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... difficult to maintain a happy marriage than to marry one's Golden Girl; it is more difficult to offer creative leadership than to acquired a status of political importance; it is more difficult to become a poet than to have a Poetic Soul; it is more difficult to live with the healthy woman one has created from a beautiful neurotic, than to make the "cure" itself. There is, in short, a certain fascination with what might be called the comforts of failure (or inability to cope with success) common to books like Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, and This Side of Paradise; in each case, Fitzgerald gives us a protagonist for whom consummation itself becomes destructive - an individual who in some way cannot commit himself totally to the reality of his own desires. Amory Blaine, certainly, in his career up until the time he enters Princeton (Chapter I of This Side of Paradise carries us through Amory's 18 th year), never seems quite "at home" even-or especially-when he does succeed in achieving a particular desire. Dreaming of "romance, " he despises the flesh when it is finally offered to him.
Obsessed with social success, and "showing off" either in the classroom or on the football field in order to achieve it, he seems almost determined to ruin the success itself, and acts in such a way as to alienate precisely those whom he has been trying so desperately to impress. Possessed of a fine intellect, he concentrates this intellect "on matters of popularity, a university social system, as represented by Biltmore teas and Hot Springs golf links. " The paradox of Amory Blaine, indeed, is the paradox of Fitzgerald himself. There is a group of opposing powers which, struggling in the same individual, produces a high pitch of frenzied activity leading, finally, to self-neutralization, or self-immolation, and so producing nothing at all: a kind of ineffectuality created not by lack of power, but rather by the multi-directional proliferation of power in terms of romance and perpetual "desire. " Amory senses this fatal "propensity toward failure" in himself. Speaking to a companion during his last year at St.
Regis', he attempts to differentiate between the "philosophers" and the "slickers" of the campus world-which is, of course, a microcosm of the American world itself. The "slickers" are those individuals whose brilliance is concentrated solely on social (and therefore material) "success": they are the perpetual "in" people, the skilled "Big Men on Campus" who instinctively "know who to know, " who concentrate their powers and make their emotions, their talents, their resources into effective and well-sharpened instruments of their will. The "philosophers, " on the other hand, are those who pursue their own course independently of the rewards - and the demands - of "Society" itself. And it is significant to note that Amory remarks that there is, in his own personality, much of both the "slicker" and the "philosopher. " Amory Blaine, indeed, who even as a youth "wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, " was too much of a "slicker" to commit himself to his intellectual pursuits and aesthetic sensitivities; and too much of a "philosopher" to become a wholly successful "slicker. " And this tension, so basic to F.
Scott Fitzgerald's own life, is the central tension of Amory Blaine. Even at Princeton, Amory's schizophrenic ambitions tend to dilute and weaken whatever intellectual power he possesses. He loves and is awed by all things Princetonian-especially the traditions, the self-assurance, the air of "good breeding" that seem as much a part of campus environment as are the lecture halls and athletic fields. But the Princeton "atmosphere" rests on a foundation of intense social competition; Amory, indeed, discovers all too rapidly a pecking-order of prestige and power.
It is, Fitzgerald tells us, a "breathless social system, that worship, seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey 'Big Man. '" Amory, of course, is fascinated with all the jockeying for "position. " In a world composed of the "ins" and the "outs, " he determines to achieve status at all costs, and to this end will use every talent at his disposal-whether it be a talent for "correct" dress, a talent for football, or a talent for writing. Each of these things, in short-the important along with the trivial-becomes little more than a method of achieving "success. " For Amory Blaine, however, "success" is defined simply by the standards of the most powerful of those already established; lacking the kind of identity and will which enable young men like Burne Holiday to set the pattern for others, or to ignore all patterns in pursuit of goals shaped by personal rather than "social" goals, Amory simply drifts into "success" and, with an equal lack of conviction, drifts into failure as well. Even his relationships with women are defined by characteristic posturing. Isabelle Born, for example, with whom he carries on a largely verbal "affair" and to whom he sends long and "rapturous" letters, is simply an image or dream-audience reflecting Amory's own narcissistic performances; their "love" is absurd because it is not real and cannot become real on the terms which Amory himself sets for it. The power of sex, indeed, offends him while it attracts; obsessed with guilt produced by his own emotions, Amory must either turn the emotions into Romantic Love derived from adolescent vapourings, or "worship" their object (as he worships Clara Page) until reality in some way becomes purer than its own existence. It is Clara Page, who-refusing to be turned into an object by Amory's emotional unreality-defines what is, perhaps, his essential weakness, and the weakness of the Fitzgerald Hero as a type. "You lack judgment, " says Clara, "the judgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play you false, given half a chance. " For Clara perceives that Amory Blaine does not simply oppose reality with his own Idealism, but rather confuses one with the other, so that reality is virtually reshaped according to a dream-image that will be "spoiled" by any sort of real consummation.
The result, inevitably, is a continual disaffection with reality, together with an equally persistent dissatisfaction with the Ideal. Unwilling or unable to sacrifice "real" success by committing himself fully to an ideal, and unwilling to sacrifice his Ideals or Dream-roles by committing himself totally to the real world, Amory fluctuates between both, and finally can identify neither. And so he is left without emotional or intellectual direction-until the war provides at least a temporary solution by eliminating the need for any commitment whatever. Bibliography: monarch notes, check sheets
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