Shallow and Superficial Relationships in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Number

Shallow and Superficial Relationships in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novels

The relationships between characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels tend to be based on superficial means. Very seldom is love and honesty key factors in their relationships. These relationships are very dangerous and destructive in the long run. Fitzgerald wrote about destructive partnerships because he himself had one. In all of the main characters in his books, you can always find a bit of Scott Fitzgerald in the males and Zelda Fitzgerald in the females. In three of his novels, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, and Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the main couples to be superficial and immoral. Their relationships are based on materialistic items and they all end up extremely unhappy, even though they are wealthy and have achieved the American dream. The relationships of Tom and Daisy, Anthony and Gloria, and Dick and Nicole, prove that shallow relationships based on superficial things lead to destruction and unhappiness.

The first example of this type of destructive and shallow relationship can be found in The Great Gatsby with Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The Buchanan’s are a main couple in the novel and display the emptiness of the American Dream. Tom lacks moral responsibility and focuses on obtaining wealth and possessions. Tom “is rich with no conscience, moralistic without being moral, exclusionary, racist, and, above all, untrue to any self-conception” (Berman 56). He is a successful businessman with a fortune and has a trophy wife, Daisy. Nonetheless, unhappy with his life and feeling that the American Dream is not enough, he cheats on Daisy. His mistress is treated badly and he tends to physically abuse her. Tom is overall a terrible man. However, his wife Daisy is not a good person either. She marries for money, not love, and eventually cheats on Tom with Jay Gatsby. The two dysfunctional characters have obtained the ideal American dream, yet are the most miserable characters throughout the novel. Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, describes the Buchanan’s as “careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (The Great Gatsby 171)

In The Beautiful and Damned, Anthony and Gloria Patch also are in an unhealthy, unbalanced, and materialistic relationship. Gloria Gilbert marries Anthony because he is the presumptive heir to his grandfather’s fortune. Anthony marries Gloria because solely because she is beautiful. Gloria has no ambitions “except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love.” (The Beautiful and Damned 193). They tend not to communicate with each other and their relationship becomes toxic extremely quickly. Both extremely