aintain this lifestyle, Fitzgerald was forced to put aside working on novels, and focus his creative efforts on penning lucrative, but by no means extraordinary, short stories. Throughout their marriage, Zelda put constant economic, as well as, emotional strains on Fitzgerald. She encouraged his short story writing, as well as his drinking, and was continually swaying his focus from writing to socializing. Also, Zelda’s eventual mental breakdown triggered Scott’s own series of nervous breakdowns. Because of these factors, Zelda is often considered the prime instigator of Fitzgerald’s literary and personal declines. Yet in spite of Zelda’s overtly negative influence on Fitzgerald, he continued to love his wife to the day he died. Later in life, after Zelda became mentally ill, Fitzgerald clearly illustrated his unconditional love for his wife by compromising his artistic integrity in order to write short stories to support her medical expenses. Aside from Zelda, two major American literary figures played a substantial role in Fitzgerald’s life, and his personal decline as well. On an extended trip to Europe, and at the pinnacle of his fame, Fitzgerald met and became acquainted with a then obscure fellow expatriate named Ernest Hemmingway. Throughout the course of their friendship, Hemmingway would become Fitzgerald’s harshest critic, and in the eyes of Fitzgerald, his, “artistic conscience”(Meyers 263). The second major American literary figure who influenced Fitzgerald’s life was Edgar Allen Poe. Fitzgerald’s intrigue with both the tragic and romantic elements of Poe’s life, as well as the many similarities these two men shared, may have very well facilitated his plunge into the unforgiving abysses of alcoholism and depression. Jeffrey Meyers’ biography Scott Fitzgerald provides a complete and seemingly unbiased account of the life of one of the most complex men in ...
