so anticlimactic

For someone claiming to be so highly sophisticated, Amory's life beyond Princeton is defined by his relationships with the women who left him. While i was reading, i felt as though everything that happened to Amory outside of a relationship, was just filler until the next one. He has so many great plans for himself but loses track, or even ambition for life after being harshly dumped by Rosalind. From there on it seems that he is on the road from which he will never be able to be proud of his old self ever again. Despite having come from a once wealthy family and having a Princeton education, Amory believes himself so well versed in the ways of the world that he doesn't realize how quickly it's leaving him behind. Even though he is not as pompus as he was in college, the older Amory seems to have experience in only two things: heartbreak and failure. He was more interesting when his ridiculous mannerisms actually amounted to something.

The dramatic return to Princeton that Amory sets in order at the end of the novel seems to be where Fitzgerald thought he could make a reasonable end to the winding road of his narrative. The aesthetic value cannot be argued. At this point i didn't care too much for what Amory meandered off to do. He is an absolute wanderer, never being able to find contentment in anything he does. Here at Princeton however, Amory rests in his memories. With most of his life having occurred with Princeton as a defining point he is able to make a return to the past, where everything and nothing happened. This allows the novel to end in a neutral position, even after all the back and forth Amory underwent during his time there.

I had the first impression that Amory was a romantic. Even from a young age, he had discovered the game of charming and leading women along. It seemed natural that he would marry a couple times, stopping only for cutthroat divorces, and then find yet another affair waiting for him. The only surprise of the whole novel was that although Amory falls in love a couple times, he never marries. Then again, knowing his habit of pursuing fleeing passions, i suppose Amory was never secure commit himself to another. The one time he had found his match in Rosalind, he wasn't able to satisfy her needs, as even he himself realizes that he's a basically selfish person. But if Amory had actually married, it would probably feel as though he wasn't, since he doesn't like to be tied down and is wandering, always wandering.

I think college is a lot different for college students of today, especially since women have entered the collegiate population. We also have different reasons for going to college and the journey to achieve admission is also much more rigorous than that which Amory experienced. For students of today, college is about being able to find the means to a career, rather than just a rite of passage, or a way to waste away four years. Since most of Amory's peers were from mostly well off, successful families, they did not worry so much about securing a living, since there were options and outlets for them to make money even if college did not work out for them. Amory's generation also did not have to fight through SATs, high competition, and the rigorous admission process that is normal today. College is shaped by the students, which are inevitably changed through their generations and the kind of world they live in.