The misfortunate elites with a mirage: F. Scott Fitzgerald shaping modern human in This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby

Abstract

A mirage of human lives is that people are prone to have materialism to find happiness in it; the 20th century was such an age for the United States of America. The rising American economy after WW1 made massive wealth, which we know as American Materialism. Consequently, the heavy load from every aspect of life hit the younger generation who joined and returned, known as the Lost Generation; F. Scott Fitzgerald was a part of that generation. He joined the war by leaving Princeton and returned with the nothingness in the materialism portrayed in his major and critical works, The Crack-Up. In an attempt to provide more dimensions to further the purpose of this paper, it includes the autobiographical perspectives of Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby. The portrayal of lost values in his generation, Freudian theory of the psyche New Historicism, is important to understand the modern human of the 20th century.