vents. They lived like characters in one of Fitzgerald's books and Fitzgerald himself said that sometimes he didn't know if Zelda and he were real or characters in the book. He wrote many short stories to pay for their lifestyle but they were always in debt. By the end of the 1920's they had problems with their marriage. They had financial problems, Fitzgerald often drank but was unable to handle alcohol and Zelda had psychological problems. At the start of the 1930's Zelda had had serious mental breakdowns and in fact she would spend the rest of her life in and out of mental institutions. In many ways their lives reflect the 1920's and the " jazz age". After the destruction of the First World War the early 20's were a period of great creativity and there was a spirit of change. Similarly with Fitzgerald , between 1920 and 1925 he published three novels and the third, The Great Gatsby is thought to be his greatest work written at the height of his maturity. But the "jazz age" ended with the great economic depression in America due to The Wall Street Crash. Similarly Fitzgerald increasingly drank and his life became dissipated. His early promise and creativity seemed to be going to waste. He recognized his own failings and wasted promise and they, along with Zelda's mental problems, were the basis of his next and last finished novel "Tender is the Night" published in 1934. For the rest of his life Fitzgerald spent most of his time writing scripts for films in Hollywood. He died there in 1940. Zelda died in a fire in a mental institution in 1947. They had one daughter.
             Jay Gatsby's real name was James Gatz and his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people from North Dakota. He changed his name when he was seventeen and at that exact same age he invented his new self according to a model that would make a seventeen-year-old boy proud. He worked as a clam-d...