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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was one of the most significant writers of the Twentieth Century and continues to influence readers today. He has received large amounts of criticism from authors and scholars, both positive and negative. As a writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald relied heavily on his own life experiences to write about his character’s pursuit of the American Dream.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896. He came from a wealthy Irish family from his mother’s side, whereas his father was poor, but a well brought-up descendant of the old Maryland Scott and Key families. Fitzgerald’s father (Edward Fitzgerald) moved to St. Paul when he met his mother (Mary McQuillan). While is St. Paul Edward opened a wicker furniture business, which shortly went out of business, so he moved his family to Buffalo, New York in 1898. Later that year they moved Syracuse and then back to Buffalo, and by eleven years old Fitzgerald and his family moved back to St. Paul to reside with the security of the McQuillan wealth.
The McQuillan wealth provided Fitzgerald with the money to attend a private school in Hackensack, New Jersey. He spent two very lonely years at the school, where he developed a passion for writing musical comedy. After his last year, Fitzgerald decided he would go to Princeton University. At Princeton he did what he excelled in, writing for the Triangle Club and the Nassau Literary Magazine. During a Christmas vacation spent in St. Paul, he met Ginevra King, a wealthy Chicago debutante, who became the first love of his life. She later rejected him and sent Fitzgerald into a devastating depression, though he still kept her letters until his death, which were over two hundred pages.
Fitzgerald left Princeton in 1917 without a degree and enrolled in the army, where he wrote the first draft of what would become his first novel, This Side of Paradise. In the summer of 1918, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre...