We Leave Tonight

261 Words2 Pages
This poem was one of Fitzgerald’s many poems that he composed during his lifetime, this one in particular written in 1920 in New York. The poem stemmed from Fitzgerald’s success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise which became one of the most popular books that year. The purpose of the poem was to entail the transformation of Fitzgerald’s life from being empty and unfulfilled to having the best time of his life where his novel became successful, having impressed and married the woman he loved and becoming friends with many American expatriates in Paris, most notably Ernest Hemingway. Gaining his new found fortune, he made several excursions to Paris and the French Rivera, using the lines ‘we leave tonight’ to express so, as well as to also express Fitzgerald’s leap towards fame, fortune and luxury. Imagery is used substantially in the poem, for example, the still, deserted street, the moonless way, the sea is white, hollow highways and more. It all expresses and alludes the change of life for Fitzgerald and his wife in New York, the first stanza regarding his lifeless life, silent and boring in a city of grey buildings and empty shadows. Regarding the second stanza, it looks back upon the previous years of Fitzgerald’s life and how he abhorred that time, saying how futile it was. With the third and last stanza, Fitzgerald then entails how everything then quickly changed, how his world became bright with light implying his fortune gained and how he would take journeys to Europe where prevailed the Jazz
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