The Lost Generation's Struggle: Modernism and Disillusionment in "This Side of Paradise"

It can be said that, This Side of Paradise, which is the first novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s is culmination of modernist literature. This work, much like other modernist works, deals with the same kinds of plots, themes and motifs and mostly deals with dissilusionment, fragmentation of identity and shifting social norms.

American modernist writers were dissilusioned because they experienced the war, came back to Europe and see what is going on there, people didn’t really care about the war and it was also a conservative era. The conservative era compounded their sense of alienation, as they no longer fit into the society they once knew. This disconnection earned them the moniker "The Lost Generation," as they found themselves without a place in the post-war world. The values they once held dear had disappeared, replaced by a culture that admired gangsters like Al Capone and icons like Babe Ruth and Henry Ford. The old values they used to believe in had disappeared, all the good values that they adopted were no longer the values of the 20s. The 1920s represented a breaking point in terms of cultural and social history and those living through it felt lost, as a result they expressed these kinds of themes in their works.

They especially felt lost about things like gender and sexuality. All of Fitzgerald's works mostly touch upon the relationships between men and women and how they have changed. Men are no longer men and women are no longer women in the sense that they were not acting in traditional ways. The girl of 1920 was now someone different that Modernist writers didn’t recognize. The 1920s "flapper" embodied this shift, challenging previous norms with their assertiveness and sexual freedom. So most of American writers of that era went back to Europe and they never found fulfillment. They psychologically had no home. Men like Fitzgerald and Hemingway came from a world in which men dominated and women were supposed to be passive and men were supposed to be aggressive especially sexually as this was the way it was before The World War I. Men took the lead in everything when it came to things like relationships, marriages, sexuality. Men were trying to be in control but it didn’t always work out that way.

This Side of Paradise follows the life of Amory Blaine, a handsome and intelligent young man from a wealthy family, as he grows from adolescence into adulthood. Raised by his sophisticated mother, Beatrice, Amory attends a prestigious preparatory school and later enrolls at Princeton University. At Princeton, he becomes involved in the social and literary circles but feels a growing sense of aimlessness and disillusionment.

During his college years, Amory experiences several romantic relationships, each reflecting his search for identity and purpose. His romantic pursuits, marked by idealism and disappointment, culminate in a significant relationship with Rosalind Connage. However, Rosalind ultimately rejects him due to his lack of financial stability, leaving Amory heartbroken.

Amory’s life is further complicated by World War I, which he leaves Princeton to fight in. The war’s harsh realities deepen his sense of disillusionment. Upon returning to America, Amory struggles to find his place in a society that has drastically changed. He becomes critical of the materialism and moral decay of the 1920s.

Throughout the novel, Amory engages in introspective and philosophical reflections, grappling with the meaning of life, love, and individualism. His once confident and romantic persona gives way to cynicism and reflection. In the end, he returns to Princeton seeking solace but realizes that the world and his ideals have changed irrevocably. The novel concludes with Amory’s poignant reflection on his journey, encapsulating the sense of loss and disorientation felt by the Lost Generation.

In This Side of Paradise what we see is women increasingly become more sexually outgoing and assertive. Amory Blaine, the protagonist, is depicted as a passive/feminized romantic lover, while Rosalind Connage, his love interest, is portrayed as an aggressive flapper. This reversal of gender roles illustrates the broader social changes of the era. Rosalind manipulates and uses men, embodying the materialistic and shallow nature of the new social order. The lack of women’s solidarity in the novel further underscores the ethical and moral decay Fitzgerald perceived in society. Both male and female characters in the novel are flawed, reflecting the lost morality of the time. Flappers are almost always villains in these works maybe because of Fitzgerald's own personal problems with Zelda as she was the ultimate flapper. Zelda was as forceful as Fitzgerald in terms of personality and it didn’t work out well for both of them. Zelda was a dancer, a poet and a very tragic figure. She lived in a time period that still heavily objectified women. Even if they were flappers, they were just flapper objects and this figure was highly sexualised. They danced, drank and had sex which were out of norms. The women protogonists like Rosalind and Daisy were very much like flapper figures. Daisy was a murderer for example, Here, Rosalind is almost like a men killer. She manipulates and tries to use men and she is like a gold-digger character. Their characters are very shallow which makes them very degrading. But in his works men were also as bad as these female characters. One of the other things is that we don’t see any women’s solidarity in these works and they are more inclined to compete with each other and there is sort of lack of humanity and ethics. What Fitzgerald touches upon is that people lost their morals.

This work is also a modernist work in terms of format and structure. We see a pattern of repetition that symbolise the dullness of life. He also adds stage directions which makes the novel seem like a play and this was something completely new for 20's. Just as society was going through so much change, the form of these modernist writers also changed as writers were experimenting. This experimentation with form mirrored the societal changes happening at the time. 

The title of the work is ironic because America was no longer a paradise for these people.  Amory is constantly searching for love but ends up experiencing unrequited love and tragedy. Rosalind, initially presented as a vain and self-centered character, ultimately rejects Amory because of his lack of wealth, highlighting the importance of class over love. Amory is in love with all these women but they don’t care about him so love destroys him while Rosalind turns everyone around her miserable, but at least she is honest about her dishonesty as she tells honestly that she won’t marry Amory as he is poor. She wants people to like her but there are unlikable things about her. She sees other women as threat and challenge. She is also a gorgeous woman and it is even said that people would dye their hair to make it look like hers and she was also very athletic. At the beginning of the second part, the setting is Rosalind’s own room and Fitgrelad shows how things really changed. She does makeup which was an act of sex workers or actresses before the 20s, but now time has changed and we see she makes a lot of money and she is also very feminine at the same time which was rare. Another thing different was women were smoking and they talk about it in the second section of the novel. They have their own party and Gillespie calls Rosalind a vampire which is obviously what Fitzgerald called women of those times. At one point Amory says she is impractical, she can drive a car but can’t change the tire so we see how roles really changed. We can notice that their relationship is so physical while Amory wants deep attachment but Rosalind is unable to give him that. In the Bittersweet section, the reality that Rosalind needs a lot of money is revealed, it doesn’t matter how hard Amory works, he is not the old rich and not coming from the old money, so class becomes more important than love in this story just as in The Great Gatsby. Rosalind chooses the old money and class at the end rather than love. We see how independent Rosalind is when it comes to love and relationship, he tells Amory that he likes Dawson Ryder while she also says she is in love with him, so this is definitely a new kind of freedom of the 20s. She has a lot of lovers and she kind of plays with them, make them in love with her and then chooses what’s best for her; the man with the old money. In the next section, Amory starts drinking heavily to forget what happened he starts talking to himself and loses consciousness and in the next section the prohibition starts with the 18th amendment. Alcohol became hard to reach and Amory starts to face the reality that he is living in a new age but it doesn’t change the fact that he is lost. He is having a dialog with Tom about this generation, he is critiquing this new world, sexuality, politics and the individualism they have now. The needs of these men are now suppressed by the empty, superficial society of the 20s.

Ultimately, This Side of Paradise is a seminal work that captures the spirit of its age.  At the end of the novel, he ends up in campus to finish his degree as he left Princeton to go to war. It is the only thing that is left from his old life. Rosalind, his mother and everything is gone and the only thing he has is Princeton. The last passage of the book conveys to us the disillusionment and displacement that these young people were feeling in the 20s. They felt lost, they didn’t belong to the old world but they also didn’t belong to the new world. They had to endure both the past and the present. God is dead for them as also Fitzgerald says “there was no God in his heart”.