This Side of Paradise: F. Scott Fitzgerald

This Side of Paradise is a kind of "Dead Poet's Society" without the Robin Williams aspect. The story follows this group of college boys in whatever endeavors their college paths lead them. This is obviously one of Fitzgerald's earlier works, because the character's are not fully developed and don't have an overall arch- with a beginning, middle and an end. "Fitzgerald’s success started with the publication of his first novel This Side of Paradise in 1920. The novel is written in three distinct parts that explore the romantic and mental maturation of a young Midwesterner named Amory Blaine as he attends Princeton (like Fitzgerald did himself), serves in WW1 and suffers romantic rejection in New York after the war."- Dan@Central

Book Two starts off with The Debutante, a play script, written in the middle of this book. The play also has the same characters, but I am not sure the sequence of whether The Debutante directly follows This Side of Paradise or if there are several years in between. It's difficult to read a novel and then switch to a play with the same characters, because the novel is third person point of view and the play is first. Different writing forms lead the brain to think and picture what is happening differently. The Debutante then switches back to novel form and remains in novel form throughout the rest of the book.

The entire book in interspersed with poetry- a stylistic writing that symbolizes the action or what the characters are feeling in that particular moment. This poetry acts as as the music in a musical- giving the audience another view of the story. "Blending poetry, letters, free verse and traditional narration, Fitzgerald offers a glimpse into the world of Amory Blaine and the “Roaring Twenties” with masterful skill that foreshadows the literary genius that emerged five years later with the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925."- Dan@Central