This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in March 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition. Fitzgerald, who took inspiration for the title from a line in Rupert Brooke’s poem Tiare Tahiti, spent years revising the novel before Scribner’s accepted it for publication.

Within months of its publication, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed it as an outstanding debut novel. Overnight, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies. While the book did not make him wealthy, his newfound fame enabled him to earn higher rates for his short stories, and his improved financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him. Although not one of the ten best-selling novels of the year, the novel became popular among young Americans, and the national press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for «youth in revolt».

With his debut novel, social commentators touted Fitzgerald as the first writer to turn the national spotlight on the so-called Jazz Age generation In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and largely untouched by the conflict’s horrors. Fitzgerald’s novel riveted the nation’s attention on the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked societal debate over their perceived immorality.

The novel created the widespread perception of Fitzgerald as a libertine chronicler of rebellious youth and proselytizer of Jazz Age hedonism which led reactionary societal figures to denounce the author and his work. These detractors regarded him as «the outstanding aggressor» in the rebellion of «flaming youth» against the traditional values of the «old guard». When Fitzgerald died in 1940, many social conservatives rejoiced. Due to this perception of Fitzgerald and his works, the Baltimore Diocese refused his family permission to bury him at St. Mary’s Church in Rockville, Maryland.

Plot summary

Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, is convinced that he has a great destiny, but the precise nature of this destiny is uncertain. He attends a posh college-preparatory school where he becomes a football quarterback and then enters Princeton University. He grows estranged from his eccentric mother Beatrice Blaine and becomes the protégé of Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a Catholic priest. During his sophomore year at Princeton, he returns to Minneapolis over Christmas break and falls in love with Isabelle Borgé, a wealthy debutante whom he first met as a boy. Amory and Isabelle embark upon a romantic relationship.

While at Princeton, Amory deluges Isabelle with letters and poems, but she becomes disenchanted with him due to his criticism. After his prom, they break up on Long Island. Following their separation, Amory goes with a Princeton classmate to an apartment occupied by two New York showgirls of easy virtue. He considers staying the night with the showgirls, but his conscience and an apparition compel him to leave. After four years at Princeton, he enlists in the United States Army amid World War I. He is shipped overseas to serve in the muddy trenches of the Western front. While overseas, he learns his mother Beatrice has died and most of his family’s wealth has been lost due to a series of failed investments.

After the armistice with Imperial Germany in November 1918, Amory settles in New York City as it undergoes the birth pangs of the Jazz Age. Rebounding from Isabelle, he becomes infatuated with Rosalind Connage, a cruel and narcissistic flapper. Desperate for a job, Amory is hired by an advertising agency, but he detests the work. His relationship with Rosalind deteriorates as she prefers a rival suitor, Dawson Ryder, a man of wealth and status. Rejected by the materialistic Rosalind due to his lack of financial prospects and his inability to support her affluent lifestyle, Amory quits his advertising job and goes on a drinking binge for three weeks until the start of prohibition in the United States.

When Amory travels to visit an uncle in Maryland, he meets Eleanor Savage, a beautiful and reckless atheist. Eleanor chafes under the religious conformity and gender limitations imposed on her by contemporary society in Wilsonian America. Amory and Eleanor spend a lazy summer conversing about love. On their final night together, before Amory returns to New York City, Eleanor attempts suicide by riding her horse over a cliff in order to prove her disbelief in any deity. At the last moment, she leaps to safety as her horse plummets over the precipice, and Amory realizes that he does not love her.

Returning to New York City, Amory learns that the fickle Rosalind is now engaged to be married to his wealthy rival Dawson Ryder, and he declares that Rosalind is now dead to him. He is further dispirited to learn that his beloved mentor, Monsignor Darcy, has died. Homeless, Amory wanders from New York City to his alma mater Princeton. Accepting a car ride from a wealthy upper-class man driven by his resentful working-class chauffeur in a Locomobile, a brash Amory speaks out in favor of socialism in the United States—although he admits he is still formulating his thoughts as he is talking.

While riding in the expensive Locomobile, Amory concludes his argument about their time’s societal ills and articulates his disillusionment with the current historical era. He announces his hope to stand alongside those in the upcoming younger generation and to bring forth a new age in America. Both the upper-class and working-class men in the car denounce his views, but when Amory discovers that the upper-class man is the father of a Princeton classmate who died in World War I, they reconcile. Amory amicably parts ways with his travel companions, and the upper-class man tells him: «Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.»

As he approaches Princeton, Amory recognizes his selfishness as well as his addictions to drink and beauty. He realizes that he must transcend these traits to become a better man. Wandering through a graveyard at twilight, he reflects upon his inevitable mortality and finds solace in the fact that future generations may one day ponder his life. He reflects upon the next generation—inheriting disillusionment and a loss of faith, yet still chasing love and success. After midnight, standing alone and gazing at Princeton’s gothic towers, Amory feels a newfound freedom. He stretches out his arms to the sky and proclaims, «I know myself . . . but that is all.»

Major characters

I don’t know what it is in me or that comes to me when I start to write. I am half feminine—at least my mind is…. Even my feminine characters are feminine Scott Fitzgeralds.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1935

Most of the characters are drawn from Fitzgerald’s life, although he often created composites and imbued many of the female characters with his own personality traits and thoughts.

Amory Blaine – a handsome and egocentric Princeton student from the Midwest and later a World War I veteran who has a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The character is based on an idealized version of Fitzgerald and his disappointing romantic relationships. The name «Amory» is taken from Fitzgerald’s football hero at Princeton, Hobart Amory Baker.

Isabelle Borgé – a wealthy and shallow debutante who is Amory’s first love. The character is based on 16-year-old Ginevra King, a socialite upon whom Fitzgerald developed a life-long romantic obsession. Like Isabelle and Amory, Fitzgerald met King on Christmas break in Saint Paul, Minnesota, during his sophomore year at Princeton, and their relationship ended in a similar fashion. Rumors circulated that Ginevra had kissed dozens of boys, and all of them had fallen in love with her. «I was too thoughtless in those days,» Ginevra recalled, «and too much in love with love to think of consequences.» Until his death, Fitzgerald remained forever in love with King and «could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes».

Rosalind Connage – a cruel and selfish flapper whom Amory romances. Rosalind is based on 18-year-old Zelda Sayre and, to a lesser extent, on the fictional character of Beatrice Normandy in H. G. Wells’ novel Tono-Bungay (1909). Mirroring Rosalind’s materialistic relationship with Amory, Sayre ended her engagement with Fitzgerald due to his lack of financial prospects and his inability to support her lifestyle as an idle Southern belle of Montgomery’s country club set. She resumed their engagement on the condition that he could pay for her privileged lifestyle.

Eleanor Savage – a beautiful and reckless atheist whom Amory meets in Maryland. Fitzgerald partly based Eleanor on a purported love of his mentor Father Sigourney Fay, and, to a lesser extent, on 18-year-old Elizabeth Beckwith MacKie, a romantic interest he briefly knew. MacKie commented that the character «reminded me of how little he really knew me. His Eleanor loved to sit on a haystack in the rain reciting poetry. Forgive me, Scott: if that is the way you wanted it, then you missed the whole idea of what can happen atop a haystack.»

Thayer Darcy – a jovial and impious Catholic priest who serves as Amory’s spiritual mentor. The character is based on Father Sigourney Fay, a possibly gay Catholic priest with whom Fitzgerald had an intimate and ambiguous relationship. While writing This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald quoted verbatim entire letters