an allegory of youth

Anyone who has read The Diamond as Big as the Ritz would agree that Fitzgerald does an admirable job of manipulating rhetoric into creating a piece that has all the elements of a heartwarming “Once upon a time” tale: a castle situated on a supernatural diamond mountain, a magical bathtub, an evil villain, a beautiful princess and her Prince Charming, and even a moral-of-the-story that’s painfully true. What it lacks is the “happily ever after.” It’s quite ironic, really, that instead of rising from rags to riches, our wonderful Kismine and her beloved actually descend from the “floating fairy-land” into a pit of Hell. So maybe they aren’t so wonderful after all.

Although Kismine is deemed the “incarnation of physical perfection” itself, none can match the naivety of her mind. She reveals her foolishness when she claims, “I believe that girls ought to enjoy their youths in a wholesome way”—much like Daisy, who thinks girls are better off being “beautiful little fools.” Frankly, the fact that Kismine “never…read[s] anything” nor knows “any mathematics or chemistry” convinces me that she would better fit in with a herd of pink elephants rather than the human race. (At least I’m not saying she can only have water as a beverage.)

So what’s wrong with John T. Unger? Doesn’t he rescue, heroic and Moses-like, the damsels in distress? Shouldn’t he have been spared the torments of Hell? Unfortunately, our main character lacked the nobility and wisdom of Moses; he allowed himself to get caught up in the “warm enchantment” of luxury and began “measuring up the day against [a] radiantly imagined future.” Like Gatsby, his fantasizing about the “unattainable young dream” eventually results in a hard fall back to reality.

And so, although DBR was written decades ago, its message is very applicable even today. The shiny, gaudy opulence of the Washington estate is representative of the excessive, dreamy way in which we live youth. Like Unger, it is a time when most everyone experiences the flush of first love sitting atop their mountains of unrealistic aspirations, a time when one is first exposed to the “terrible and golden mystery” of life, a time that abruptly ends with “the shabby gift of disillusion.”