The Beautiful and Damned Summary
The epigraph of the novel — "The victor belongs to the spoils," which is a paraphrase of Anthony Patch's advice to a friend — sets the tone and thematic thrust of the novel. While a number of themes have been identified in this long novel, there is general agreement that it is a condemnation of American society and, to a degree, life in general. The gloomy atmosphere of the work underscores the severe, almost tragic, vision of the wasted lives of the principal characters: Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria Gilbert Patch.
A prominent theme, about which some critics disagree, seems to be the revolt of youth against the status quo.
When the text was first published, in serial form, in The Metropolitan Magazine, the subtitle, which Fitzgerald probably either wrote or approved, was "A Searching Novel of the Revolt of American Youth." While...
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Study Pack
The The Beautiful and Damned Study Pack contains:
The Beautiful and Damned Short Guide
F. Scott Fitzgerald Biographies (6)
6,442 words, approx. 22 pages
F. Scott Fitzgerald died on the afternoon of December 21, 1940, suffering a fatal heart attack as he was finishing a chocolate bar--one of his placebos for the alcohol that had ravaged both his talent...
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1,285 words, approx. 5 pages
The American author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940), a legendary figure of the 1920s, was a scrupulous artist, a graceful stylist, and an exceptional craftsman. His tragic life was an ironic ...
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12,215 words, approx. 41 pages
An air of transience pervades the biographies of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and slips into their writing. This lack of permanence is a key to understanding their relationship with ...
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9,361 words, approx. 32 pages
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer very much of his own time. As Malcolm Cowley once put it, he lived in a room full of clocks and calendars. The years ticked away while he noted the songs, the shows, ...
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12,326 words, approx. 42 pages
Although for the general reader F. Scott Fitzgerald 's fame rests primarily on one novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), his creative life, from youth to early death, found full expression in some 160 shor...
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11,000 words, approx. 37 pages
Biography EssayF. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer very much of his own time. As Malcolm Cowley once put it, he lived in a room full of clocks and calendars. The years ticked away while he noted the song...
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F . Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald