Date of Award
Spring 2014
First Advisor
Dr. David LaGuardia
Abstract
“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, said this to his friend Nick Carraway in order to convince both himself and Nick that he could recapture Daisy Buchanan, his former love. However, some of Fitzgerald’s critics argue that, on a second level, Fitzgerald is asking this question of his own audience. Fitzgerald used his life as a frame for his own work, so some critics argue that he stays stuck in the past and writes from his own limited world view. I believe the argument that Fitzgerald simply transformed his life events into literature discredits the author and overlooks his development as a writer. In conclusion, I intend to review Fitzgerald’s works chronologically and use them to present evidence that Fitzgerald grew as an author over time.
Recommended Citation
Kirby, Sean, "“Can’t Repeat the Past? Why, of Course You Can!” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Greatest Lie" (2014). Senior Honors Projects. 47.
https://collected.jcu.edu/honorspapers/47
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.