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Book 2, Chapter 1: The Débutante
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Side of Paradise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age
Friendship and Masculinity
War, Modern Life, and Generations
Money and Class
Love and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
Amory is very drunk at a bar, consuming alcohol to numb the pain of his breakup with Rosalind. Amory drunkenly laments his time spent in the war, explaining that he has lost his idealism and now has adopted a reckless, hedonistic attitude towards life and women. Amory passes out in a hotel room and starts drinking again when he wakes up in the morning, thinking about Rosalind. After more days of drinking, Amory shows up to the advertising agency drunk and quits his job, telling his boss that the work is meaningless. Amory finally returns home to the apartment he shares with Tom, who is now a magazine writer, and Alec. Tom reveals that Alec is moving out to return home and that they may not be able to afford the rent themselves.
Because of his devastation from his breakup with Rosalind, Amory’s life begins falling apart. It seems that he had been using their relationship to give his life direction and without it, the aimlessness of his life is abruptly and dramatically revealed to him. This moment is also the first time that Amory admits to the impact that the war had on him, and it becomes clear that the destructiveness of the war was very traumatic for him.
Themes
Once Prohibition begins, Amory can no longer drown his sorrows in alcohol. He reveals that he will never love anyone more than he loved Rosalind. He begins writing and reading again. Amory contacts a friend of Monsignor Darcy’s, Mrs. Lawrence, who reminds him of Beatrice. Spending time with Mrs. Lawrence revives Amory’s interest in life. However, Amory is still bored with his life and feels ambitionless. He receives news from his family’s lawyer, Mr. Barton, that the estate in Lake Geneva, which Amory inherited, will not make him any money.
Prohibition, which completely banned alcohol in the United States, went into effect in January 1920. It was a significant moment of transformation for the country, as well as for Amory. This portion of the novel is perhaps one of the most succinct portrayals of the mood of the “Lost Generation” and their sense of aimlessness and artistic sensibility after the war. The letter from Mr. Barton also deepens the significance of the symbolism of the Lake Geneva estate: now that Amory has lost all his family, the Lake Geneva estate is all that ties him to his origins. But while he comes from a family of good lineage, he has no wealth to show for it, demonstrating the ephemerality of money and class status.
Themes
Amory and Tom discuss the impacts of the war. Amory claims that it destroyed the individualism of their generation and the possibility for men to become heroes. Amory criticizes Tom’s column in his magazine, The New Democracy, calling it cynical. Amory vows not to write until he clarifies his ideas, yet he feels like he is purposeless without intellectual pursuits. Tom criticizes the writers of their time, saying that none of them will be memorable. Amory tries to write about the spirit of the times and his lost youth. Amory receives a letter from Monsignor Darcy inviting Amory to visit him in Washington. When Tom’s mother becomes sick, they both move out of the apartment. Amory goes to Washington, where he misses Darcy, and then travels to Maryland to stay with an uncle.
Amory and Tom’s discussion of the war illustrates the degree to which their experiences in the war were part of a broader generational consciousness—a consciousness of the fact that the war significantly altered their entire way of life in the modern world and that their generation was, literally and metaphorically, on the front lines. Amory and Tom’s struggles to find intellectual and literary fulfillment echo their discussions in college, in which Tom said that without Amory’s influence he could have been a great poet and Amory said that he himself would never be a poet. It seems that their prediction—that they would both fail to become true artists, not just writers—has come true, perhaps because they became too conventional.
Themes
Literary Devices
