Literary Analysis #2

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. The setting primarily takes place in New York City during the 1920's. The exposition displays a young man Anthony Patch, a young graduate student from Harvard. Anthony is full of promise, he is handsome, intelligent and part of the social elite. Though he is greedy, he has to have the best of the best and keeps putting off a career that will help him excel in life. Anthony awaits the fortune that his grandfather will behind so that he can continue to party. Soon enough he meets Gloria whom is charmingly beautiful and hopelessly reckless. Their love for one another begins rocky and continues to stay on this path. The young couple cannot make up their mind and continue to move from place to place in search of something that won't ever satisfy their greed. As they wait to see if Anthony will win in court for his grandfather's fortune, their own savings rapidly diminishes, which is when the climax occurs and their lives spiral out of control. Anthony consumes alcohol to forget his financial troubles and eventually the alcohol consumes his life and is never sober. Glory is obsessed with her own beauty and the thought of growing old and not being pretty consumes her life. The two are not ready to let go of the New York nightlife and all the glitz and glamour that it has to offer which eventually causes more strain on their relationship and reputation. The resolution finally occurs when the court decides to turn the case over to Anthony and he inherits his grandfather's fortune, but before this occurs Anthony finally turns himself over to sin and goes insane.

2. The theme of the story would be the addiction of sin. Anthony and Gloria are driven by greed, lust, envy and pride. Once they both had a taste of what Roaring Twenties had to offer they were pulled under by the temptations of sin. Anthony and Gloria had lost sight of reality and as a result became completely lost in sin. One by one the couple had lost their morals and values, as they were replaced by a sin. Anthony was under the influence of greed and envy. He envied the life and success of his friends, but instead of working for it he expected everything to just come to him. He believed that he was the best of the best and deserved the whole world. He was to proud to accept any favors from anyone and "handled" everything on his own. Gloria's lust to be maintain her beauty drove her insane. She was fixated on becoming a movie star, so that her looks were eternal and praised by many. Gloria knew she was growing older and thought she had lost her beauty so she was determined to have the latest fashion to remain beautiful. The power of sin throughout this novel had made a remarkable impact on the entirety of the novel. If one is weak and desperate enough one can be consumed by sin and their lives will be full with nothing but despair.

3. Bitterness: was present throughout the novel in Anthony because he was so distraught with the fact that he had little control over what was happening in life that he took it out on everyone around him.
"You'll have to get out," he said at length, speaking with tortuous intensity. "Haven't you I enough to worry me now without you coming here? My God! You'll have to get out! 

Despair: was present throughout the novel, mainly within the lives of Anthony and Gloria. The two had been brought up completely spoiled and expected everything to be handed down to them without effort, as if the whole world was against them. When they did not get their way they fell to despair.
For the first time in weeks tears started from Gloria's eyes and the look she ave him had a quality of real pain.

Haughty: Anthony became too proud to ask for any help from his friends and that he believed that he didn't  need to work because he was Anthony Patch. Gloria was obsessively vain and became distraught with the fact one day she will stop being pretty and she will never get attention from others.
"Oh, my pretty face," she whispered, passionately grieving. "Oh, my pretty face! Oh I don't want to live without my pretty face! Oh, what's happened?"

4. Characterization pg 25; In person Richard Caramel is short and fair--he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes--one of them startling clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool--and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby.

Theme pg 24 here we discover early on in the novel that Anthony's first sin, envy becomes known, thus creating a platform for envy to drive him to the point where he feels that his friends are too good for him and that he can make it on his own resulting in him losing all of his friends; This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintances whom he admires and, to a big extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.

Imagery pg 33; Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue.

Dialogue pg 354; "What time will you be back?" asked Anthony. "We won't come back," she answered, "we'll meet you down there at four."

Tone indignant pg 349; "I'll kill him," cried Anthony, pitching and straining from side to side. "Let me kill----"

Setting pg 124; "April 20th.--Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe i'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas--he stimulates all the originality in me. Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out to Riverside Drive."

Point of View third person pg 133; Herself almost completely without physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most out of what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that he thought he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain.


CHARACTERIZATION 

1. Direct:
He thinks of himself rather an exceptional man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else knows.

"Gloria has a very young soul--irresponsible, as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."

Indirect:
On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold--but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.

Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort.

Fitzgerald uses both forms of characterization to convey what Anthony and Gloria are like directly from others' perspectives and indirectly by the way the act upon or say something. Instantly we are able to discover what the character is really like and their actions support what we already know from the author telling us. To me Anthony and Gloria are the most perfect imperfect match. They both have conflicting personalities and faults but coincide with each other well. Without one another they would surely crumble, even though they both have proven to be poison.in each other's lives.