Work record
This Side of Paradise
1920 · Early 20th Century · Novel · English
Abstract
Background. Fitzgerald's debut, drafted in training camps and revised after two rejections, draws heavily on his own schooling, his Princeton years and his mentor, the priest to whom it is dedicated. Its epigraphs come from Rupert Brooke and Oscar Wilde.
Plot. A pampered Midwestern boy arrives at college hungry for distinction. Friends die, grades slip, a vision of evil frightens him, and the war intervenes. Afterwards, poor and in love, he is rejected by a society girl who wants security, drinks until the saloons close, drifts through a Maryland summer, takes the blame for a friend's indiscretion, and loses his spiritual guide. He walks back toward the college town alone.
Form. The book is a mosaic of narrative, poems, correspondence and dialogue arranged as drama, reflecting the hero's literary self-consciousness. Chapter titles such as 'Spires and Gargoyles' and 'The Egotist Becomes a Personage' chart his progress like stages in a moral education.
Themes. Vanity and self-creation, love tested by money, the shaping power of a university, lost and remembered Catholic faith, and the mood of youth after the Great War.
Significance. Its instant success launched Fitzgerald's career and his marriage. Critics regard it as the first novel of the American Jazz Age and an apprentice work whose concerns ripen in his later fiction.
Main characters
- Amory Blaine: Self-dramatizing Princeton undergraduate
- Monsignor Darcy: Catholic priest and fatherly adviser
- Rosalind Connage: New York debutante who jilts him
- Beatrice Blaine: Glamorous, unstable mother
- Eleanor Savage: Reckless Maryland girl of one summer
- Burne Holiday: College reformer turned pacifist
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Summary
Amory Blaine, the only son of the wealthy, eccentric Beatrice Blaine and her ineffectual husband Stephen, is raised in luxury, travels with his mother, and grows up handsome, clever and sure of his own superiority. After two years in Minneapolis and a spell at a New England boarding school, where he is unpopular and then a football hero, he goes to Princeton, drawn by its glamour. Through his mother he knows Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a worldly, warm-hearted Catholic priest who becomes his confidant and spiritual father, writing him letters that treat him as a kindred Celtic soul. At Princeton Amory works for the clubs, the Triangle Club show and the Princetonian, flirts by letter and in person with the debutante Isabelle Borgé, and is shaken when his friend Dick Humbird is killed in a car accident after a night out. He fails a make-up examination and loses his place on the paper. In New York, after a night with chorus girls, he believes he sees the devil, a vision that sends him into a period of moral fastidiousness. His father dies and the family fortune shrinks. His friend Burne Holiday renounces the clubs, reads Tolstoy and becomes a pacifist, and Amory falls briefly in love with his widowed cousin Clara Page, who refuses him. A short interlude of letters and a poem carries him through the war years, during which he serves in France; friends die, his mother dies, and much of her money is gone. Back in New York in 1919 he falls deeply in love with Rosalind Connage, the brilliant younger sister of his classmate Alec. Their courtship is written as a play. Amory works in an advertising agency, but Rosalind will not marry a poor man, and she leaves him for the reliable Dawson Ryder. Amory goes on a three-week drinking spree that Prohibition ends. In Maryland he has a brief, strange romance with the wild Eleanor Savage. At Atlantic City he takes the blame when house detectives find Alec with a young woman in a hotel room, protecting his friend at the cost of his own name. He learns that Rosalind is to marry and that Monsignor Darcy has died. Walking alone toward Princeton, he gets a ride from the father of his dead classmate Jesse Ferrenby, argues for socialism, and ends at the college gates, crying out that he knows himself but that is all. Charles Scribner's Sons published the novel on 26 March 1920, after rejecting an earlier version titled The Romantic Egotist in 1918; it made Fitzgerald famous at twenty-three. It is dedicated to Sigourney Fay, the priest behind Monsignor Darcy.
Virtues in this work
- Friendship: At Atlantic City Amory takes Alec's disgrace upon himself so that his friend's name is spared.
- Humility: On the walk to Princeton Amory admits that he knows himself but nothing more, setting aside the egotism of his youth.
- Charity: Monsignor Darcy gives Amory years of patient affection and counsel, writing to him as a son.
Plot or Argument
- Book One, Ch. 1: Amory, Son of Beatrice
Beatrice Blaine raises her son as a precocious companion and takes him to Monsignor Darcy. When Amory's appendix bursts at sea and he is operated on, she suffers a nervous breakdown; Amory spends two years in Minneapolis and then goes to St. Regis' school, where he moves from unpopularity to athletic success.
- Book One, Ch. 2: Spires and Gargoyles
Princeton enchants Amory. He seeks prominence, courts Isabelle Borgé, and writes for the Triangle Club. A car crash kills Dick Humbird on the way back from New York, and Amory's first sense of death breaks into his college romance.
- Book One, Ch. 3: The Egotist Considers
Amory fails his condition exam, loses his Princetonian post, and quarrels with Isabelle. Monsignor Darcy distinguishes a personality from a personage. After a night in New York, Amory sees a ghostly figure he takes for the devil, and the face of Dick Humbird.
- Book One, Ch. 4: Narcissus Off Duty
Burne Holiday leads a revolt against the clubs, turns to Tolstoy and pacifism, and leaves Princeton. Amory, half in love with his cousin Clara Page, is refused. The war comes, and Amory and his friends prepare to enlist.
- Interlude: May 1917 – February 1919
Monsignor Darcy's letter calls Amory his son and tells him he will remain Celtic and Catholic in spirit; a poem and a letter from Amory to Tom D'Invilliers mark the war years and his return.
- Book Two, Ch. 1: The Debutante
In play form, Rosalind Connage makes her debut in New York, meets Amory, and falls in love with him; her mother presses the claims of Dawson Ryder. Amory's poverty and Rosalind's fear of a shabby life bring their parting.
- Book Two, Ch. 2: Experiments in Convalescence
Amory leaves his advertising job and drinks for three weeks until Prohibition arrives; he argues about literature with Tom and reflects on his generation.
- Book Two, Ch. 3: Young Irony
In Maryland Amory meets Eleanor Savage in a thunderstorm; they read poetry and talk of God and death, until a reckless ride to a cliff's edge ends the affair.
- Book Two, Chs. 4–5: The Supercilious Sacrifice; The Egotist Becomes a Personage
At Atlantic City Amory shields Alec Connage from scandal by taking the blame himself. Monsignor Darcy dies; Rosalind is engaged. Walking to Princeton, Amory debates a rich man in goggles, Jesse Ferrenby's father, and looks at the spires with new self-knowledge.
Characters
- Amory Blaine, protagonist
Gifted, vain, restless young man whose education the novel follows from childhood to his early twenties.
- Beatrice Blaine, mother
Extravagant, theatrical, convent-educated woman who forms her son's tastes.
- Monsignor Thayer Darcy, mentor
Worldly, affectionate Catholic priest and Amory's spiritual guide.
- Rosalind Connage, Amory's great love
Beautiful, candid debutante who loves Amory but marries for security.
- Isabelle Borgé, early romance
Debutante whom Amory courts during his Princeton years.
- Eleanor Savage, summer romance
Wild, poetic, defiant girl Amory meets in Maryland.
- Clara Page, cousin
Widowed cousin of serene goodness who declines Amory's love.
- Burne Holiday, classmate
Princeton idealist who turns reformer and pacifist.
- Tom D'Invilliers, friend
Poetic classmate and later roommate in New York.
- Alec Connage, classmate
Rosalind's brother, whom Amory shields at Atlantic City.
Lessons
Personality and personage
Monsignor Darcy tells Amory that a personality depends on charm and fades, while a personage gathers achievements and character over time. The book traces Amory's slow, unfinished turn from the first toward the second.
- How does Darcy define a personality and a personage?
- Where does Amory act as a personality, and where as a personage?
- Is the title of the last chapter earned by Amory's actions?
Love and money
Rosalind loves Amory but will not marry a poor man, and she says so plainly. Fitzgerald presents her choice in her own terms, as fear of a shabby, quarrelsome life, and leaves the reader to weigh it.
- Why does Rosalind choose Dawson Ryder?
- Is she wrong, or is she being honest about herself?
- How does Amory's loss change him?
Faith remembered
Amory is not a practising Catholic, yet Darcy's Catholicism is the only code he half keeps, and he flees in terror from what he takes to be evil. The novel records a young man drifting from faith while still haunted by it.
- What does Monsignor Darcy offer Amory that no one else does?
- Why does the vision of the devil affect Amory so deeply?
- What does Amory lose when Darcy dies?
A generation's restlessness
The closing chapter describes a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead and faith shaken. Fitzgerald speaks for young people after the Great War who felt cut off from older certainties.
- What does Amory mean by the 'new generation'?
- Is his final cry of self-knowledge a victory or a confession?
Context
The novel moves from the pre-war prosperity of the 1900s and 1910s, through the Princeton of eating clubs and the Triangle Club, the First World War, and the New York of 1919, ending as national Prohibition took effect. Its frank picture of college life, 'petting' and young women's independence made it a document of the post-war young.
Composition
Fitzgerald began the book as The Romantic Egotist while in army training camps in 1917–1918. Scribner's declined it twice, though the editor Maxwell Perkins encouraged revision; Fitzgerald rewrote it in St. Paul in 1919 as This Side of Paradise, taking the title from Rupert Brooke's poem 'Tiare Tahiti'. It was published on 26 March 1920 and dedicated to Monsignor Sigourney Fay, who had died in 1919.
Reception
It sold quickly and made Fitzgerald a celebrity; within weeks he married Zelda Sayre. Reviewers praised its vitality while noting its loose structure, mixing narrative, verse, letters and drama. It is now read as the novel that announced the Jazz Age and as the apprentice work behind The Great Gatsby.
Comparisons
- the-great-gatsby
Fitzgerald's later masterpiece takes up the same pairing of love and money in a tighter form; Gatsby, like Amory, loses the girl to a richer rival.
- the-picture-of-dorian-gray
Fitzgerald borrows a Wilde epigram as his second epigraph, and Amory's aestheticism and self-regard owe much to Wilde's world.
- jude-the-obscure
Both novels centre on a young man and a university city of spires; Amory enters and leaves Princeton, while Jude never enters Christminster at all.
- confessions
Augustine's account of a restless, gifted youth seeking pleasure and reputation offers a classic pattern for Amory's search, though Amory does not find Augustine's rest.
- a-farewell-to-arms
Hemingway's war novel shows the war Amory's chapters skip over, and the disillusion both books attribute to their generation.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.”
Frequently cited
“Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he’s done.”
Frequently cited
“a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”
Frequently cited
““I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.””
“After the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore a suspicious resemblance to delirium tremens”
“I’m a cynical idealist.”
“The education of all beautiful women is the knowledge of men.”
“The advent of prohibition with the “thirsty-first” put a sudden stop to the submerging of Amory’s sorrows”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- Every appearance and letter of Monsignor Darcy.
- Changes in form: verse, letters, lists and the play-script chapter.
- Amory's lists of books and what they reveal about his tastes.
- The spires and gargoyles of Princeton as images of aspiration.
- Amory's claims about himself, and whether the story bears them out.
Key terms and names
- Personage
- Darcy's word for a person whose character is built up from what he has done, as opposed to mere charm.
- Romantic egotist
- Amory's own description of himself, and the novel's original title.
- Eating clubs
- Princeton's social clubs, whose election system Burne Holiday attacks.
- Triangle Club
- Princeton's student musical-comedy society, for which Amory writes.
- Debutante
- A young woman formally introduced to society, as Rosalind is in Book Two.
- Prohibition
- The national ban on alcoholic drink that took effect in 1919–1920.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What role does Monsignor Darcy play in Amory's life?
- Comprehension Why does Rosalind end her engagement to Amory?
- Comprehension What does Amory do for Alec Connage at Atlantic City?
- Interpretation Why might Fitzgerald have mixed prose, poetry, letters and drama in one novel?
- Interpretation Is Amory's sacrifice at Atlantic City the turning point of his character, or another pose?
- Interpretation How does Princeton change in meaning for Amory between Book One and the last page?
- Big Question Can a person truly know himself without knowing God?
- Big Question What is the difference between being admired and being good?
Faith Connections
- Ecclesiastes 1:2–14 (Scripture)
The Preacher's search through pleasure, wisdom and work, ending in vanity, mirrors Amory's restless circuit of clubs, romance, drink and ambition.
- John 15:13 (Scripture)
Amory's taking of Alec's disgrace on himself is a small, flawed echo of laying down one's life for a friend.
- Augustine, Confessions I.1 (Church Fathers)
Augustine's line that the heart is restless until it rests in God names the hunger Amory feels but cannot satisfy at the novel's end.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: Through Amory's education, Fitzgerald argues that charm, talent and romantic feeling do not by themselves make a self; character must be built by choices and losses, and even then self-knowledge may be the most a modern young man can claim.
Rhetorical device: anaphora. In Book Two, Ch. 5, the description of the 'new generation' repeats 'all' in 'all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'.
Debate: Resolved: that Rosalind was right to break her engagement to Amory.
Memory Work
Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he’s done.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Argue whether Amory Blaine really 'becomes a personage' by the end, using Darcy's definition, the Atlantic City episode and the final scene.
Comparison with The Great Gatsby: Compare Amory's loss of Rosalind with Gatsby's loss of Daisy: what does each novel say about love, money and the dreams of young men?
Medical Lens
Drink runs through the book: Beatrice's 'nervous breakdown' is said to resemble delirium tremens, and after losing Rosalind Amory drinks steadily for three weeks until national Prohibition ends the spree. In New York Amory, after a night of drinking and excitement, sees a figure he takes for the devil and then the face of his dead friend Dick Humbird, an experience the novel presents as moral and supernatural rather than as intoxication, though readers may read it either way. Dick Humbird's death in a car crash and the deaths of classmates in the war give Amory his first encounters with mortality. Amory's restlessness and despair after Rosalind are written as moods rather than illness; any diagnosis is interpretive.
- Book One, Ch. 1
Amory's appendix bursts on an ocean liner, the ship turns back, and after the operation Beatrice suffers a 'nervous breakdown' the narrator likens to delirium tremens; Amory is sent to Minneapolis.
- Book One, Ch. 2
The car crash on the road from New York in which Dick Humbird is killed.
- Book One, Ch. 3 ('The Devil')
Amory's vision of a ghostly figure in a New York apartment and his flight through the streets.
- Book Two, Ch. 2
Amory's three-week binge after Rosalind leaves him, ended by the coming of Prohibition.
Creative Prompts
- Fiction
Write one more letter from Monsignor Darcy to Amory, sent just after Rosalind's engagement.
- Essay
Explain why Fitzgerald tells the Rosalind chapter as a play and what the form adds.
- Dialogue
Stage a debate between Burne Holiday and Amory about the Princeton clubs and what a college is for.
Further Reading
- Flappers and Philosophers, F. Scott Fitzgerald
His first story collection, published later in 1920.
- The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli
- The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. Edmund Wilson)
Essays, notebooks and letters, including recollections of his early success.
Verification notes
All quotes were found by search in the stored Gutenberg #805 text (edition 11, which its producers say follows a reprint close to the 1920 printing); locators are book and chapter as in that file. The publication date of 26 March 1920, the 1918 rejection of The Romantic Egotist, the dedication to Sigourney Fay and the Rupert Brooke source of the title are standard facts, the last two confirmed by the epigraph and dedication in the text. The schoolBand 9-12 stands for the batch band 11-12, which is not in the enum; readingLevel carries 11–12.
- Confirm whether Scribner's rejected The Romantic Egotist once or twice in 1918 before the 1919 revision was accepted.
- The setting's opening year (about 1906) is inferred from Amory's age and the 1919 ending; check against the chronology given in the novel.
- Rosalind's models (often given as Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre) are biographical identifications and should be checked before citing.