Francis Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is known as one of the most important American writers of his time. He wrote about the disturbing period he lived in, known as the Jazz Age. During this era people were rich or dreamed of great riches. Fitzgerald fell into the trap of wanting to get rich and suffered great personal anguish because of these driving forces. I chose to write a thesis on F.Scott Fitzgerald. The goal of this presentation is to show the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald through his defeats and triumphs and how these situations influenced his life as a writer. Fitzgerald's life began in the Midwestern part of the United States. On September 24, 1896, he was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. F. Scott Fitzgerald was of Irish ancestry on both sides and was distantly related to Francis Scott Key, for whom he was named, and to the Maryland aristocracy. His parents, Edward Fitzgerald of Glen Mary Farm near Rockville, Maryland and Mary McQuillan of St. Paul were married February 13, 1890 in Washington, DC. Fitzgerald's maternal grandfather was a very successful wholesale merchant. His grandfather's early death, and his father's inability to hold down a job, forced the family to be extremely dependent on the wealth of his grandfather's estate. Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy as a child. In 1911 he entered the Newman School in Hackensack, NJ. Growing up with a father who was out of work and relied on his wife's inheritance gave Fitzgerald a mixed feeling of guilt and shame, yet he felt love for both of his parents. These internal conflicts in his early life may have contributed to his inability to manage his finances, along with his constant obsession with obtaining extreme wealth. Fitzgerald later went to Princeton University, where writing and football were his main interests. It was there that he met friends EdmundWilson and John Peale Bishop. Fitzgerald was too young to play football, so he joined a fraternity called the Triangle Club, the second most prestigious cliché on campus, after football. After Princeton, Fitzgerald reportedly told a friend "I want to be the greatest writer who ever lived, don't I (Bruccoli, 1981)." In 1917, Fitzgerald joined the Army and prepared to fight in World War I. It was soon after his mobilization that he sold his first… paper medium… incessantly into the past” (GrolierEncyclopedia, 1993 ). Showing his failed attempts to go back to the past made him someone who felt like he had no control over his destiny, because he could never be as successful as his past. He knew that his work would have a permanent claim on the American literary world. Fitzgerald's life mirrored his novels. His life was full of love and tragedy. He pursued his dreams, and in real life, he often lived out those dreams. He wanted to capture her youth and purity. He produced thousands of tales, often to support their frivolous lifestyle and to tell their stories. Many scholars have criticized his work and their desire to interpret Fitzgerald's work on library shelves. The Great Gatsby is a great American classic of which hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year to high school and college students around the world. Much of his work has been translated into 35 languages. It is ironic that more Fitzgerald books are sold each year than were sold during his lifetime. Sometimes it takes more than a lifetime to achieve your goals and Fitzgerald found a way to achieve his goals without living forever.