Fitzgerald - Adv Higher English Dissertation help needed!

Right. So, for my Advanced Higher English I have decided to study 'The Beautiful and Damned' and 'Tender is the Night' by F Scott Fitzgerald.

I wanted to re-do The Great Gatsby, seeing as I'm an avid fan, but seeing as I did it at Higher, alas I cannot study it at Adv Higher :-(


So basically, I was wondering if any of you who are familair with the two novels could help me in anyway come up with a really good question to compare the two texts?

I was thinking something along the lines of how he portrays the complexities of marriage/relationships using different linguistic techniques etc, but I feel there is probably something I could study in far more depth that would get me a better overall grade! I've always been awful with thinking up questions like such so any help at all would be much appreciated!

Thanks :-) x

How about from the point of view...comparative female characters in both works...also comparative to Zelda, Fitzgerald's unusual wife http://www.pbs.org/kteh/amstorytellers/bios.html

The interior dialectic of Fitzgerald seen through his works. I know Lionel Trilling wrote an essay about it in The Liberal Imagination called "F. Scott. Fitzgerald" where he talks about Fitzgerald's struggle compared to Gatsby's, and other works. That may be interesting to write about.

I have not read those novels. I wish I have. Some day perhaps. :) Best of luck.

Great idea to put these two novels together. I loved both of them. Perhaps you could evaluate the struggle of youth and beauty and the ultimate degeneration of both and how they interplay into love/relationships. The transience of love and beauty, and ultimately life. But that might be too simple or too broad. I wish I had the texts with me here right now to cite some lines from.

Do you know what it is in those two novels that draws you to studying them? Once you get an idea of that, it becomes easier to form it into a question.

Although I must say that some topics will have been done to depth, like the links between Zelda Fitzgerald and the women in Fitzgerald's novels. You could always argue that you don't see the parallels as being fundamental to his work. Look at some of the things we generally think about Fitzgerald and ask yourself what such thoughts bring to a study of his work.

Well, Kelby, seeing as this request was made five years ago, you may be a little late with that advice by a day or two.