Page 1 About the Author
Francis Scott Kit Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was born into a small merchant family in St. Paul, Minnesota. His ancestors were once rich and generous, and the family road has declined to his parents' generation. In 1913, with the financial support of relatives, he attended Princeton University, an aristocratic institution of higher learning in the eastern United States.
But he had no intention of studying, often missed classes and failed exams, and devoted almost all his energy to social activities. He managed to join the school's literary group, was invited to the most famous club, got rid of the country tone to grind out a standard "senior" English, and tried his best and cleverly erased the difference in his life. In 1917, he enlisted in the army, was busy with military training all day, and never went abroad to fight. After retiring from the army, he insisted on amateur writing.
In February 1920, the novel "Paradise on Earth" was published, which became a hit for conveying a vivid sense of the times, and the first edition was sold out in just a few days. Magazines began to scramble to ask him for papers. After the novel was published he married Gisarda. After marriage, he lived in Paris with his wife and became acquainted with many American writers such as Anderson and Hemingway. Since then, the couple has indulged in pleasure and spent money like dirt.
The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 and initially sold mediocrely. But his life also began to fall into alcohol from this year, and to make matters worse, his wife Zelda's mental condition also began to develop problems, and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to the hospital. This placed a heavy burden on him. The daughter has to go to a good school, the wife has to go to a good hospital, and everything needs money. He had to let go of his writing ambitions to deal with Hollywood.
In 1929, the United States and the world fell into the Great Depression, and the golden age that belonged to Fitzgerald passed quietly. His novel Gentle night, published in 1934, lived up to its reputation. Alcoholism became the only way for writers to escape from life, and they also squandered their remaining genius. The vices and inappropriate style of frequently defaulting on manuscripts caused magazines and newspapers to interrupt their requests for manuscripts.
On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack caused by alcoholism at the age of 44, leaving behind an unfinished work, The Last Tycoon. He was bankrupt before his death and his will called for the "cheapest funeral". Fitzgerald and Zelda are buried together. Their tombstones are engraved with the end of The Great Gatsby: "So we continued to push forward, sailing against the current, and were constantly pushed backwards until we returned to the old days."
Page 2 Reader's Comments
1, most of the content of this novel is written very wonderfully, amazing, this is a novel that makes people feel more and more interesting the more they read.
2) This is a tragic story about a beautiful, wealthy, and charismatic couple, telling the demise of a doomed marriage between them. In it, the reader can see the Fitzgeralds' own struggles with alcoholism, infidelity, madness, and mental hospitals.
3. "Gentle Night" is "a novel of career failure or treatment failure". As a psychiatrist, Dick failed to fulfill his ambitions, and as a husband, he lost his wife after curing her of her mental illness. His failure was twofold.
Page 3 Background of writing
Published in 1934, Fitzgerald's last novel is the story of a young man from humble but brilliant background who pursues dreamy ideals and how he ultimately fails and becomes decadent and depressed. The novel is set in a european continent familiar to the author, spanning between 1917 and 1930, but the novel still presents the social scene of the "jazz age" in the United States.
In this work, the protagonist Dick appears as a loser in life after this change of events, and has suffered a total and complete failure in career, life, love and marriage, and even in spiritual values. This failure itself is not something that psychologists like Dick can solve, nor is it a value crisis that can truly save humanity, but more importantly, in the context of this world that has been eroded by disease, it is impossible to truly find the true meaning of life.
In this society where money worship prevails, the sincere and kind nature of man and the pursuit of lofty ideals have formed a huge contradiction with the hedonistic outlook on life and the reality of moral degeneration. Thinking that everything can be bought with money, how gentle the night is, cannot change the cruel state. The disillusionment of faith and the aimlessness of life are deeply exposed, and all emotions in the face of money seem to become less important. The ultimate foothold of the American Dream became a complete worship of money.
Page 4 Summary of contents
"Gentle Night": The male protagonist, Dick Daver, is a young and promising psychiatrist from the eastern United States who falls in love with his beautiful patient Nicole, the daughter of a billionaire. Nicole slowly recovers, but Dick becomes increasingly depressed, and has an ambiguous relationship with actress Rosemary... Nicole and Dick eventually divorced; Dick practiced medicine in a small American town and spent the rest of his life practicing medicine.
Volume I: On the beautiful coast of the French Riviera, about halfway from Marseille to Italy, there is a rose-coloured hotel with a high lobby. Several humble palm trees shade the crimson walls on the front of the hotel. In front of the property, a small stretch of dazzling beach stretches out. Recently, it has become a summer resort for celebrities and hipsters.
Volume II: In the spring of 1917, Dr. Daever was only twenty-six years old when he first arrived in Zurich. This is the age of a man's flesh and blood, and it is indeed a period of single man's prosperity. Even during the war years, it was a spirited age for Dick. He has become a very valuable talent, and has been greatly cultivated, so that he will not be shot.
Volume III: Dyver no longer asks to send his children to the United States, and Nicole writes to him if he needs money, and he doesn't answer. In the last letter Nicole received, he told Nicole that he was practicing medicine in the town of Geneva, New York. Nicole felt as if he had settled there and had someone to manage the household for him. His most recent letter was shortly stamped with the postmark of The Hornell, New York. Hornel is some distance from the town of Geneva and is a very small municipality. In any case, it was almost certain that he lived in that part of the United States, either in this town or in that small town.
Page 5 Quotes
1) She smiled, a childlike smile, just like the lost youth of the whole world is there.
2. "The two were speechless for a moment--their hearts were thinking differently, and the distance was getting farther and farther away, just breathing the air in the blue sky in front of them, but they couldn't see the sky in each other's eyes." ”
The problem is that when you're sober, you don't want to see anyone, and when you're drunk, no one wants to see you.
3, people often write that the wound is scarred, to the pathological phenomenon of the skin as a metaphor for a psychological state, but in a person's life can not be such a thing, only the wound, sometimes shrink to the size of the needle eye, but not scarred, is still a wound. The marks of torture are closer to losing a finger or being blind in one eye. All year round, we don't feel wrong because we're missing a finger or blinding an eye, but even if we don't feel right, there's nothing we can do to remedy it.
4) There is also an element of loneliness involved – it is so easy to be loved – and it is so difficult to love someone else.
5) Drinking alcohol makes pleasant past events a reality for the present, as if they were still going on, even with the future, as if they were going to happen again.
6, she smiled, it was a childlike and touching smile, as if representing all the lost youth in the world.
(To be continued)
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