This Side of Paradise

Although I initially was unsure what to expect, I thoroughly enjoyed This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At first, I thought the book was destined to be very similar to The Great Gatsby, another one of Fitzgerald’s works, but it turned out be very different. It was almost as if Amory Blaine was the exact opposite of Jay Gatsby. Although they were both chasing after an unattainable girl, Amory came from wealth and ended up poor and Gatsby was born poor but became very wealthy. I found the book very intellectually stimulating and was repeatedly interested by Amory’s continuously changing outlook on life. The book seamlessly intertwined Amory’s family life, inner conflict and social circle into one cogent and easy to follow timeline.

The thesis or concept of the book is Amory’s journey to truly learn who he is. Throughout the book, he must overcome societal norms, drugs and alcohol, women, and money to finally learn who he truly is. The culmination of his journey occurs in the final line of the book when he states finally, he knows himself, “but that is all.” While I agree that the thesis of the book is for Armory to find himself, I do not think he achieves this in the book. Instead, I believe that Armory chooses to believe and act on only what is convenient to him at that particular point in his life. He believes in his mother’s unconventional ways in the beginning of the book but quickly discards them in order to be popular at St. Regis. Armory strives to be socially known at Princeton. However, once he is no longer able to participate in his clubs, due to failing a course twice, he quickly discredits the clubs as superfluous. At this point, he conveniently rediscovers the “fundamental Armory.” He also ceases to believe in love after a checkered and beleaguered past leaves him loveless. Additionally, he turns to socialism after he becomes penniless and to put it simply “loses at capitalism.” In short, when the going got tough Armory looked for the easy way out and altered his beliefs.

The time in which Fitzgerald sets the book, 1910’s and 1920’s, has greatly affected the influence This Side of Paradise has had thus far. The aforementioned time period garners a lot of attention of scholars as well as casual readers because of the economic boom of the 1920’s and World War I. The time period has only seemed to bolster the books already broad appeal. In writing the book, Fitzgerald was aiming to target

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