Journey from Innocence to Experience

The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald reflect the life he lived. They can, in fact, be seen as the records of a pilgrim in his progress from innocence to experience. Almost as a rule all the heroes in Fitzgerald’s novels mature as they encounter the real world. All his major works illustrate an agonized search for the true inner self, a quest for individuality. This book traces the development of Fitzgerald and his characters from dreams to maturity. It shows how all the heroes in Fitzgerald’s novels from Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise to Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon, in their search for different ideals, represent man’s quenchless desire to affirm the perennial moral values of life. In recording the journey of all his dreamers from Amory Blaine to Monroe Stahr, he depicted a longing for a unified selfhood that enjoys a universal appeal in the context of the contemporary realities of life. The book shows how Fitzgerald utilized his own experience – a tragic experience on the whole – to represent the national experience and ultimately the human experience. Almost as a rule, all of them start their journey as innocents with an explicit faith in life and the pre-conceived notions about the goodness of man. Experience comes to them through their confrontation with reality – both social and moral – which do not conform to their idealistic faith. Since they are powerless to change the reality they live in, they brood, they suffer. The overwhelming impression is of disillusionment and suffering. But Fitzgerald bestows a positive value on suffering. His wise and tragic sense of life imparts an enduring quality to his works. The book justifies how Fitzgerald’s works finally transcend the time he lived in and establish him as a major American writer.