A New Amory?

MIKE: I've just finished reading the next chapters (Interlude and The Debutante) and here I sit, reflecting while I type.  For previous responses I've waited at least a few hours to write because I need time to process and reflect.  Not the case today.  At least, not what you're going to get.

The past few chapters have kind of thrown me.  I was all on board with TSoP after chapter one but my interest began to wane with each additionally chapter, mostly because I've not necessarily found Amory worth the time.  Then I read today's chapter and I'm back on board.  I begin with my reactions to the very brief Interlude.  The text is predominantly a letter from Monsignor Darcy.  His writing seems so tender and heartfelt that I found myself wanting to learn more about his story.  One of my favorite lines is when he writes, "I've discovered suddenly that I'm an old man."  So I'm only thirty-three but there are times when I've had a similar revelation.  The reality isn't so much that I'm old but rather, I'm older than my rash and careless days as a teen and twenties.  I look back at some of my past held attitudes and temperaments and I question how I could ever have acted in such ways.  What further blows my my mind is that in ten to fifteen years I'll look at my thirties and again have the same realization.  

I write all this to say that maybe I've been too harsh on Amory.  Monsignor Darcy writes, "curiously alike we are...curiously unlike".  I wonder in what ways Darcy finds commonality with Amory and if Darcy sees in Amory what I don't; someone developing into a worthwhile personage.  Amory does appear to be growing into his skin in a more favorable way.  Perhaps this is because he's without the fortune he once had or because he's seen the realities of war.  In his letter to Tom, Amory writes, "...the war instead of making me orthodox, which is the correct reaction, has made me a passionate agnostic."  Ain't that the truth. 

Book Two: The Education of a Personage is an aptly titled second half to our story.  After Princeton, Amory finally begins his education.  I think this is the same for a lot of college students who see the world through clearer lenses after they graduate and walk in a world that is more real than what they've previously known.  Amory is now officially not rich and he's got to establish himself alongside the 99%.  Fitzgerald begins this section of the book as a theatrical script.  If nothing else, TSoP is experiment in medium.  

We meet a few new characters in Rosalind, Cecelia, and Alec.  I don't remember Alec in the first half of the book, do you?  I think Rosalind is Fitzgerald's Zelda.  I also think the second half of this book must be written after the rejection of the Egotist from major publishers.  Fitzgerald pursued and was engaged to Zelda before being rejected for lack of social standing just before publishing this novel.  And like Amory in this chapter, Fitzgerald works in advertising before finding success in his writing career.  I think it will be interesting now to see how the rest of the book plays out as autobiography.  In real life, Zelda-The-Gold-Digger marries Fitzgerald after he successfully publishes TSoP.

Despite her superficial lifestyle, I have a favorable opinion of Rosalind.  Is that strange?  Why should I like her?  However, I did hope Amory would pursue Cecelia instead.  Maybe he still will?  Probably not, but one can hope.  I thought Rosalind's speech to Cecelia about how life is difficult for such a beautiful person was humorous:

...you don't know what a trial it is to be--like me.  I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.  If I laugh hard from a front row in the theatre, the comedian plays to me for the rest of the evening.  If I drop my voice, my eyes, my handkerchief at a dance, my partner calls me up on the phone every day for a week.

Poor girl.

What did you think?  How did you view the new Amory?  Where do you see him headed?