This Side of Paradise

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Portrayal of Amory Blaine as a Uniquely American Character in This Side of Paradise by Scott Fitzgerald
The novel This Side of Paradise by Scott Fitzgerald is a story about the life of Amory Blaine, a young American man torn between his need to conform to societal expectations and the desire to develop an authentic self identity. Brought up in an upper class environment, Amory is, from an early age, socialized into high society by his wealthy and sophisticated mother. He attends elite learning institutions, with the hope that it will help him to be successful and fit into the upper class society that every American dreams of belonging in. However, these ambitions go unfulfilled because besides being lazy, the young Amory is more fascinated by unconventional lifestyles and worldviews than conformity to societal expectations and academic success. Amory’s experiences make him uniquely American because they portray the struggles and life crises that American youths encounter in life. They include the desire for academic and financial success, as well as establishing satisfying relationships. Amory’s failure to find success in any of these endeavors highlights the disconnection between idealism in the American Dream and reality. While the American Dream promises success in life, the disillusionment that Amory experiences in his education, financial future and love life captures the misconceptions that people may have about the American life and experience. In this light, this essay argues that the character of Amory portrays the American experience because his life is influenced by the pressure of societal expectations, adolescence rebellion against these expectations, and unfulfilled academic, financial, and romantic dreams.
Three factors that are typical of the American experience, namely money, convention and women influence Amory’s life and journey toward self-realization. All the three fail him in his quest to find fulfillment and success, an eventuality that forces him to re-examine his life, the decisions he has made, and the people whose lives had touched his in an attempt to understand himself and his position in society.
Amory’s socialization into high society by his mother is his first journey in becoming the ideal successful American in the substance of the American Dream. Indeed, it is the dream of many parents to see their children become successful in life and living an upper-class life. Amory’s mother, Beatrice, shows this inclination in her determination to take her son to the best schools as well as to socialize him within the social cycles of the rich. These actions suggest the desire by his mother to mould him into a gentleman suited for high society life. She wants Amory to conform to the values of successful gentlemen, chiefly a good education, good values and understanding one’s position in society. Amory is intended to internalize the privileges of his social class and what is expected of him as a member of that class. His schooling in the fictitious but prestigious St. Regis Prep school and eventual admission to Princeton University not only illustrates Amory’s mother’s desire to make him fit into high society, but most importantly, mirrors the social and educational upbringing of American children by parents who believe in the American Dream.
However, the social conventions that his mother chooses for him, such as learning and speaking with an excellent French accent- supposedly the mark of a polished upper-class person, not only makes him “unconventional” in the eyes of his peers and college friends, but interrupts his journey of self-knowledge and self-discovery that all young people must go through as party of their maturing process (Vincent 2010). The sophistication of his mother, which has evidently rubbed onto him through his sophisticated education and contact with high society culture, makes him different from the people he wants to socialize with, such as his college mates. The tension between the two conventions, his mother’s affluence and sophistication on the one hand, and his expectations and obligations as a student at college, creates an identity crisis in Amory because he cannot fit in both. The question that arises from this situation is the social tensions and cultural conflicts that American children raised within the safety and comfort of high society experience when they come into contact with the harsh realities of the outside world. College life exposes such children to social and cultural diversities for the first time. It plunges them into a different social environment where they have to interact with people from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, and who subscribe to different conventions. In this regard, being born into privilege and socialized into the social lifestyles of the upper class is a tragedy for children who eventually must go out into the world and compete with ot...