This Side of Paradise

“Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of fourteen.”

As numerous chapter headings and subheadings denote, Amory is an egotist—someone vain and self-absorbed—and holds himself in very high esteem. He firmly believes he will achieve greatness someday, which causes him to look down on his peers. This self-absorption alienates Amory and forces him to change his attitude and behavior to make friends. However, this self-confidence also gives Amory a romantic and idealistic view of the world, especially while attending Princeton.

“From the first he loved Princeton—its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that pervaded his class […] that breathless social system, that worship, seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey ‘Big Man.’”

Princeton plays a strong symbolic role in the novel and serves as a perfect setting for the social structure that Amory values and believes to be ideal (See: Symbols & Motifs). In Book 1, Amory’s greatest goal is to achieve popularity and recognition, and Princeton, he feels, allows him to accomplish these things easily.

“Amory spread the table of their future friendship with all his ideas of what college should and did mean. Kerry, not inclined as yet to take things seriously, chided him gently for being curious at this inopportune time about the intricacies of the social system, but liked him and was both interested and amused.”

Although Amory is an egotist, he occasionally establishes strong, genuine friendships. This passage demonstrates the great difference between Amory and his friend Kerry. While Amory is obsessed with Princeton’s social system and his desire to be among the social elite, Kerry doesn’t see the value of the social system but appreciates Amory’s friendship and finds amusement in his preoccupation with status.

“‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I sure am up in the air. I know I’m not a regular fellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn’t. I can’t decide whether to cultivate my mind and be a great dramatist or to thumb my nose at the ‘Golden Treasury’ and be a Princeton slicker.’ ‘Why decide?’ suggested Kerry. ‘Better drift, like me. I’m going to sail into prominence on Burne’s coat-tails.’”

Again, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the difference between Amory, who cares deeply about his social status and position, and Kerry, who happily drifts from one day and experience to the next. These foil characters illustrate both extremes, as one wants to reach the highest social levels while the other drifts through life without intention or aspiration.

“Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it—he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons.”

By the end of his sophomore year, Amory feels he’s attained true success by being part of Princeton’s most elite clubs despite being an academic failure. Now that he has reached this social status, Amory feels he can drift as Kerry does from one day to the next because he values social order more than anything.

“He made a last night’s effort with the proverbial wet towel, and then listlessly took the exam, wondering unhappily why all the color and ambition of the spring before had faded out. Somehow with the defection of Isabelle the idea of undergraduate success had loosed its grasp on his imagination, and he contemplated a possible failure to pass off his condition with equanimity, even though it would arbitrarily mean his removal from the Princetonian board and the slaughter of his chances for the Senior Council.”

This passage exemplifies Amory’s desire to drift through life without taking action to further his development. By ignoring this exam’s importance and not trying to pass it, Amory jeopardizes all the social standing he spent two years achieving. Thus, this failed exam symbolizes Amory’s shift from caring about his social standing to focusing on his intellectual and spiritual development, reflecting The Experience of Disillusionment.

“Then something clanged like a low gong struck at a distance, and before his eyes a face flashed over the two feet, a face pale and distorted with a sort of infinite evil that twisted it like flame in the wind; but he knew, for the half-instant that the gong tanged and hummed, that it was the face of Dick Humbird.”

On a double date in New York, Amory sees an apparition he believes is a devil. The fact that the apparition’s face turns into Dick Humbird’s is significant. Dick was a student Amory greatly admired and looked up to, but he tragically died in the car accident mentioned in Chapter 2. Thus, the devil in New York partially represents the losses and tragedies that haunt Amory.

“During Princeton’s transition period, that is, during Amory’s last two years there […] certain individuals arrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had been freshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below; and it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables at the Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions that Amory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret.”

Amory spends his first two years at Princeton building his social status, his highest goal and priority. Now that he has achieved what he believes is social greatness, he turns his focus on developing himself intellectually, no longer caring about the social structure that once intrigued him. Now, Amory focuses on the institution Princeton represents and the faults that lie therein.

“Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was drifting toward—and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory and Alec had reached an impasse: never did they seem to have new experiences in common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with their committees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the things they had for dissection—college, contemporary personally and the like—they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversational meal.”

For much of Book 1, Amory looks up to and admires several individuals, including Darcy, Kerry, and Tom. These characters direct his behavior and choices, but now that Amory’s worldview matures, he begins idolizing Burne. Burne represents a new set of ideals, including social reform and justice, which contrasts Amory’s obsession with social status earlier in the novel.

“The idea that the girl was poverty-stricken had appealed to Amory’s sense of situation. He arrived in Philadelphia expecting to be told that 921 Ark Street was in a miserable lane of hovels. He was even disappointed when it proved to be nothing of the sort.”

Fitzgerald often characterizes Amory by his ability to find disappointment and discontent in numerous areas of his life. One example is when Amory meets Clara, whom he thinks is an impoverished widow. When Amory finds she doesn’t fit his imagination, he is disappointed, likely thinking he could be the hero who saves Clara from destitution and struggle. This incident is another example of The Experience of Disillusionment.

“‘Not a bit of will—I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires—’ ‘You are not!’ She brought one little fist down onto the other. ‘You’re a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.’”

Though they don’t know each other well, Clara sees who Amory truly is and what he stands for. She is also one of the few people who can tell Amory about his character and have him intrigued by her analysis. This further illustrates Amory’s growth as a character and how his view of himself is changing.

“‘The grass is full of ghosts tonight.’ ‘The whole campus is alive with them.’ They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, make silver the slate roof of Dodd, and blue with rustling trees. ‘You know,’ whispered Tom, ‘what we feel now is the sense of all the gorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years.’ […] ‘And, what we leave here is more than this class; it’s the whole heritage of youth. We’re just one generation—we’re breaking all the links that seemed to bind us here to top-booted and high-stocked generations.’”

This scene at the end of Chapter 4 creates a powerful transition as Amory leaves Princeton and enters the world beyond it. As they wander the campus on their final night, Tom and Amory acknowledge that they are one of a larger group of men who entered this college as boys and are leaving as men. Tom’s mention of their generation also symbolizes Fitzgerald’s social commentary on The Dark Reality Behind the Jazz Age and how a generation can differ greatly from its predecessor.

“We are many other things—we’re extraordinary, we’re clever, we could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people, we can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celtic subtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid—rather not!”

In his letter to Amory before he leaves for Rome and Amory goes to Europe to fight in WWI, Darcy responds to Burne’s comment that he is “splendid.” He feels that neither he nor Amory are splendid, though he does think they’re both smart and charismatic. Darcy also makes a familial connection between himself and Amory by mentioning their “Celtic” roots, furthering the strong bond the two characters share.

“No, I’m romantic—a sentimental person thinks things will last—a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t. Sentiment is emotional.”

Amory says this to Rosalind, defining himself as “romantic” rather than “sentimental.” In claiming that a romantic person “hopes against hope” that things won’t last, Amory once more reveals his self-defeating tendencies and proneness to dissatisfaction in life.

“GILLESPIE: And you haven’t kissed me for two weeks. I had an idea that after a girl was kissed she was—was—won.

ROSALIND: Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every time you see me.

GILLESPIE: Are you serious?

ROSALIND: About as usual. There used to be two kinds of kisses: First when girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Now there’s a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted.”

In this passage, Rosalind’s description of kissing creates a feminist statement about how women developed more sexual and romantic freedom during the Jazz Age. It also demonstrates the liberation from traditional gender roles women are beginning to find. Thus, Rosalind shows how the female psyche is evolving and gaining independence from tradition.

“ROSALIND: It’s just—us. We’re pitiful, that’s all. The very qualities I love you for are the ones that will always make you a failure.”

While Amory believes he will be a great success someday, Rosalind knows that such greatness is unlikely. Her ability to understand Amory’s character is central to her choice to marry Dawson, who represents the financial stability Rosalind is used to and wants to maintain. Her rejection of Amory embodies The Impact of Money and Class on Relationships.

“‘Use’ be straight ‘bout women college. Now don’givadam.’ He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzer bottle with a broad gesture to noisy extinction on the floor, but this did not interrupt his speech. ‘Seek pleasure where find it for tomorrow die.’ ‘At’s philos’phy for me now on.’”

Amory, who is drunk, engages in incoherent rants reflecting The Experience of Disillusionment. Amory’s statement also demonstrates his hurt regarding his breakup with Rosalind. His character has always been unconventional, but now he uses alcohol to cope with his trauma and simply seeks pleasure.

“It’s the strangest feeling. You ought to get beaten up just for the experience of it. You fall down after awhile and everybody sort of slashes in at you before you hit the ground—then they kick you.”

Amory goes through a lot of emotional turmoil during his drinking binge to deal with his heartbreak. Once he comes out of it, he can look back on the experience objectively and realize his experience will help him in the future.

“He wrote a cynical story which featured his father’s funeral and dispatched it to a magazine, receiving in return a check for sixty dollars and a request for more of the same tone. This tickled his vanity but inspired him to no further effort.”

Poetry and writing are one of the novel’s key motifs (See: Symbols & Motifs), as this passage demonstrates. Amory often uses writing to cope with difficult situations. This passage is ironic because Amory could have used his writing to become financially stable, yet he ignores the opportunity and continues drifting through life.

“Yet was Amory capable of love now? He could, as always, run through the emotions in a half-hour, but even while they revelled in their imaginations, he knew that neither of them could care as he had cared once before.”

When Amory meets Eleanor Maryland, there appears a brief chance that Amory might find happiness with her. However, Amory has changed so much since Rosalind’s departure that he feels incapable of love. This failure is especially ironic because Amory and Eleanor have much in common and appear to be a great match. Regardless, Amory’s broken heart prevents him from falling in love again.

“He was in an eddy again, a deep, lethargic gulf, without desire to work or write, love or dissipate. For the first time in his life he rather longed for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their petty fevers and struggles and exaltations. His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before […] the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.”

Amory once believed himself to be exceptional, and behaved with arrogance and self-satisfaction. Now, however, Amory has moved away from a more childish outlook on life to the greater self-awareness and pessimism. His “long[ing] for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their petty fevers and struggles and exaltations” reflects Amory’s growing awareness of The Dark Reality Behind the Jazz Age.

“‘Is Alec a great friend of yours?’ asked Jill […] ‘He used to be. He probably won’t want to be any more—and never understand why.’ ‘It was sorta crazy you takin’ all that blame. Is he pretty important?—kinda more important than you are?’ Amory laughed. ‘That remains to be seen,’ he answered. ‘That’s the question.’”

This passage taps into the novel’s theme of The Impact of Money and Class on Relationships. Since Amory is willing to sacrifice himself to save Alec’s reputation, Jill assumes that Alec must be “more important” than Amory is. While Amory’s motives for taking the blame aren’t wholly selfless, he does recognize that Alec has a family to care for, whereas Amory does not.

“Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amory suddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playing listlessly in his mind: ‘Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.’ On the contrary, Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense of security.”

Darcy’s funeral becomes a turning point for Amory. He has spent several days thinking about his life and how much it has changed from his days at Princeton. When he sees the many people attending the funeral to honor his hero, Amory realizes that he also wants to be necessary to others. Fitzgerald doesn’t show the reader if or how Amory achieves this desire, but he does illustrate how drastically Amory’s character is changing and how he’s beginning to think of others more than himself.