How Can The Great Gatsby's Characters Represent F. Scott Fitzgerald?

While reading The Great Gatsby, I have always wondered about how the author F. Scott Fitzgerald was like when he lived. His detailed descriptions and mocking tone seemed to perfectly portray the 1920s, and made me assume that he was an intelligent man who disapproved of the corruption occurring in the American society. I thought he was a man similar to the narrator Nick. That’s why I was surprised when I learned that Fitzgerald was an alcoholic himself, who also had much of a materialistic ambition.

After researching more about Fitzgerald’s life, his background and experiences seem to parallel with those of many different characters. He was born in Minnesota just like Nick, and they also both attended an ivy league university: Fitzgerald went to Princeton and Nick studied at Yale. The next stage of Fitzgerald’s life then seems to mirror that of Gatsby, as he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army during the WWI and fell in love with a girl where he was stationed. Trying to impress this girl named Zelda, Fitzgerald wrote many novels to gain fame and money, much like Gatsby. Different from the character, however, Fitzgerald actually married Zelda.

The marriage between the two can also be represented by the married couple in the novel: Tom and Daisy. In both cases, both spouses enjoyed materialistic goods and alcohol together, while also having affairs outside of their marital relationship. I find it ironic that Fitzgerald worked on The Great Gatsby while he was in France, while Nick said that Tom “ had spent a year in France for no particular reason”(4).

Aside from similarities, many characters seem to contrast Fitzgerald, again making me wonder about his intentions when creating these fictional roles. The most significant difference that I observed between Fitzgerald and the characters of his novel, Nick and Gatsby in this case, is their attitude towards alcohol. While Fitzgerald was such a heavy alcoholic to the point that it resulted in his early death, Gatsby did not drink at all and Nick despises the men and women drinking excessively during parties. This difference is made more notable because Nick and Gatsby are the two characters that seem to mirror Fitzgerald’s life the most. That makes me think that Fitzgerald himself realized the evils of drinking but could not help but crave for alcohol, and he was only able to express this kind of consciousness within his novel. In this sense Gatsby would be Fitzgerald’s ideal version of himself, as Gatsby witnessed Cody’s drinking binges and realized the dangers of alcohol.

It is very interesting that different from the book, the movie version starts off with Nick in a sanitarium due to his alcoholism. This contradicts Nick’s character in the novel, as he rarely consumed alcohol and did not seem to favor heavy drinking. A combination of the two aspects, however, could maybe serve as a more accurate portrayal of Fitzgerald himself: an alcoholic man who might have been against the idea of drinking.