There were numerous influences on the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. His unique ability to synthesize both the world around him and the artistic drive within him emerged from many influences. His modest and Midwestern background helped to create from an early age a unique perspective of wealth and the differences between yearning for it and having it. His background as a youth was typically “middle class” as his father worked as a salesman who battled through relocation and unemployment. Such an experience allowed him to experience both the impact of not having wealth and the distance from afar of those that had it.
Another powerful influence on his work was his wife, Zelda. Born to an upper class family and possessing a great deal of mental instability, Fitzgerald’s relationship with her helped expose him to the cavernous sense of emptiness that can accompany wealth. At the same time, through Zelda’s established wealth he began to understand the class based difference between “old money” and “new money,” a theme that resonates in much of his work.
Another influence on Fitzgerald’s work was the time period of the 1920s, what he would describe as the “Jazz Age.” He was able to understand and perceive the obsession with celebrity, the proliferation of mass consumption and consumerism, and the desire to be socially acceptable and contrast all of these with the toll it takes on the human psyche as well as the corroded sense of emotions that results when soulful connection is supplanted with material appropriation. If there is one phrase of his that underscores much of Fitzgerald’s work, it would be “The rich are different than you and I.”
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