Three comrades - Gatsby, Diver, Stahr and F. Scott Fitzgerald's re-invention of failure

This thesis addresses how Fitzgerald breaks new ground as a novelist, by acknowledging the death and rebirth of a post-war American protagonist for whom failure serves counter-intuitively as the basis for self-invention. It illustrates how Fitzgerald revitalises and re-establishes artistic meaning and integrity through his work, indicative of his own heroic struggle to achieve both mental and emotional equilibrium following his well documented ‘crack-up’ during the 1930s. Moreover, this study hypothesises that Fitzgerald’s treatment of failure in Gatsby, Tender, and Tycoon enhances their status as a means of embracing and engaging other alternative, marginalised, narrative voices. Consequently, I propose that in reading Fitzgerald’s work within the globalised context of the 21st century, his heroes may be better understood through a critical awareness of the Japanese philosophy of noble failure, which celebrates and honours both integrity and sincerity of purpose in the face of overwhelming odds.The idea of noble failure not only serves to illustrate how Jay Gatsby, Dick Diver, and Monroe Stahr develop as protagonists in relation to a clear narrative cycle, but also how Fitzgerald recognises and reinvents himself in terms of his own societal function as artist. Finally, I ask to what extent through re-evaluating Fitzgerald's treatment of failure can the novel form itself be reconsidered as a necessary 'heroic' agent essential to restoring the cultural vitality of American life. In doing so I submit that by adapting the function of the novel to a re-imagining of America as a creative territory socially, historically and geographically, it is possible to justify describing Fitzgerald as a genuine pioneer of American letters.