Fitzgerald fosters a wistful mood in This Side of Paradise. The emotional impact of the narrative shifts and swells with Amory's evolution as the central character, punctuated by the shaper edges of Fitzgerald's caustic sarcasm. But this wistfulness—informed by the loss of youth, innocence, and optimism that Amory feels when he enters college—is pervasive. The mood may be felt most keenly in the moments when Amory confronts, and contemplates, the unrelenting passage of time, as in Book 1, Chapter 2:
The cool bathed his eyes and slowed the flight of time—time that had crept so insidiously through the lazy April afternoons, seemed so intangible in the long spring twilights. Evening after evening the senior singing had drifted over the campus in melancholy beauty, and through the shell of his undergraduate consciousness had broken a deep and reverent devotion to the gray walls and Gothic peaks and all they symbolized as warehouses of dead ages.
Within the hallowed halls of Princeton, Amory becomes aware of the endless march of generations in which he plays only the smallest of parts. With the passing of the seasons, seniors graduate and abandon the haze of undergraduate bliss—a cruel reminder that even those most formative experiences in Amory's life will inevitably fade into the past. As time continues to "creep" along, Amory's reflection on his college career grows even more wistful. In Book 1, Chapter 4, Amory faces at once the coming end of his time at Princeton and the growing impact of World War I:
Early April slipped by in a haze—a haze of long evenings on the veranda with the graphophone playing 'Poor Butterfly' inside... for 'Poor Butterfly' had been the song of that last year. The war seemed scarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springs of the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amory realized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime.
Everything in this passage reflects Amory's preoccupation with the past: last year's song plays on the graphophone, and the ambiance of a long evening in springtime reminds him of his previous springs on campus. In Fitzgerald's wistful portrayal of Amory's early life, the coming-of-age process is precisely the process of coming to terms with this impermanence and the equally painful process of learning to live, with oneself, in the present moment.
Fitzgerald fosters a wistful mood in This Side of Paradise. The emotional impact of the narrative shifts and swells with Amory's evolution as the central character, punctuated by the shaper edges of Fitzgerald's caustic sarcasm. But this wistfulness—informed by the loss of youth, innocence, and optimism that Amory feels when he enters college—is pervasive. The mood may be felt most keenly in the moments when Amory confronts, and contemplates, the unrelenting passage of time, as in Book 1, Chapter 2:
The cool bathed his eyes and slowed the flight of time—time that had crept so insidiously through the lazy April afternoons, seemed so intangible in the long spring twilights. Evening after evening the senior singing had drifted over the campus in melancholy beauty, and through the shell of his undergraduate consciousness had broken a deep and reverent devotion to the gray walls and Gothic peaks and all they symbolized as warehouses of dead ages.
Within the hallowed halls of Princeton, Amory becomes aware of the endless march of generations in which he plays only the smallest of parts. With the passing of the seasons, seniors graduate and abandon the haze of undergraduate bliss—a cruel reminder that even those most formative experiences in Amory's life will inevitably fade into the past. As time continues to "creep" along, Amory's reflection on his college career grows even more wistful. In Book 1, Chapter 4, Amory faces at once the coming end of his time at Princeton and the growing impact of World War I:
Early April slipped by in a haze—a haze of long evenings on the veranda with the graphophone playing 'Poor Butterfly' inside... for 'Poor Butterfly' had been the song of that last year. The war seemed scarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springs of the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amory realized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime.
Everything in this passage reflects Amory's preoccupation with the past: last year's song plays on the graphophone, and the ambiance of a long evening in springtime reminds him of his previous springs on campus. In Fitzgerald's wistful portrayal of Amory's early life, the coming-of-age process is precisely the process of coming to terms with this impermanence and the equally painful process of learning to live, with oneself, in the present moment.
