2130_American Lit Module 2 _F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Get to know this F. Scott Fitgerald - Beyond The Great Gadsby Source: Norton's American Literature Anthology, Shorter volume.
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2130_American Lit Module 2 _F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 2. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 4. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 5. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company The Great Gatsby and “Winter Dreams”
- 6. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • In the end one loves one’s desire, not the thing desired. — Friedrich Nietzsche • There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. — Oscar Wilde “Winter Dreams”
- 7. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Had he been as calm inwardly as he was in appearance, Dexter would have had time to examine his surroundings in detail. He received, however, an enduring impression that the house was the most elaborate he had ever seen. He had known for a long time that it was the finest on Lake Ermine, with a Pompeian swimming pool and twelve acres of lawn and garden . . .” “Winter Dreams”
- 8. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • “As so frequently would be the case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his winter dreams.” • “Now, of course, the quality and the seasonability of these winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained.” • “Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.” “Winter Dreams”
- 9. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now . . . ‘Long ago,’ he said, ‘long ago there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.’ ” “Winter Dreams”
- 10. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • “She was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much youthful love, so many youthful lovers, she had come, in self-defense, to nourish herself wholly from within.” • “She had insulted him, and she had ridden over him, and she had played his interest in her against his interest in his work—for fun.” “Winter Dreams”
- 11. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Babylon Revisited”
- 12. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “Sudden ghosts out of the past: Duncan Schaeffer, a friend from college. Lorraine Quarrles, a lovely, pale blonde of thirty; one of a crowd who had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago.” “Babylon Revisited”
- 13. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “He believed in character; he wanted to jump back a whole generation and trust in character again as the eternally valuable element. Everything wore out.” “Babylon Revisited”
- 14. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “ ‘I want to get to know you,’ he said gravely. ‘First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles J. Wales, of Prague.’ ‘Oh, daddy!’ her voice cracked with laughter. ‘And who are you, please?’ he persisted, and she accepted a role immediately: ‘Honoria Wales, Rue Palatine, Paris.’ ‘Married or single?’ ‘No, not married. Single.’ He indicated the doll. ‘But I see you have a child, madame.’ Unwilling to disinherit it, she took it to her heart and thought quickly: ‘Yes, I’ve been married, but I'm not married now. My husband is dead.’ ” “Babylon Revisited”
- 15. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company “He would come back some day; they couldn't make him pay forever. But he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact. He wasn't young any more, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone.” “Babylon Revisited”
- 16. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • Why does Fitzgerald favor the predicament of the hero on the edge of the glamorous life, looking at it with these conflicting emotions, suffering from and in an odd way delighting in his exile? Fitzgerald’s Protagonists
- 17. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company • Are Fitzgerald’s narratives unique because they tell stories of growing up? Or is it that the major characters in them never grow up as much as they tell themselves they have? Fitzgerald’s Protagonists
- 18. Visit the StudySpace at: http://wwnorton.com/studyspace For more learning resources, please visit the StudySpace site for The Norton Anthology of American Literature. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hinweis der Redaktion
- F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ca. 1920. “In the 1920s and 1930s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (NAAL 658). Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, Fitzgerald was raised in upstate New York and attended boarding school in New Jersey when he was fifteen years old. He entered Princeton University when he was seventeen, but left after three years to join the army. World War I ended before Fitzgerald saw action, but his decision to join the army would profoundly effect the course of his life. While stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, a local woman with whom he fell madly in love. She rejected him, and he went to New York in 1919 determined to make a fortune and win Zelda’s heart. The plan worked. Fitzgerald published a novel in 1920 (This Side of Paradise) that became an immediate bestseller. Rich and famous at age 24, he and Zelda were wed. The two lived lavishly in New York, St. Paul, and Long Island, ultimately spending all of the money Fitzgerald earned with his pen. (Biographical information continues on the next slide.)
- Passport photo of the Fitzgeralds, with biographical details. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald moved to Europe (with their young son, Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald, born in 1921) in 1924 to live more cheaply. There, they became part of a community of expatriate American writers that included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. It was during this time that Fitzgerald wrote and published his most famous (and most successful) novel, The Great Gatsby (1926). Fitzgerald continued the critical and commercial success of Gatsby by writing dozens of short stories for mass-market periodicals (many of which were published in the Saturday Evening Post, which paid Fitzgerald handsomely), but he never was able to earn more money than he spent. As the stock market crashed in 1929, so too did the Fitzgeralds’ lives: “Scott became an alcoholic, and Zelda broke down in 1930 and spent most of the rest of her life in mental institutions” (NAAL 659). (Biographical information continues on the next slide.)
- The Fitzgeralds in Hollywood with Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery, 1937. Upon returning to the United States in the 1930s, Fitzgerald published another novel—Tender Is the Night (1934), which was not a commercial success—and eventually moved to Hollywood in an effort to earn money (and revive his faltering career) as a screenwriter. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in 1940 and Zelda died less than a decade later in 1948.
- The Great Gatsby (1925). Dust Jacket Illustration by Francis Cugat. Students who have read The Great Gatsby will sense that in some ways “Winter Dreams” is a compact version of Fitzgerald’s most famous novel and that the obsessions and mixed emotions that characterize Nick Carraway are also present here in Dexter Green and the nameless narrator. Some students will recall moments in The Great Gatsby that resonate strongly with “Winter Dreams”—the moments where Nick imagines Gatsby acquiring Daisy after so much longing and feels regret and a measure of disappointment that the quest is now over. Nick himself, as the narrator of Gatsby, has similar moments with Jordan Baker: His desire for her rises when she moves out of his reach. All of this can lead up to a more complex conversation about the narrator of “Winter Dreams” and his unsteady empathy with Dexter Green. There are moments when this narrator seems superior to and dismissive of this Black Bear Lake world of golf and fashion and money and a bit contemptuous of young Dexter for falling for it. At other times, however, the narration seems as breathlessly credulous as Dexter does. Or else it seems to present a strange commingling of the two sentiments, the wonder and the contempt.
- To start the conversation a bit enigmatically and get the students to look at Fitzgerald from fresh perspectives, you could put two famous epigrams on the board. One from Nietzsche: In the end one loves one’s desire, not the thing desired. And one from Oscar Wilde: There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. After the class discusses these epigrams, you might test them on the values of Dexter and the narrator of “Winter Dreams.” Does Dexter love Judy Jones? Is the fascination with her or with a life and a social class that she represents? If she had not been out of reach or mercurial in Dexter’s adolescence and young manhood, would he have pursued her as hotly?
- Ask a student to read aloud the paragraph that begins the second section of “Winter Dreams,” searching for the tone of it. What do your students hear in these lines? How does this tone prepare us for the events that ultimately unfold in the story?
- What does Fitzgerald mean by the phrase “winter dreams” that he uses as the title of the story? The phrase appears at three different points of the story: at the end of the first section; at the beginning of the second section; and at the end of the story itself. How does the placement of this phrase throughout the story contribute to the themes with which Fitzgerald is concerned?
- In his emotional turmoil at the end of the story, what is going on? Is Dexter’s regret for lost time and lost opportunity, for a life with Judy that he never had, entirely an experience of pain? Or do you sense a pleasure lurking somewhere in his nostalgia, a final superiority—of himself over Judy or of men over women (as the upper classes in the early twentieth century had constructed women, as lovely and ephemeral acquisitions)? When Dexter says, at the very end of “Winter Dreams,” “That thing will come back no more,” does he believe that wholeheartedly? Has Dexter stopped looking for the glamorous and impossible dream? Will he ever be capable of loving a woman for what she is, not what she represents as a status symbol?
- What about Judy Jones, the object of Dexter’s affection? Does Fitzgerald allow her to become a character in her own right, or is she little more than a projection of Dexter’s hopes and desires (his “grail”)? Discuss with your students the passages where Fitzgerald’s narrator focuses on Judy’s character and motivation (some of which appear on this slide). Does Judy ever emerge as a fully rounded character? Does Fitzgerald make it possible to see this story from Judy’s point of view, or is it only Dexter’s male perspective that comes through?
- The financial district, usually the quietest district in New York City at night, was the scene of great activity on “Black Thursday” (October 24, 1929), the moment of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. The photo shows clerks in the office of Tobey and Kirk, on Broad Street, reading the ticker. “Babylon Revisited” comes from an array of stories about men and women who have made it, people who have lived beyond the year or two of glory that Gatsby achieved before he died, perhaps mercifully, in his own West Egg swimming pool. These are stories of people who move unhappily through glorious locales: the Riviera and Paris, the comfortable private places in midtown Manhattan, the exclusive resorts of Switzerland. It is also a story of loss and decline as the prosperity that blessed a select few in the 1920s came crashing to an end. As you read this story with your students, have them think about the ways in which Fitzgerald is attempting to capture an entire era in the hopes, dreams, and frustrations of the character of Charlie Wales.
- Why does Fitzgerald refer to Charlie’s friends from the 1920s as “ghosts out of the past”? What are the ways in which Charlie is being haunted by his past? How is the ghost of Charlie’s wife, Helen—whether literally or metaphorically—the real specter haunting the story? What other ghosts of the past is Charlie forced to confront?
- While Charlie is haunted by the recent past (the excess and “dissipation”—a favorite word in the story—of the 1920s), early on in the story the narrator expresses this desire to “jump back a whole generation.” What does Charlie hope to find in an earlier generation that his generation—which Gertrude Stein famously referred to as the “lost generation”—no longer has?
- In this playful exchange between Charlie and his young daughter, Honoria, Fitzgerald is able to introduce a comic element into the story at the same time that he raises the emotional stakes considerably. What are the implications of Charlie and Honoria conversing with one another with such formality? What does it say about their estranged relationship? And what do we make of Honoria’s quick response “My husband is dead,” given that Charlie’s wife, Helen—Honoria’s mother—is also dead? How does this humorous exchange allow them to express some of their greatest fears and heartaches (that they are growing apart and becoming strangers; that Honoria is growing up and will soon no longer be a child; and that Helen has died)? Why does Fitzgerald choose a humorous theme to communicate such heartbreaking emotions?
- Both “Babylon Revisited” and “Winter Dreams” end with the protagonist reflecting on his life and what he has lost. Compare these two conclusions (one appears on this slide, the other on Slide 9) and discuss what they tell us about Fitzgerald’s take on the feelings of loss and sorrow that permeate his generation.
- To wrap up your students’ experience with Fitzgerald, discuss the questions on this and the following slide with reference to the heroes in “Winter Dreams” and “Babylon Revisited” (and, if they’ve read it, The Great Gatsby as well). Cumulatively, what do these characters tell us about Fitzgerald’s take on the modern world?