged as integral facets. Despite the glamour of this type of lifestyle, Fitzgerald nonetheless critiques the moral vacuity he witnesses all around him. Fitzgerald unequivocally is influenced by realism in this work as he eschews any and all efforts to glorify any happy endings or provide unnecessary beautification. Rather, Fitzgerald directly portrays the world as it was despite any pitfalls he may have encountered as a product of the time period. Although Amory was raised to a wealthy family during the World War I era, he faces a litany of obstacles, including the death of his mother, the pangs of heartbreak, and losing all of his money because of poor family investments. He abandons all desires to remained tethered to conformity, which he articulates halfway through his time at Princeton. Despite living during the glamorous 1920s, at the end of the novel, as he walks back to Princeton, the protagonist laments, “I know myself, but that is all–” (Fitzgerald 125). Such sentiments underscore how many people, even the wealthy, during the 1920s failed time and again because of the epochal preoccupation with money, women, and sex. Amory goes through an arduous self-realization process as he navigates a materialistic world within which he does not know his niche yet. Ultimately, Amory becomes cognizant of his own selfishness and materialism that has brought him to his current state of being: alone, broke, and somewhat lost in an epoch that has time and again been romanticized and lauded in works of literature, movies, and other cultural commentary on post-World War I America.
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Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. United States: Dover Publications, 1996. Print.
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