Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Side of Paradise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age
Friendship and Masculinity
War, Modern Life, and Generations
Money and Class
Love and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
Amory Blaine’s father, Stephen Blaine, became wealthy through the death of his brothers, who were successful businessmen. Amory’s mother, Beatrice Blaine, also came from wealth and grew up traveling around Europe. Amory is an only child and is handsome from a young age. He grows up traveling around the country with his mother, becoming accustomed to a luxurious lifestyle: staying in hotels, seeing the opera, and wearing expensive clothing. Beatrice has a very upper-class, European sensibility, and she looks down on Americans. When Amory is 13 years old, Beatrice has a breakdown and sends him to live with his aunt and uncle in Minneapolis.
The novel immediately introduces the theme of money and class, showing that Amory comes from a well-off but not upper-class family that is still fixated on status. Despite being middle class, Amory grew up with an upper-class education, thus setting the stage for his struggle to understand and accept his class status throughout the novel. It also becomes clear early on that Amory had a close relationship with his mother, who was intense but also volatile.
Themes
After two months in Minneapolis, Amory has been struggling socially in school because his classmates make fun of him for showing off in class, especially in French and history. Amory is invited to a party by Myra St. Claire. He arrives late to her house because he thinks that is fashionable, but everyone else has left to go to the Minnehaha Club already. When Myra is upset, Amory lies to her and tells her that he was in an accident and has been smoking, which she disapproves of. Amory and Myra drive to the Minnehaha Club alone, where he tells her he has a crush on her and kisses her. Afterwards, Amory suddenly becomes disgusted and refuses to kiss Myra again, which angers her.
Amory’s upper-class sensibility makes him stand out from his classmates, and his arrogance makes him inclined to show off in front of his peers, which ultimately alienates them. The beginning of the novel also shows Amory’s obsession with social conventions and his conflicting desire to stand out from the crowd. Amory’s troubled relationship with romance is also introduced here: it is not explained why he becomes upset and disgusted with Myra after they kiss, but it becomes clear that he can be very fickle in his romantic attachments, and that he associates sexuality with disgust and evil.
Themes
Literary Devices
Amory spends two years in Minneapolis. He becomes friends with Frog Parker and becomes interested in literature and theater. Amory is very interested in girls and prone to falling in love. He writes poetry about the girls he loves and collects their rings and locks of their hair. He dreams of becoming a celebrated general in a war. Amory is very egotistical and believes himself to be exceptionally handsome and charming and more intelligent than his peers. He can also be cruel, cold, selfish, and indifferent to the feelings of others. At the same time, he is self-doubting, sensitive, and insecure.
Amory is charming, smart, and haughty from a young age. In this part of the story, the narrator describes what is later referred to as “the fundamental Amory”: the aspects of Amory at his core that persist and develop throughout the novel. The novel gives a sense early on of the contradictions in Amory’s character that he struggles to resolve and accept for the rest of the novel.
Themes
Literary Devices
At age 15, after two years in Minneapolis, Amory visits his parents at Beatrice’s father’s estate in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Seeing his mother again, he both admires her and feels distant from her, avoiding her at first. When he finally talks to her, she tells him that after her breakdown, she had many strange, vivid, and fantastical dreams. She also reveals that her doctors were concerned about her alcoholism, but that she is now cured. Amory feels embarrassed by what Beatrice has revealed, wondering what Frog Parker would think about his mother. He asks Beatrice if he can go away to boarding school because all of his classmates are doing it. She agrees and tells him that he will go to St. Regis in Connecticut. Beatrice tells Amory that she would have preferred to raise him abroad and send him to Eton.
Here, Amory first visits the Lake Geneva estate, which will become a symbol of his family’s lineage and downward mobility later in the novel—though here it is intact and grand. In his reaction to his mother, Amory shows how highly he values the opinions of his male friends and how seriously those relationships are to him. By agreeing to send Amory to St. Regis, Beatrice is implicitly agreeing to let Amory become part of the American middle class, which is defined by its educational institutions. Eton, a historic elite boys’ prep school in England, represents the institutions of European upper-class consciousness; while Beatrice would have preferred Amory to become part of that social world, she recognizes that he belongs in the United States.
Themes
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In September, Amory departs for New England, where there are many boarding schools—such as Andover, Exeter, Groton, and Choate—that prepare young wealthy men to go to elite colleges. After taking his exams at St. Regis, Amory visits Monsignor Darcy, a friend and former lover of his mother who is now a Catholic priest in upstate New York. Amory and Monsignor Darcy connect immediately and have engaging conversations about literature, religion, and their emotions. Amory stays for a week with Monsignor Darcy.
Here, readers are given a portrait of the landscape of elite American educational institutions. The schools that the novel mentions are all real schools that still exist today. The beginning of Amory’s relationship with Monsignor Darcy is significant because Monsignor Darcy becomes a close mentor and father figure to Amory.
Themes
Literary Devices
Amory has a difficult time starting out at St. Regis. He is disliked by his classmates, who consider him arrogant, and his teachers, whose authority he resents. He is very dedicated to playing football but disinterested in his schoolwork despite his intelligence. He feels lonely and does not feel attached to his friends, who are not among the school’s elite. A teacher offers Amory advice to connect with his classmates, which he rejects. When he returns to Minneapolis, he tells Frog that he is having a great time at school.
The start of Amory’s education at St. Regis echoes his struggle to make friends in Minneapolis: Amory is very persistently arrogant, stubborn, and rebellious, and “the fundamental Amory” has not changed much since his early childhood. In addition, Amory is already obsessed with status among his peers and sees himself as worthy of socializing with the elite, upper-class boys though he himself is middle-class.
Themes
Literary Devices
Amory begins to have a better time at school. In February, he sees a play in New York with a friend, and they both admire the beautiful lead actress. In October, Amory is the hero of St. Regis football game against Groton, which makes him happy. His time at St. Regis starts to influence his personality. Even though many of his fundamental character traits remain—his “moodiness,” “laziness,” and unseriousness—now younger boys look up to him. He spends much of his time reading.
Amory’s experience being the star of the football game is significant: it is evident that Amory has grand dreams of being a hero, which foreshadows his later disappointments after World War I. St. Regis is starting to make Amory more conventional, and there is a sense for the first time of the extent to which these elite, all-male social environments demand conformity.
Themes
Towards the end of his second and final year at St. Regis, Amory becomes friends with Rahill, their class president, whom he considers a “co-philosopher,” though Amory still considers himself to be more intelligent than Rahill. Together they invent the concept of “the slicker,” a boy whom they consider has “social values,” dresses well, excels in activities, is successful in college, and slicks his hair back. They contrast the slicker with “the big man,” who is socially unaware, dresses carelessly, does activities out of a sense of duty, flounders in college, and does not have slicked hair. Amory decides to go to Princeton. After he leaves St. Regis he forgets the good times of his final year, remembering only when he was lonely and unhappy.
The symbol of “the slicker” becomes very significant for the rest of the novel because it provides a way for Amory to identify and assess a certain type of masculine conformity that becomes widespread when Amory is in college. The invention of the slicker here indicates Amory’s awareness of and obsession with class status, success, and social conventions.
Themes
