User:Tbattes33/sandbox

Plot
While at Princeton, Amory meets new people and becomes friends with a few. He joins the Triangle Club and travels to different places around the world performing. A new girl comes into his life who's name is Isabelle, him and Isabelle had met when they were kids and became an item when Amory was a sophomore in college. After a little while of dating Isabelle, they broke up for various reasons.

During Amory's freshman and half of his sophomore year in college, Amory was very dedicated to his studies, but the turning point to his procrastination occurred one day when his friends convince him to go on a trip and skip school. While on the trip, a friend named Dick Humbird was driving drunk and died. Amory continues to party and not care too much about school

Amory has a very strong opinion about World War l but has no interest in it what so ever but ironically leaves early his senior year to go off and serve in World War I for two years. Once he returns he falls deeply in love with a girl named Rosalind, but looses her due to his lack of family money. Rosalind left Amory to marry a wealthier man, leaving Amory depressed. After a few weeks of heavy drinking and the death of Monsignor Darcy, his good friend, Amory goes on a journey back to Princeton and finally accepts who he is and everything he has been through.

Reception
"This Side of Paradise" was the first novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and has been critiqued by many other authors and scholars. The book is set for the Jazz Age, the 1920's, and was based around Amory Blaine, a Princeton man. Some experts, such as Marcie Amidon Lusted, praised the "clear literary voice"  that Fitzgerald used in the novel that directly connected to that generation. Others, such as Katie Baker, said that Blaine, the protagonist, "aspires to the gentleman's life" which ironically includes the "Ivy League pedigree". Baker also believed that it is "weird, wild, and wonderful".

In contrast, critics such as Charles E. Shain said that the novel is "very uneven, and full of solemn attempts to abstract thought on literature, war, and socialism". Shain also believed a lot of people thought it was "fake" but, it offers "the first evidence of Fitzgerald's possession of the gift necessary for a novelist".