51 pages • 1 hour read
This Side of Paradise
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Book 2, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: “The Education of a Personage”
Book 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Debutante”
It’s now February 1919, and Amory has returned from the war and is almost 22. At the Connage house in New York, 19-year-old Rosalind and her sister Cecilia are preparing for Rosalind’s coming-out party. Amory arrives and waits downstairs. Alec tells Cecilia, Rosalind, and Mrs. Connage about Amory before he and his mother go downstairs. The two sisters remain upstairs and talk about Rosalind’s coming of age, and Cecilia teases Rosalind for loving too many male admirers. She then goes downstairs, leaving Rosalind alone. Rosalind dances in front of the mirror, and Amory enters the room.
They introduce themselves and instantly like each other. They kiss, but Rosalind refuses when Amory asks her to kiss him again. The couple continues to flirt with each other, and Amory eventually leaves. Mrs. Connage returns and tells Rosalind that the family fortune is dwindling and this might be their final year in the house. She then gives her daughter instructions regarding what men to associate with and which to avoid, specifically mentioning Dawson Ryder, a wealthy young man she likes. Mrs. Connage then returns downstairs with Rosalind.
“Several Hours Later”: In a downstairs den, Rosalind and Howard Gillespie discuss their relationship. Dawson Ryder joins them and asks Rosalind to dance. She asks him to wait a moment because she is tired. Howard leaves, and a moment later, Rosalind says she has changed her mind and leaves the room with Dawson. Alec and Cecilia then enter the den. He says he doesn’t want Amory to fall in love with Rosalind because he worries she will break his friend’s heart. Mrs. Connage suddenly appears looking for Rosalind, and all three leave to look for her. Rosalind and Howard return to the den, but when Amory arrives, Howard leaves. Rosalind and Amory kiss and say they love each other.
“Kismet”: Two weeks pass, and Amory and Rosalind fall deeply in love. He takes a job at an advertising agency in New York in early March, spending all of his free time with Rosalind. By June, they discuss marriage.
“A Little Interlude”: After work one day, Amory returns to the apartment he shares with Alec and Tom. He tells Tom that Rosalind is his whole world now.
“Bitter Sweet”: One summer evening, Rosalind tells Amory she’ll marry him when he’s ready. She wants to be a part of his life and family and have his children. They sit in a chair, holding each other and dreaming of the life they’ll create together.
“Aquatic Incident”: One day, Amory and Howard cross paths downtown and have lunch together. During their conversation, Howard tells a story about Rosalind jumping from a 30-foot roof into a pool because she heard another girl do it. Howard jumped, too, feeling obligated to follow her, but Rosalind criticized his diving form. Amory laughs, disregarding what this story says about her character.
“Five Weeks Later”: Rosalind has grown thinner and looks older. She’s sitting in her family’s library, staring at nothing. Mrs. Connage enters and talks to her about her choice of loving Amory. Rosalind tries to defend him, but her mother warns her not to make a mistake she will regret for the rest of her life.
Amory and Alec come into the room, and Alec quickly leaves with his mother to attend a play together. The couple kisses, and Rosalind begins to cry. Amory accuses Dawson of fraying her nerves and says he knows she and Dawson have been together every day this week. Rosalind then says Dawson asked her to marry him, so Amory asks her to marry him next week. In response, she tells him she loves him but doesn’t want to be poor, knowing he will always be a failure. Rosalind won’t have to worry about money if she marries Dawson.
Amory tells her to kiss him, but Rosalind refuses. She tells him she can’t marry him and ruin both their lives. She takes off Amory’s ring and returns it to him. Amory says goodbye and leaves the library.
Book 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Experiments in Convalescence”
Amory enters the Knickerbocker Bar, and a former Princeton classmate greets him. The classmate accuses him of being drunk, but Amory denies it. They have a few drinks together, and then Amory has drinks with another Princeton alumnus. He begins delivering a slurred speech on his current philosophies of life. He and the Princeton alumnus cross the street to a diner. After they eat, Amory falls asleep in a hotel room.
“Still Alcoholic”: Amory wakes in the hotel room and orders drinks from the front desk. He showers and drinks as he fights memories of Rosalind. At noon, he goes to the Biltmore bar and repeats his drinking binge, sleeping periodically anywhere he can find. He tries to meet a famous cabaret singer, but a waiter escorts him to his table. Amory threatens to die by suicide the next day. His companions try to calm him down, and they all begin discussing their depressing lives. Amory falls into a stupor and emerges when a pretty woman clings to him and begs him to take her home. The man who brought her demands Amory release her. A waiter pulls the woman off, but she slaps him in the face and returns to the man she came with.
“Amory on the Labor Question”: Two days later, Amory goes to the advertising agency and quits his job, telling his boss that he is underpaid, given his Princeton education.
“A Little Lull”: Amory returns to his apartment for the first time in days. Tom comments on his black eye and swollen jaw, both results of several fights. Tom then tells Amory that Alec moved back home to be with his family and that they need to find a replacement to afford rent. Amory tells Tom to find someone and goes to his room. He collects everything that reminds him of Rosalind and packs it into his trunk. Amory then leaves the apartment and returns to the Biltmore bar.
“Temperature Normal”: Prohibition ends Amory’s drinking binge, but he doesn’t mind. He knows his drinking has helped him recover from losing Rosalind, and he no longer feels the pain. However, he is emotionally exhausted. One day, he calls Mrs. Lawrence, a friend of Darcy’s. They go to lunch together, and Amory enjoys her company. They discuss literature, religion, and the social order. He leaves Mrs. Lawrence’s house feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.
“Restlessness”: Tom and Amory decide not to bring in another roommate but must live frugally to afford rent. One day, Amory tells Tom he’s bored and accuses Tom of being cynical in his writings for The New Democracy, a weekly publication Tom works for. They discuss the war’s impact on their generation and then argue about individualism. Amory insults Tom’s writing and influence, which has the power to sway his audience’s thinking. Tom’s only reply is to express gratitude that Amory finally has strong opinions about something again.
“Tom the Censor”: Days later, Tom rails against American authors and their shallow novels. Amory disagrees with Tom’s assessment but listens to his friend’s rant.
“Looking Backward”: Five months after his separation from Rosalind, Amory attempts to write about his experience of losing her. However, he previously told Tom he wouldn’t write again until he could get his ideas straight.
“Another Ending”: In mid-August, Amory receives a letter from Darcy. Darcy senses Amory’s unhappiness and feels he has lost his former romanticism. Darcy then cautions his protégé not to lose himself to someone else’s personality or marry in haste.
Tom’s mother becomes seriously ill, so he moves in with her to take care of her. Amory decides to visit Darcy in Washington, DC, but when he learns the priest has already left, he visits his uncle in Maryland. While there, Amory meets Eleanor Savage.
Book 2, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Book 2 contains another example of Fitzgerald’s narrative experimentation: He writes Chapter 1 as a script, complete with stage directions and simplified settings, where all the action takes place in one room or location at a time. The plot is written through dialogue between characters, highlighting their conversations instead of their actions and behaviors. Fitzgerald’s presentation of this section as a stage drama symbolizes the intensity of Amory’s and Rosalind’s relationship, while also capturing the dramatic split between the two when Rosalind decides to marry Dawson Ryder for financial reasons, invoking The Impact of Money and Class on Relationships.
Rosalind’s choice to marry Dawson Ryder instead of Amory is simply because Dawson is wealthy and Amory is not. Rosalind’s choice symbolizes the power money and materialism have during the Jazz Age, but it also represents her desire to be secure and well-supported. Rosalind grew up wealthy, yet her family’s fortune is dwindling. This is why Mrs. Connage talks to her daughter about what men to pay attention to at her coming-out party. She knows if she marries Amory, she will struggle, something she has never experienced. Just as Daisy does in The Great Gatsby, Rosalind becomes a vehicle for Fitzgerald to demonstrate how the upper class often sacrifices their feelings and desires for monetary comfort.
Another example of The Impact of Money and Class on Relationships occurs when Alec, Rosalind’s brother and Amory’s long-time friend, moves out of the New York apartment to return home. His choosing to leave directly after Amory’s breakup shows that Alec might also feel the pull of money matters over friendship, adding to Amory’s despair. Thus, money and class don’t just affect romantic relationships with long-lasting consequences, but can also impact deep friendships such as that shared by Amory and Alec.
This section also demonstrates how drastically Amory’s character has changed from Book 1 due to The Experience of Disillusionment. While Fitzgerald doesn’t describe any of his experiences fighting in WWI, readers can assume he brings home some emotional trauma from his time in Europe. Amory then moves from the intensity of war to an emotionally intense relationship with Rosalind, which leaves him emotionally exhausted for the remainder of the novel. This emotional fatigue sends him on a several-week-long drinking binge and drives him to avoid relationships and experiences because he feels he can no longer handle them. Thus, Amory’s most meaningful romantic relationship changes who he is, how he sees the world, and how he reacts to other people and opportunities.
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