This Side of Paradise: Scott Fitzgerald

This novel is about Amory Blaine, a boy born to a wealthy family, and how he drops in the world. As a child Amory is arrogant and egocentric. He meets Monsignor Darcy, a suitor of his mother’s turned clergyman, who encourages Amory because he sees his potential. After reaching adulthood Amory embraces his unlikeable qualities and enters Princeton. He falls in love several times, most deeply with a woman who wants to marry into money, and he didn't have enough. He also falls deeply in love with his widowed cousin. His most traumatic relationship was with Eleanor Savage, who, when the relationship ended, rode her horse off a cliff and jumped off at the last minute. In the end, after the war, his mother's death, and trouble staying employed, he realizes he is broke. When he has nothing and doesn't want to work for it, he becomes a socialist. At the end of the book he states that he knows himself, but that is all. It is sort of an unsatisfying ending, because we don't know what he will do with this knowledge. He has fell from great heights from his own self-thought importance and finds out his is simply a man.