Talk:The Beautiful and Damned

Gloria's Birthday

Fitzgerald, either unwittingly or as a literary device, changes the month in which Gloria Gilbert's birthday falls. In Book 2, Chapter 3, 'Retrospect',"Gloria would be twenty-six in May." However, later in the novel, in Book 3, Chapter 2, 'Further Adventures With 'Heart Talks', the sentence "She would be twenty-nine in February." is repeated twice to highlight the crisis which Gloria is having over her loss of youth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dewey56 (talk • contribs) 20:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Fitzgerald is actually notorious for inconsistencies such as these - and as you say nobody really knows if they are genuinely unwitting or purposeful literary devices to reflect the carelessness in these characters' lives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.135.119.98 (talk) 13:01, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Bilphism

Fitgerald, F. Scott. (1922) The Beautiful and Damned. Charles Scribner's Sons.

A Bilphist--one who practices or believes in the idealogy of Bilphism--is a concept invisioned by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1922 "portrait of the noveaux riches," The Beautiful and Damned. What actually constitutes Bilphist beliefs is only vaguely alluded to by Fitzgerald. Gloria's mother is a self-proclaimed Bilphist and makes comments as to the age of other characters souls. She describes her daughter of having a particularily "young soul" while Richard Caramel, a family relation, is described as having a "very old soul". Aside from these comments made by Mrs. Gilbert in the early pages of the novel, a more insightful description of Bilphism does not occur until the last third of the book when Gloria proclaims to Anthony that she is a Bilphist. This proclamation causes Anthony great disbelief that Gloria could "believe that stuff" because it's "fantastic" and that he considers Gloria to be an agnostic. He belittles Gloria's claim by stating, "you'd laugh at any orthodox form of Christianity-and then you come out with the statement that you believe in some silly rule of reincarnation". Anthony continues on to claim that Bilphism is a faith that "appeals to the reason...of a lot of hysterical women," and calls it "mental garbage."

Aside from Fitzgerald making clear Anthony's opinions toward Bilphism, what Bilphism actually is, is described only as a belief in reincarnation.Akbadass4life (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

NPOV and other issues

Some examples:

• The novel provides an excellent portrait
• As with all of his other novels, it is a brilliant character study - possible WP:EDITORIAL before the comma too.

The Themes section seems to be a sea of WP:OR. Autarch (talk) 02:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Dot

What happened at the end? Did he kill Dot? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.199.23.128 (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2014 (UTC)