Fitzgerald’s Narrative Technique

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is known as the representative of the "Lost Generation", the poet laureate of the "Jazz Age", and an excellent chronicler of American history, whose work not only dramatically demonstrates his success and failure, but also specifically depicts the joy and sorrow of American generation of the time. Fitzgerald is the master of the modern fiction for his unique narrative style and stylistic language.Fitzgerald is a professional writer who has the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retains the ability to function. He skillfully uses the narrative strategies of the free indirect discourse and authorial intrusion to greatly minimize the distance among the writer, the readers, and the work. He also prompts the charm of his work by the use of the flashback narrative structure. Besides, he poetically expresses the connotive meanings of the details through the defamiliarized symbols prolonging the time to feel the aesthetic enjoyment.This thesis focuses on All the Sad Young Men, Fitzgerald’s third short story collection, with his writing technique and style as the main line. In All the Sad Young Men, Fitzgerald truthfully records the fretfulness, the disappointment and the anxiety of the younger generation in the Roaring twenties, and also reproduces the chaotic social panorama concealed in the1920s’prosperity, profoundly exposing and criticizing the distorted and paralyzed effect of the wealth and property on happiness and love and individuals’development through his unique narrative technique. The use and analysis of the skillful narrative techniques in All the Sad Young Men give a deeper penetration into the three leitmotivs of the story collection, and an insight into Fitzgerald’s unique creating thoughts.