Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) wrote arguably the best novel in American history. The "Great American Fiction", a title sought by almost all American fiction writers of, well, basically any century.
Before I jump into it let me tell you a few things about American Fiction history. They had a very slow start. "Genuine" fiction didn't start to come out of America until the early 19th century, and even then it was in the form of the short story. Not until Twain, Melville, Hawthorne and co, did remarkable novels, that could stand up to their European counterparts, start to come out of America.
And it was then that the scramble for the title began: Who has written, or will write, "the Great American Story". I could take you through each meaningful attempts: all Melville, Hawthorne, Poe. I could take you through the entire bravery of the generation after that: the attempts at something new and meaningful and 100% American. But I won't. Because I want to talk about something much more fun. Character Development Arc in F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Most Americans would be familiar with F. Scott. They read him to death in school. But for those who haven't, and doesn't know him, I had to hype him up really fast: ergo the talk about the great American story up there. But its true. A lot of critics through generations are agreed on it. The Great Gatsby is the most beautiful, genuinely American novel ever written.
And this is no small feat, of course, considering the number of genius American writers that have written. The close runners-up to Fitzgerald for that title would be Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Hemingway is a close contender--if he had set any of his greater novels solely in America he might have had a more than decent chance.
Anyway, the title goes to Fitzgerald. Yay.
What I'll be doing here then is I'll be showing you Fitzgerald's go-to character Arc, present in all his novel, and what makes them stand out, not just from other books, but from each other.
THE PROTAGONIST
Scott Fitzgerald wrote four novels in his lifetime, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night. He aslo left one uncompleted, The Love of the Last Tycoon.
In all of these novels, the protagonist is a brilliant adult male, with so much intelligence; so much potential: with ideas and dreams of a bright future. He is mostly handsome, has a few features from Fitzgerald himself. One thing Fitzgerald--and most of the 20th century novelists--loved to do was take character traits from different real-life people they knew. They believed in Samuel Johnson's maxim that a writer could borrow from a whole village to make a single character. This way they could make characters that bear a huge semblance to life. But also, when overdone, it could lead to confusion, and mis-knowledge of characters: in traits and idiosyncrasies. Hemingway once criticized Tender is the Night as being an amalgamation of so many people that Fitzgerald ultimately lost control of the character. Anyway, in all Fitzgerald novels we have this young man, about to enter into the real world, armed with talent and brilliance and illusions.
In This Side of Paradise it was Amory Blaine, in The Beautiful and the Damned it was Anthony Patch, in The Great Gatsby it was Jay Gatsby, in Tender in the Night it was Dick Diver--all young, promising men with their future ahead of them, until then comes....
THE LADY
The lady is beautiful; the stuff of dreams--fittingly--she is different and amazing, brilliant, but not loved for her brilliance, loved for her grace, her cymbals song. Oh Fitzgerald was amazing at creating charming female characters! Perhaps because he lived with a most charming most exciting one himself.
His wife, Zelda Fitzgerald nee Sayre, was beautiful herself, and the inspiration behind most of the love interests in Fitzgerald's novel. Rosalind in This Side of Paradise perhaps bears the most semblance, mainly because the novel itself is a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's life. Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert in The Beautiful and teh Damned are like the evolution of Amory and Rosalind in TSOP, i.e the characterization of Fitzgerald and Zelda after their marriage--which happened just after the publication of This Side of Paradise.
In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald's classic masterpiece, "The Great American Fiction", Fitzgerald brought this art and elevated it to the sublime. More on that in...
THE TRAGEDY
What happens when a promising talented young man meets a beautiful talented young women? If you ask Fitzgerald, he'll say TRAGEDY all the time!
He gives a quite compelling argument too, and never does it in a sappy way. The man and woman gets into a brilliant love; the stuff of fantasy. The fulfillment of dreams. But Fitzgerald knows that hardly in life can you have it all. Then comes the conflict. Which comes mostly in the form of poverty.
Because the dream--American mostly--the American dream, is built on materials and wealth, and Fitzgerald--just like he himself was--submerges his characters in dreams of this wealth, and sets them pursuing after it at all cost; they have it for a while, and then poof, it's gone, either taken away--as in the case of Anthony Patch--lost, --as in the case of Amory Blaine--gotten via unscrupulousness, which leads to it being fickle and unsustainable--as in the case of Gatsby.
Any form it takes, the wealth is lost. The illusion is broken, and the lady, the cause of the dream, the reason that drives it, is also lost in one violent, heart wrenching-burst!
THE EXCEPTION
Not just in his novels, a lot of his short stories, in fact, adopts this arc. The promising young male meeting a tragic end after meeting a suicidally beautiful young woman who spurs him on violently in search of his dreams.
And yet Fitzgerald's stories never read as cliche. You don't read the next one thinking meh I've read that before.
The reason for this may be Fitzgerald's talent for prose. His writing is so fluent, so poetic, so elevated, that he could write about whales fucking and it'd still be so damn awesome. But this is not what takes the sole responsibility. That honor will go to the fact of development. You see, even though these characters all go through the same journey, they pass through different paths EVERY TIME.
Plus the fact that like a zen puzzle, these paths never seem like they're heading towards the same end. They feel more like a continuation of that journey, leading to a different end each time. AN end that even though similar, feels more like a beginning. Isn't this the greatest form of development?