I am Jonathan Mahrt. I graduated from an American High school in Mallorca. I am a tennis player at Hofstra, and I am majoring in Computer Science. I chose to do my blog about F. Scoot Fitzgerald simply because he is the first American author I read in english. Also because he is one of my favorite authors with Kafka and Orwell.

Francis Scoot Fitzgerald wrote a lot about his personal life and about the era he lived in. «The great Gatsby» represents perfectly the era of the 1920-30 which is when he lived. In his book «Tender is the night» he in part describes is marital situation, he inspired himself a lot from the mental condition his wife was suffering from. In the book the main character who is suffering from seeing his wife affected by her mental condition is living F. S. Fitzgerald’s life. In the book the explains what effect her sickness had on him. It is really interesting to see how much of his life and of himself Fitzgerald puts in his books. All of his books are in part biographical. This shows how much passion he had for writing, as well as much work he put in it since it is never easy to write about oneself.

Fitzgerald’s works are quite easy to read. He has an impressive capacity to include the readers in his writings, allowing us to completely understand how his characters work while still surprising us. He achieves this through his extensive descriptions and his use of common archetypes.

This image is quite self explanatory, but I like to the think that the butterflies are a metaphor for someone reading F. S. Fitzgerald. A reader is completely absorbed by his novels that he gets transported somewhere else.

Overall Fitzgerald doesn’t give a lot of importance to having organised stories, as a reader we quickly lose the notion of time. He often combines flashbacks and present events which makes the readers lose the notion of time. He often uses an unreliable narrator which often makes the course of the story confusing. Another factor that adds to the readers losing the course of his novels is that he allows his characters to take control of the story. During these periods we are completely absorbed by the character’s life.

This is one of my favorite paintings, from Dali. It illustrates well the effect of «timeless» that Fitzgerald gives to his novels.

Fitzgerald’s descriptions of characters and scenes are very specific. He his more of a superficial writer. He often gives more importance to describing specific details than to explaining the overall situation. This is in part why his novels are so enjoyable. The fact that he gives so much importance to describing the environment and the mood, but does not insist too much on sharing his point of view. He simply allows the readers to make an opinion for themselves.

This picture is taking from the last movie made about the Great Gatsby. It illustrates well how Fitzgerald describes his scenes. He would go into details to describe the heavy decorated room his characters found themselves. Also he would describe people’ s character by describing how they dressed and behave. The women in front is a great representation of that.

Fitzgerald uses detailed language to spike our senses. He often describes the general mood through specific descriptions of how the characters are dressed, and how the objects in the room they find themselves in is disposed of. He somehow manages to make the situations he describes very familiar to us even though we have not lived them. With his simple and straightforward language, he personalizes events and always involves his readers in his work.

I chose this image because it represents well what sort of language Fitzgerald used. He used a warm and familiar language to include the reader as much as possible. I believe that the same way this room is warm and familiar.