This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free Page B

stage of his quest, he is too narcissistic and egotistical to succeed. In fact, he has already admitted that his code to live by is a sort of aristocratic egotism (p. 19), and he believes himself to be physically, socially, and mentally superior to his fellow students.
    Not only is Amory unable to live up to his idealized vision of himself; neither will the world conform to his illusions. Amory’s experience at Princeton leaves him so disillusioned that he claims he manages to educate himself in spite of it; the social elite leaves him embittered and “ ‘sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl’ ”; women leave him heartbroken and convinced that evil and sex are nearly synonymous; and his job in advertising makes him tired of a society where “ ‘the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer’ ” (p. 256). Paradoxically, what begins as a “quest” becomes more of an inquest on the values of the culture upon which it is based. By the end of the novel Amory is spouting his own brand of socialism as a way to change a culture in which he no longer believes, in “a gesture of indefinite revolt.”
    Thus Amory’s romantic quest ends in a rude awakening. It is Horatio Alger in reverse, a story of riches to rags. In the end Amory has left Princeton without a degree, has fought in World War I, has grieved the death of his parents, his mentor Monsignor Darcy, and several of his friends, has lost the love of his life to a richer man, and is poverty-stricken. When we first meet Amory, he is being advised by his mother to have breakfast in bed. When we leave him he has recently calculated that his remaining $24 will buy 480 doughnuts, which he can live on for quite a while, provided he sleeps in the park. What happens between these two points in Amory’s life does not happen in a straight line. He spends most of his time befuddled, trying on different poses like so many suits, attempting to find a fit. He has taken to heart the advice of Monsignor Darcy that personalities fade but personages do not, and he determines to become a personage. Personalities are static characters, Monsignor Darcy claims, living according to the opinions of others, while personages are active, always creating, constructing, and becoming. But Amory can become a personage only after he has thrown off his facades, shed his narcissism and conceit, and returned once again to the “fundamental Amory,” with no poses and no prejudices. For Amory to achieve this status, however, he must completely transform his values. This Side of Paradise, then, is not so much a novel about youth as it is a novel about its transience, and a blueprint with which Fitzgerald explores the themes that preoccupy him for the rest of his life: the power of money and the fear of poverty, the evils of sex and relationships with women, and the tragedy of loss—loss of love, loss of youth, and loss of certainty.

The Power of Money and the Fear of Poverty
    Probably no other theme possesses Fitzgerald so completely as that of the power of money. His maternal grandfather was Philip F. McQuillan, a successful businessman in St. Paul, Minnesota, who in 1877 left a considerable fortune to his five surviving children, the oldest of whom was Mollie McQuillan, Fitzgerald’s mother. After her marriage Mollie used her money to supplement the family income, which gave Scott the advantages of an upper-middle-class child; he took frequent trips with his mother and had a very comfortable early childhood. However, his father, Edward, was financially inept. Stephen Blaine, Amory’s father in This Side of Paradise, is strikingly similar to Fitzgerald’s. Strong on breeding but weak in business, Edward Fitzgerald lost his wicker furniture business, moved his family from St. Paul to Buffalo to Syracuse and back again, was fired from his sales position with Proctor and Gamble, and finally resorted to depending on his wife’s rich St.