The Maturing of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1997 by Alan Margolies

Possibly some of these may have been Fitzgerald's attempt to portray contemporary speech; this was the way some whites referred to blacks at the time. When Henry Clay Marston ("The Swimmers" [1929]), a Virginian whose grandfather treed his slaves in 1858, speaks about returning from France to the United States and says, "It's going to be pretty awful at first . . . but there are still a few good nigger cooks, and we'll probably have two bathrooms" (Short Stories 502), this probably was Fitzgerald's attempt to reflect how a southerner of Marston's background might speak. Further, there are instances where the racial remarks seem purposeful for dramatic reasons. In Tender Is the Night (1934) various blacks are referred to by the narrator as a "colored man" (105), "Negro" (106, 109), "Afro-European," and "Afro-American" (106). A footman refers to "a colored fellow" (103). Dick Diver, on the other hand, says of the murdered Jules Peterson, "[I]t's only some nigger scrap" (110). In addition, he denigrates Nicotera, the actor with whom Rosemary may be having an affair, when he says, "He's a spic!" (218). And when he is beaten up and jailed in Rome, he yells, "You dirty Wops!" (228). Late in the novel the narrator tells us that Dick, when criticized, "would suddenly unroll a long scroll of contempt for some person, race, class, way of life, way of thinking" (267). Here, we are seeing the defects in Dick's not-so-perfect personality - he is extremely proud of his ability to control himself - and we are seeing his decline.

But not all of Fitzgerald's readers were satisfied with these racist concepts. In the July 21, 1934, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, in "No Flowers," Fitzgerald used the word buck once again, this time to refer to members of an orchestra: "Jim Europe and his bucks were enthroned at one end of the hall, and some Toscanini of Tangos at the other" (The Price Was High 531). This time he was taken to task, possibly directly for the first time. On July 23, 1934, just two days after the date of the issue, Earl W. Wilkins, an avid reader of Fitzgerald, wrote the novelist a three-page letter perceptively discussing the writer's work, but criticizing his choice of language. "Must all male Negroes in your books and stories be called 'bucks'?" Wilkins inquired (Donaldson 187). Fitzgerald replied two weeks later. Unfortunately, we do not have his answer, but he did save Wilkins's letter. It must have made an impression.

There are far fewer references to Jews in Fitzgerald's fiction, but the stereotypes are no less disturbing. In "May Day" (1920), a crowd beats up a socialist, a "God damn Bolshevski," delivering a speech. He is "a gesticulating little Jew with long black whiskers, who was waving his arms and delivering an excited but succinct harangue" (Short Stories 108).James W. Tuttleton is correct in suggesting that this description is "a rather confused and ambivalent affair." Whereas Fitzgerald is sympathetic to socialism here, says Tuttleton, the portrayal of the Jew, on the other hand, is an example of "Fitzgerald's own American nativism" (190), in other words, bigotry.