Fitzgerald’s_Personal_Background_Paralleled_with_the_Charact

Fitzgerald’s Personal Background Paralleled with the Characters in The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald’s Personal Background Paralleled with the Characters in The Great Gatsby As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the early 1920’s, he used a variety of sources to develop the setting, themes and characters. Since Fitzgerald lived through the corrupt era of the 1920’s he is able to lend authenticity in his portrayal of the materialism and deceit among the characters of his novel. Fitzgerald was influenced by the novel, The Waste Land by C.F. Elliot (Richard Lehan “Sugar Lumps” 95). The Waste Land was a response to postwar Europe, which was undergoing a radical change (Lehan “Sugar Lumps” 95). Elliot portrays a world, morally falling apart with no principle to hold it together (Lehan “Sugar Lumps” 95). Fitzgerald incorporates his personal background, peers and close friends, to form the personalities of the various characters in The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (Michael Reynolds 2360). His mother’s father was a self made Irish immigrant millionaire, and his father was a salesman who married above his social class and squandered the family fortune (Reynolds 2360). Fitzgerald enlisted in the army and fell for the southern belle, Zelda fitzgerald, lehan, people, careless, ginevra, daisy, gatsby, stark, reynolds, name, bruccoli, love, king, jordan, 2360, zelda, story, novel, money, great, characters, based, about, 70, white, scott, qtd, myrtle, mitchell, fay, baker, after, 68, yellow, wrote, writing, world, william, tom, sugar, someone, scribner, out, never, lumps, fitzgerald’s, father, both, because