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F. Scott FitzgeraldA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
This novel, like most of Fitzgerald’s other fiction, demonstrates the failure of the American Dream and the strange coping mechanisms people adopt in light of that failure. The American Dream was a popular term, especially in the 20th century, for the ideal of America as a place where anyone could succeed in life so long as they worked hard and had merit. Understood in more concrete terms, the American Dream included such commodities: a family, a fortune, a career, and a good reputation.
Having earned their marriage, family, money, and apparent success, Dick and Nicole Diver are first shown on vacation, settled and content, enjoying the benefits of their status in life. It is within this season of their story that the seeds of discontentment take root: Dick searches for romance in someone other than his wife and Nicole begins relapsing into mental health episodes. While by appearances, they should be happy in their comfortable, upper-class existence, Fitzgerald exposes the dissatisfaction and disillusionment that lurk beneath the luxurious façade. The book resonates with the principle that it is futile to judge success by the worldly or practical terms of reputation, wealth, status, or the pleasures of life—true happiness is more elusive, maybe impossible, and one eventually fades into one’s place in the grave, unremembered.
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Babylon Revisited
Babylon Revisited
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crazy Sunday
Crazy Sunday
F. Scott Fitzgerald
May Day
May Day
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Last Tycoon
The Last Tycoon
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Winter Dreams
Winter Dreams
F. Scott Fitzgerald