Representative Symbols of the American Society: Revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Selected Novels

Abstract

The themes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works are highly influenced and inspired by his own life and ideas of the American society. The writer has never been very fond of Hollywood and the American society in his personal life which is clearly evident in the description of events in his books as well as his foundation of the characters. The works of the writer are greatly popular owing to the realistic and raw depiction of people’s obsession with social status, wealth, materialism, in a highly artistic manner. However, with time, Fitzgerald’s works started to gather less praise and appreciation, some say owing to the influence of Europe and the respective culture on his works. This review paper aimed at exploring various aspects of Fitzgerald’s life represented as symbols, themes, characters in his major works including The Great Gatsby, ‘The Rich Boy’, and The Love of the Last Tycoon. These works, which comprise both novels and short stores, had become a vehicle for Fitzgerald to express his opinions about the American society and his own feelings about it. For this reason, many of his works present the autobiographical element. ‘American Dream’ was one of the most important and recurring themes in his works. In addition, themes of ‘money’ and ‘wealth,’ in Fitzgerald’s works were used as representative symbols to describe the true nature of the American society. The current study also discussed Fitzgerald’s views on Hollywood which are greatly evident in the majority of his texts. This study has reviewed the existing literature to explore the said themes.