Imagine a thousand voices running around your head. Each one screams a story at you, demanding your attention. They all ask to be released, to immortalize their story on paper. Such is the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. A writer's mind is filled with stories of other people's lives, people who have not yet been created. F. Scott took these people's stories, poured his own life into theirs, and spread the mixture onto paper. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald chooses to mirror his life through those of his characters to express the general corruption and near impossibility of fully achieving the American dream. Matthew J. Bruccoli states in his online article "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald" that Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to Edward and Mollie. Edward did not do well as a wicker furniture maker, so he moved his family to upstate New York where he worked as a salesman for Protector & Gambler. He was fired when F. Scott was 12, so they returned to St. Paul and lived off Mollie's inheritance. F. Scott attended Saint Paul Academy where he wrote a crime novel for the school newspaper. It was the first of his writings to ever be published. At Princeton he wrote many scripts and songs for their plays and comics for their magazine. F. Scott was so passionate about writing that he neglected all his studies and was placed on probation as "unlikely to graduate." He later dropped out of school and joined the army, becoming a second lieutenant. He was so convinced that he would die in the war that he haphazardly wrote The Romantic Egoist but was rejected and encouraged to resubmit his work when it was revised (Bruccoli)..... middle of paper ..... .getting the dream American. F. Scott Fitzgerald proved to be one of the best writers of his time despite his difficult beginnings. He took his struggles and put himself and his loved ones into his stories to prove a point. He wants to shed light on his lifestyle, but not in an attempt to glorify it. F. Scott Fitzgerald used himself, Jay Gatsby, and his wife, Daisy Buchanan, to exemplify the causes of corruption caused by money and the inability to achieve the American dream. PBS. PBS, Web.Bruccoli, Matthew J. "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, Web.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, New York: Scribner 1996. Print.Gam, Karielle Stephanie. "A great analysis of the American character: is Gatsby really great?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Web.