Economic Haunting: Wealth and Waste in The Beautiful and Damned

Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned (1922) is one of the most successful novels revealing the anxiety over money and waste in the early twentieth century. However, Fitzgerald is not alone in his anxiety over wealth and waste. The period in which he wrote the novel shows the great ambivalence of American public with wealth for Americans believe that they could achieve great wealth and strive for emulating the rich. The great ambivalence has concerned with the gain and the dissipation of the rich and obviously, it has shown successfully in Fitzgerald’s novel. The present study aims to shed light on the life of Anthony Patch whose foundations of romantic ideals are rather based on his idealized world trapped in economic anxiety haunted all his life than his consciousness of the real life. Besides, the study attempts to explain the reasons why Anthony has faced with meaninglessness in life and his psychological loss in the trap of the old aristocracy in life which then makes him become a broken man.


Introduction
asserts that "If in This Side of Paradise, Amory Blaine's quest for life's meaning is a paean to possibility, then in The Beautiful and Damned Anthony and Gloria Patch's descent into self-absorbed paralysis is a dirge to disillusionment and human waste".The novel, therefore, exhibits the psychological changes of Anthony with the haunting of money during his life with a symbol of Anthony's grandfather as "a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 47).As Fitzgerald refers in a letter to Charles Scribner, The Beautiful and Damned is about "the life of Anthony Patch between his 25 th and 33 rd years (1913)(1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918)(1919)(1920)(1921) [and] he is one of those many tastes and weaknesses of an artist but with no actual creative inspiration" (Bruccoli, 1994: 41).Moreover, Fitzgerald notifies that "How he [Anthony] and his beautiful wife are wrecked on the shoals of dissipation is told in the story.This sounds sordid but it's really a most sensational book" (Bruccoli, 1994: 41).With the novel's setting, New York City, in fact, up and down Fifth Avenue, Fitzgerald opens up the depth of economic anxiety of the rapidly changing in the American society in the early twentieth century What is surprise here, however, is Fitzgerald's contradictory and dilemma regarding money between his ambivalence to wealth depicted in his novels and his lifestyle.Fitzgerald is really anxious about getting money by pushing himself writing novels and commercial short stories and he is usually under pressure of gaining more money to supply his needs.It is more especially true after Fitzgerald's marriage in 1920 when the Fitzgeralds reflect themselves as a celebrity couple in New York City, and the Fitzgeralds seem to be a symbol for the American Dream.Jim Cullen's "American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation" (2003) depicts a picture right after the title of the book which shows Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on their honey moon, titled that, "The photo is a virtual compendium of American Dreams: house, car, beauty, youth, talent".It is a life of fabulous wealth and drifting all their time from England, France, and Switzerland to Italy.Back to the America, they also spend time in the rented apartments or hotels between New York, Long Island, Montgomery, St Paul, Wilmington and Baltimore.When Zelda gets a mental illness and is hospitalized in Baltimore, Fitzgerald still lives in various hotels in North Carolina and Maryland before his final move to Hollywood.It can be said that the Fitzgeralds certainly have never settled down and get a permanent living and also face with many dilemmas in gaining wealth.Therefore, Fitzgerald's novels in generally and The Beautiful and Damned in particular exhibits a deeper sense of the hero's economic anxiety relationship with wealth as well as the narrative's ambivalence to solve the matter.
According to Konings (2011: 1), "our faith in money involves an experience of it as both traumatic and redemptive" and so is Anthony's life.Anthony begins with the joys of his life in "editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9), and gradually, he learns that "he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9).Hence, Anthony never thinks going to Harvard is a good idea because "it was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well"' (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9).Anthony, a romantic figure, never strives to fit his world into the life of romantic books and poems because of his different desires and purposes of his life.The narrative, therefore, portrays Anthony as a smart figure but it does not seem that he could control his life and is always in a quest of a dream of gaining money from his grandfather.
Consequently, within good conditions and background, Anthony, ironically, does not do anything great and meaningful in his life as his grandfather expects him to do.Anthony only hopes that great futures will await him basing on money that he could inherit from his grandfather.However, for Anthony, it seems "a tragedy to want nothing" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 47).Anthony supposes that one day he could "accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 5).Anthony, however, even does not clearly know which "some quiet subtle thing" is.Everything seems so dim in his eyes and we can say that Anthony falls into the illusive world which is established on his grandfather's money and position.

Discussion
The anxiety of money has dogged Anthony through the novel.Konings (2011: 6) argues that "money has emerged as a key stabilizer of social life, an anchor for what are often rapid processes of change".Initially, the narrative focuses on the economic haunting which appears to Anthony's life even when he is only a small boy.Anthony uses his status of old aristocracy to get his life superior to other people and "drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 6).Anthony's romantic view reflects how great things he wants to do and he could win in life.He also consciously knows what his family background is with much thought of seeing "himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 48).
Moreover, Anthony gives himself the right of justifying others because the narrative depicts him as "a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward-a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 5).Ironically, in contrast, Anthony's income "was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 12).Anthony cannot get any money from his millionaire grandfather "who never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance" because Adam Patch "judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 12).His old wealth grandfather's expectations are different from those of Anthony, and of course, Anthony's grandfather does not want Anthony to depend too much on family's money and become an independent and mature man.
In reality, Anthony is never satisfied with that sum of money.But the quickest way to get much more money only comes to Anthony if his grandfather dies.As a result, he always wishes that his grandfather will die as sooner as better.We can say that Anthony is haunted by the luxurious life which can depend on only his grandfather's death.Anthony did nothing in his early life to match his grandfather's expectation that "you (Anthony) ought to do something" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 15).Hence, Anthony's dream is "some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a raison d'être in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13).To gain this means "he had hoped to find his grandfather dead" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13).Therefore, Anthony just waits for that golden day and does not want to do anything seriously.While Dick Caramel, one of his close friends, tries to finish his first novel, the Demon Lover, Anthony thinks it "was glad he wasn't going to work on his book" which is about Middle Ages or he call the Dark Ages.It partly shows that Anthony wants to hide his laziness and "Dark Ages" is only one reason he is thinking about.On the other hand, it also shows that he does not want to be trapped in a book of "Dark Ages" which partly symbolizes the dark and traumatic events when Anthony loses both his father and mother in his childhood and we can say that this is one kind of his repressions that Anthony suffers all his latter life.
Besides, according to Edkins (2003), Anthony has suffered from "modern trauma" when he has traumatic experience generated by capitalist life which is best described by the economic haunting of wealth and comfort life.A modern trauma, from Edkins' point of view, occurs when our faith in social life is violated "when the very powers that we are convinced will protect us and give us security become our tormentors: when the community of which we considered ourselves members turns against us" (Edkins, 2003: 4).From Book One to nearly the end of the novel, Anthony seems to be powerless without money as he desires.What disappointed Anthony is his great desire and strong attachment to money that does not belong to him.In the economic trend the American endeavor to emulate the rich and it seems that wealth and social status can buy.The omniscient intrusive author depicts the public with the desire of gaining wealth and getting super rich, and Anthony is not an exceptional figure.Besides, Konings (2011: 7) points out that, "in contemporary capitalism, money simply means social power-denying this is not so much a meaningful personal belief or a potentially effective attempt to resist the lure of a fetish, but rather the inability or reluctance to recognize a social fact".Moreover, "as our faith in its ability to carry meaning across different spheres of life increases, money comes to function as a master-metaphor and assumes the quality of general social validity" (Konings, 2011: 10).Therefore, the fortune of Adam Patch can ensure Anthony's social power and social validity all his life.Moreover, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned also reflects many Thorstein Veblen's thoughts on the matter of the leisure class and its disregards to conspicuous waste.Veblen's ideas reflect the portraits of the older aristocracy and new upper classes or we can say the old wealth and new wealth.Also, muckraking writers; such as Upton Sinclair or Sinclair Lewis, sardonically depicts the American society in which more and more new wealth and socially high class appear and much money is in the hand of a few barons.Muckraking critics and novels depicts the anxiety increased with the disparity of incomes between the upper and lower-class.During the Gilded Age, that kind of theories and novels reflect the excesses of the newly rich and their corrupt in general and Anthony's allusion to get quick rich in particular.It is clearly seen that Fitzgerald captures this era's culture of the wealthy in a satirical way.Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned is parable of conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure, the pecuniary standard of living, and pecuniary emulation.
Therefore, for much of the story, we can see the generation gap of wealth's attitudes of the Patches and the symbol of money between "vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam's own moral righteousness" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13) and the money "grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13) which are depicted satirically to recapture the social facts of Gilded Age.Drawing on Veblen' s ideas, we can see that "by a further refinement, wealth acquired passively by transmission from ancestors or other antecedents presently becomes even more honorific than wealth acquired by the possessor's own effort" (Veblen, 1899: 29).Similarly, the novel shows that idea in stressing the family history and the viewpoints of money between the Patches.Anthony's only desire is to inherit money from his old wealth grandfather and that money will make Anthony's life and status in the society different; however, his old wealth grandfather persists his opinion of encouraging Anthony to find a job seriously.Besides, Veblen's idea also shows the main point of Anthony's psychic when he insists to remain his empty life without doing anything.It seems that Anthony is totally aware of the differences that money and social status can bring to him, and he enjoys its privileges and then waits for the golden day of money transmitted from his grandfather.
According to Veblen (1899), luxurious and wealthy life exhibits the standard living of leisure class.It also brings them power and status, and reputation in their life."The leisure class stands at the head of the social structure in point of reputability; and its manner of life and its standard of worth therefore afford the norm of reputability for the community" (Veblen, 1899: 84).To have such a luxurious life also, of course, means that the leisure class can "consume freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accouterments, amusements, amulet, and idols or divinities" (Veblen, 1899: 73).To tell the truth, Anthony spent so much time of his childhood in Europe that he is seen "thoroughly un-American" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 8).Anthony just returned to America because of his grandfather's illness and his life began in an apartment of "the most desirable" where "he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertain" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 11).Also, from this place, "he was reminded of a fantastic romance that he had lately read in which cities had been boomed from aerial trains" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 4).Furthermore, "on the service record his occupation stood as "student"; on the original questionnaire he had prematurely written "author" […] had he told the truth, that he did no work, they would have been suspicious of him as a member of the leisure class" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 273).To tell the truth, Anthony is between the lines because he seems to be very rich but in fact he isn't.He seems to get everything but he has nothing.He tries to look at him in the mirror of disillusioned world and indulges himself with his so-called luxurious life.
Besides, Fitzgerald sardonically shows the egotist which stresses on the individual's life.It depicts the satirical society when individuals find nothing to do and nobody to take care of.People just seem to be afraid of being slighted if they could not get much money.Also, how to get supper rich quickly and soon achieve a highly social position is a big question.Ironically, the part "CHILD'S" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 99) that depicts the true love of a self-fish man [Anthony] loves a self-fish girl [Gloria] is expressed in a strange way which might symbolize the childish, empty and stupid world of the hero.The idea of losing Gloria "drove him [Anthony] childishly frantic" (99) and Anthony "wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption.He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 99).This part really shows a triangle love in which Anthony loses in very way.In comparison with Anthony momentarily, an intrusive narrator exhibits a portrait of "a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wishes to be born-a bright flower in his buttonhole, safe and secure from the things she feared" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 99).Clearly, Anthony feels superior but jealous with his counterpart.Also Anthony reflects his hidden fright because, to some degree, unlike Bloeckman, he has to struggle against his life without money.
However, not only Anthony but Gloria wants to keep their relationship stand still because they both have their reasons.For Anthony, in one hand, he shows the hidden sexual desire when he thinks if they [Anthony and Gloria] "were married, there'll be no good night then and we [they] can do just as we [they] want" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 115).In the other hand, he is extremely like Gloria who wishes that "some day when we [Anthony and Gloria] have more money"-old Adam's death was always thus tactfully alluded to-"we'll build a magnificent estate" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 116) and even "private rivers" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 116).Their disillusioned world drive them "like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 116).Fitzgerald' narrative is especially intrusive when exhibiting the dark shadow of their world.It seems that "both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 116).The narrative implies that it is Adam Patch who prevents them from their ecstatic desires.It is a strange way of depicting someone still alive but seems rather like a ghost or a phantom chasing the other's life.
Anthony has the same feelings before his wedding because it is "the union of his soul with Gloria's, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 125).However, it cannot be denied that the wedding is also his turning point and "that his life was being slashed into two periods and that the face of the world was changing before him" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 130).Anthony understands that "it was going to cost" after his marriage and it really "worried him" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 127).Fitzgerald's intrusive narrator implies the lack of Anthony's money capacity to support his luxurious life and Gloria's frivolity gift.Anthony' anxiety stems from the fact that "grampa [Adam J. Patch] may die tomorrow and he may live for ten years.Meanwhile we're [Anthony and Gloria] living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 174).
However, parallel to the wealthy life, the leisure class must "accept their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live up to that ideal" (Veblen, 1899: 84) and also the "waste of goods" (Veblen, 1899: 85).The chapter titled "Symposium" depicts the life of that couple similarly to that of Veblen's theory.The narrative tells us that "a simple healthy leisure class […] the women, of more than average beauty, fragilely athletic, somewhat idiotic as hostesses but charming and infinitively decorative as guests […] It seems ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts American should excel unquestionably" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 160).Moreover, even "Anthony and Gloria found that they had spent too much money and for this must go into retirement for a certain period" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 160).They indulge in revel, fling, drink and dance until dawn.They do not want people around them to know their living conditions and Anthony always insists on "paying for everything" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 223), and even Gloria wants Anthony "to cut down on excess generosities" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 223).It is a way Anthony and Gloria enforce habits of leisure.
Anthony is like an effeminate kind of identity, and under that tension, Anthony considers as "a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 132).Even Gloria angrily tells him that "You coward!You coward, oh, you coward!" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 166).Further illustration is shown when Anthony thinks that "there's some one at the window" looking at him in a night.He is so afraid that he needs some help from a "night clerk with three bell-boys" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 134).It happens to him that "I [Anthony] have been nervous as the devil all evening" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 134).However, it is Gloria who confirms that "I [Gloria] will protect my Anthony.Oh, nobody's ever going to harm my Anthony!" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 135).Momentarily, Anthony becomes a small coward boy who needs somebody's arms.It happens to Gloria that she becomes like Anthony's mother.The idea of mother figure is depicted in various Fitzgerald's novels and short stories.In the scene, Gloria becomes a mother figure who wants to protect Anthony from any harm.Ironically, Gloria, a person who is irresponsible and does not want to be a mother, can act out as Anthony's mother.Besides, Gloria seems to be a magical beauty who "had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep.She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun" (159).Gloria is more and more showing herself an immortal figure that does her duty in this landscape very ably.
It is inevitable for Anthony's disillusioned of life when he lives under pressure of money and a panic of losing romance.Anthony "seldom took pleasure in an entire day spent alone with her […] There were times when he felt that if he were not left absolutely alone he would do mad" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 230).The fact is that Anthony has not found any serious jobs "in this six years since graduation" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 136) from Harvard.In his university's Alumni Bulletin, "most of them were in business, it was true, and several were converting the heathen of China or America to nebulous protestantism; but a few, he found, were working constructively at jobs that were neither sinecures nor routines" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 136).Perhaps, only Anthony does not do any job since he left university.
Finally, Anthony's wish comes true when "old Adam died on a midnight of late November with a pious compliment to his God on his thin lips" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 241).In the burial, "Anthony and Gloria rode in their first carriage, too worried to feel grotesque, both trying desperately to glean presage of fortune from the faces of retainers who had been with him at the end" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 242).However, Anthony is not allowed to inherit any money.Desperately, Anthony wants "to contest a provision of the will" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 243).The implied incident that makes Anthony lose the fortune is that his grandfather can not stand Anthony's life style and drunken in revel when Adam Patch accidentally come across Anthony's apartment.From now on, life becomes more meaningless to both Anthony and Gloria.They seem to lose their social status when they "hear rumors about themselves from all quarters, rumors founded usually on soupcon of truth, but overlaid with preposterous and sinister detail" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 246).
While Anthony seems to face with meaningless life without any money supported by his grandfather, he has a chance to meets Dorothy Raycroft.It is time that Anthony has to separate with Gloria to join the army, and "it seemed so long ago already-he had a pang of illusive loneliness" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 261).Therefore, Anthony quickly has an affair with a nineteen lower-class Dot which is "an inevitably result of his increasing carelessness about himself" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 268).Dot seems to be suitable figure and new wind to Anthony.Anthony feels that he can escape from "chief jailer" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 269), his wife, contemporarily.This romance also reveals a psychological reaction of the Anthony when he can not find the solutions of his dark marriage and life.By this we mean it is an escaping from reality and he hopes to avoid his troubles with a new romance.Anthony very soon forgets Gloria because he finds himself "increasingly glad to be alive" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 274) and Gloria becomes "day by day, less real, less vivid" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 274).Anthony finds many reasons that he does not want Gloria has a visit to South but the only reason is that "he was attracted to Dorothy" and "he lived in terror that Gloria should learn by some chance or intention of the relation that he formed" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 275).
We can see clearly that Anthony's sexual affair with Dot reveals the fact that romanticism is gone in the time of war.People only want to live faster and do not hesitate to show their sexual desires to forget the miserable time because "life is so damned hard" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 281).Through the sociology lens, Anthony finds himself a reason to have the affair, but he never thinks any affair is stable.It seems to him that life is like a game or an agonizing joke, and what you desire is not what you can really catch.Anthony supposes that "desire just cheats us.It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room.It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 282).Using the third person omniscient point of view, Anthony frankly and coldly refuses Dot when she wants to go to Mississippi with him.He found himself disillusioned because "for years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable water" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 283).He knows that his "clean" life will never be stable as he wishes as it wholly depends on his emotions.
With full of hope to change the life, Anthony has attempted to be a salesman, and Gloria tries to become a movie star.However, both of them are selling empty dreams and illusions because they are not capable of doing anything seriously.It is a huge irony because the job carries meaningless and an awful attempt to get money without doing anything and gaining no products.It is the way American culture is distorted the American Dream because it is rather like an investment trick.Like Anthony, Gloria also sells her empty dream by testing a screen to become an actress.She is selling illusion with her naïve thought that she can be a famous screen figure.Hence, both of them have failed their dreams.
The last chapter of the novel titled "No Matter" exhibits a huge irony of Anthony's life.The title reveals that there is not any goal or concern in Anthony's life.At that time, Anthony "was thirty-two and his mind was a bleak and disordered wreck" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 335).It is said that "Anthony and Gloria had become like players who had lost their costumes, lacking the pride to continue on the note of tragedy" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 334).In a rare visit of one of his friends, Muriel Kane, Anthony still shows his high ranking class which is expressed in Anthony's conversation with Muriel.

"Why do you [Anthony] say such awful things?" she [Muriel] protested. "You talk as if you and Gloria were in the middle class."
"Why pretend we're not?I hate people who claim to be great aristocrats when they can't even keep up the appearance of it.""Do you think a person has to have money to be aristocratic?"Muriel…the horrified democrat…!"Why, of course.Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine-courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing-can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity."(Fitzgerald, 1922: 336) Clearly, Anthony fights against any counterpoint opinions to keep his lifestyle.He supposes that if he can earn a little money, it does not change anything in his life.He is sensitive to think that because of no money "people don't want us [Anthony and Gloria].We're too much the ideal bad examples" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 336).They come up to the next winter in their life with so much cold in their heart.Anthony depends too much on alcohol and "was intolerable now except under the influence of liquor, and as he seemed to decay and coarsen under her eyes, Gloria's soul and body shrank away from him" (3 Fitzgerald, 1922: 49).They seem not to belong to each other any more and live in a hopelessly and desperately life with small amount of money.They actually react as their life will end soon."Only their mutual misery and disappointment and their legal efforts to reverse the terms of Adam's will unite Anthony and Gloria."(Pelzer, 2000: 58) The last chapter of the novel also depicts Anthony's psychological loss and collapse when he returns his life to the childhood.Drawing on Konings's idea, we can see that "capitalist socialization involves productive admixture of hope and disappointment, admiration and envy, illusion and disillusionment" (Konings, 2011: 12).Anthony, in a long way of waiting the victory of the lawsuit, seems to have both these feelings that Konings refers.The scene when Gloria and Dick come to see Anthony to inform him about the win of the lawsuit which "worth thirty millions" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 368) and they find Anthony stay in his bedroom with his "three big stamp-books" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 368) shows Anthony's nostalgia and the mixture of Anthony's feelings.Anthony does not care the news when he asks them to get out or he "will tell my [his] grandfather" (Fitzgerald, 1922: 368).Anthony's reaction depicts the resolution of the novel which shows his regression to childhood when he does not have to live under any pressures.It seems to Anthony that he has been spoiled by the world of vanity and selfishness he creates for his own that makes him traumatized and cynicism of the world around, and he can never achieve a coherence character.

Conclusion
Anthony, at last, wins his dream of gaining money from old Adam Patch.He thinks he deserves to the pure luck, and thirty million dollars is what he has own right to entertain.The novel gives a negative picture of the American Dream in which the idea of getting money without work overwhelms the hero and heroin.Hence, the irony here is that Anthony's pursuit of money and pleasure is not expected by old Adam, but finally he inherits the millions left by his wealthy grandfather.However, their life totally changes as the "existence relies not only on our personal survival as individual beings but also, in a very profound sense, on the continuance of the social order that gives our existence meaning and dignity: family, friends, political community, beliefs, [and] if that order betrays us in some way, we may survive in the sense of continuing to live as physical beings, but the meaning of our existence is changed (Edkins, 2003: 4).From the moment on, Anthony's life, sardonically, will be wheeled in an exact way of Adam Patch's life with a fabulous figure of money but his meaning of life will be totally changed.
Anthony and Gloria's choice is to leave America to Europe where they can enjoy themselves on various luxurious tours and, sardonically, Anthony may have more chances to collect more "stamps of England and Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain-Italy" ( (Fitzgerald, 1922: 368).It is highly ironic because the leisure class plays itself over America and desires to set up much better life in different continent.We can meet this international Jamesian theme in Fitzgerald's novels and Tender is the Night is an example.However, whether Anthony and Gloria can live happily with that money or money only gilds their surface is a big question, because "their victory, however, is hollow, for it has not altered their essential selves" (Pelzer, 2000: 65).Anthony and Gloria seem to be the corrupted figures before they can get what they desire.Furthermore, neither romantic nor idealist happens to him at the end and we are sure that they will be haunted by that money and inevitably, both Anthony and Gloria find themselves imprisoned in their false illusions.