This Side of Paradise

“So while more or less fortunate little rich boys were defying governesses on the beach at Newport or being spanked or tutored or read to from ‘Do and Dare,’ or ‘Frank on the Lower Mississippi,’ Amory was biting acquiescent bell-boys in the Waldorf, out-growing a natural repugnance to chamber music and symphonies, and deriving a highly specialized education from his mother.”

This passage describes Amory’s unique upbringing and how his experience traveling the country with Beatrice has set him apart from other boys his age. Unlike most boys his age, Amory is sophisticated and appreciates social order and status. This disparity between Amory and his peers will become apparent during his time at St. Regis’ and Princeton.

“Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of fourteen.”

As numerous chapter headings and subheadings denote, Amory is an egotist—someone vain and self-absorbed—and holds himself in very high esteem. He firmly believes he will achieve greatness someday, which causes him to look down on his peers. This self-absorption alienates Amory and forces him to change his attitude and behavior to make friends. However, this self-confidence also gives Amory a romantic and idealistic view of the world, especially while attending Princeton.

“From the first he loved Princeton—its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that pervaded his class […] that breathless social system, that worship, seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey ‘Big Man.’”

Princeton plays a strong symbolic role in the novel and serves as a perfect setting for the social structure that Amory values and believes to be ideal (See: Symbols & Motifs). In Book 1, Amory’s greatest goal is to achieve popularity and recognition, and Princeton, he feels, allows him to accomplish these things easily.