Fitzgerald's Brave New World

Abstract

Ultimately, Fitzgerald's literary stature derives from his ability to apply the sensibilities implied by the phrase romantic wonder to American civilization, and to gain from the conjunction a moral critique of that civilization. As this predominant motive took shape in Fitzgerald's writing, he approached and -achieved an almost archetypal pattern that can be isolated and analyzed, admired for its aesthetic complexity and interest and valued for its ethical and social insight. Certainly, this pattern does not run through all Fitzgerald's fiction; but its significance is underscored by the fact that it appears in his two finest novels and in several of the best stories. It is important to us, because it embodies above all Fitzgerald's understanding of the past and the present-perhaps the future -of his America. Fitzgerald's story, roughly, is of the New World, or, more exactly, of the work of the imagination in the New World. It has two predominant patterns, quest and seduction. The quest is the search for romantic wonder, in the terms which contemporary America offers for such a search; the seduction represents capitulation to these terms. Obversely, the quest is a flight: from reality, from normality, from time, fate, and the conception of limit. In the social realm, the pattern of desire may be suggested by the phrases the American dream and the pursuit of happiness. Fitzgerald begins by showing the corruption of that dream in industrial America; he ends by discovering that the dream is universally seductive and perpetually unreal. Driven by forces that compel him towards the realization of romantic wonder, the Fitzgerald hero is

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