The Beautiful and Damned: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Beautiful and Damned" is a novel that explores the lives and moral decay of its main characters, particularly focusing on Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria Gilbert Patch. Anthony is portrayed as a handsome and intelligent man who, despite his potential inheritance of a vast fortune, grapples with a debilitating lack of motivation and direction due to his privileged background. His passive nature leads him into alcoholism as he struggles with the legacy of his tragic childhood. Gloria, three years younger than Anthony, is depicted as a self-absorbed woman whose beauty has shielded her from personal growth and responsibility. As her looks fade, she becomes increasingly lost and dependent on Anthony.
Additionally, Anthony's grandfather, Adam Patch, serves as a contrasting figure; a once-ruthless businessman who, facing mortality, attempts to instill values of hard work and sobriety in his grandson. Other characters like Richard Caramel, a once-idealistic novelist, and Maury Noble, a cynical businessman, further illustrate the theme of lost potential in the face of societal pressures. The story also highlights Joseph Bloeckman, a Jewish producer who embodies ambition and success, contrasting sharply with Anthony's weaknesses. Through these character dynamics, the novel critiques the disillusionment and moral complexities of the Jazz Age, ultimately portraying the consequences of wealth and societal expectations on individual character and relationships.
The Beautiful and Damned: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
First published: 1922
Genre: Novel
Locale: New York City and environs, and near a military training camp in South Carolina
Plot: Satire
Time: 1913–1921
Anthony Patch, a playboy and dilettante. Most of the novel is narrated from the point of view of this good-looking, intelligent, and fundamentally decent man and concerns his moral deterioration between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-three. He stands to inherit the lion's share of his grand-father's estate, worth about $75 million. This inheritance has a debilitating effect on Anthony because it stifles any motive to do anything for himself, although he continues to entertain notions of writing about history. His parents died when he was a child, as did his paternal grandmother, who was rearing him in their stead. These tragedies left him with a chronic paranoid anxiety and help to explain why he is passive, immature, and lacking the aggressiveness to carve out a career for himself. With nothing serious to occupy his mind, he takes to drinking and becomes a hopeless alcoholic.
Gloria Gilbert Patch, Anthony's wife, three years his junior. Just as Anthony has never had to develop any strength of character because of his grandfather's riches, Gloria has never had to develop any strength of character because of her remarkable beauty. She is spoiled, selfish, and narcissistic. She believes that her beauty conveys a certain nobility upon her, so that she does not have to do anything; she merely has to be. Gloria is the worst possible wife for Anthony because she is as feckless and incompetent as he. She is Fitzgerald's model of a flapper: She is one of the first socialites to bob her hair and wear daring fashions. When her beauty begins to fade with age and dissipation, she becomes a lost soul.
Adam Patch, a millionaire and philanthropist, Anthony's grandfather. In his prime, Patch was a ruthless businessman, but in his old age, with death staring him in the face, he suddenly develops a conscience and begins trying to reform the world. He advocates hard work and sobriety, virtues that his grandson completely lacks. When Anthony learns upon the old man's death that he has been disinherited for his wild conduct, he and Gloria are thrown into desperate straits. Anthony continues squandering the meager capital he inherited from his mother and becomes involved in a seemingly endless lawsuit to overturn his grandfather's will.
Richard Caramel, Gloria's cousin and Anthony's best friend, a successful novelist. Pudgy and unattractive but talented and warmhearted, Caramel graduated from Harvard with his head full of ideals about “service to humanity.” His first novel was a sincere work of art, but he gradually became corrupted by literary fame and the need to keep making money. His later works are potboilers, but he does not recognize them as such.
Maury Noble, another of Anthony's friends from Harvard days. This handsome, brilliant young man might have made important contributions to some branch of human thought but he can find no meaning in a mechanistic universe. He goes into business and becomes hardened and cynical while growing prosperous. He is another illustration of Fitzgerald's thesis that the blind forces of nature have countless ways of corroding innocence and beauty.
Joseph Bloeckman, a Jewish motion picture producer. He is in love with Gloria but loses her to Anthony, who appears to have more to offer in terms of wealth and social prestige. Bloeckman serves as a foil to Anthony: Through his brains and ambition, he acquires money, power, and even the upper-class polish that he initially lacked. His success in spite of disadvantages highlights Anthony's weakness of character.
Dorothy Raycroft, Anthony's mistress during World War I. Anthony is sent to training camp in South Carolina, where he meets this pretty, unsophisticated country girl of nineteen. After the war ends, she follows him to New York and causes him to have a nervous breakdown by demanding his love when he is in the final stages of his character disintegration and has nothing left to give anyone.