ABSTRACT
In his autobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald described the progress of his protagonist’s youth as “the education of a personage.” He credited “Monsignor Darcy,” the fictional realization of one of the primary influences on Fitzgerald’s late adolescence, with coining the term “personage” in the context of a discussion about Amory’s listlessness in the wake of his failure to achieve the desired college success. Fitzgerald’s immersion in Catholicism was one of the most important facts of his life. To understand Fitzgerald’s Catholic sensibility in interaction with the American Way, it is important to look carefully at the process of his education, in the sense he gave to the word. Fitzgerald was impressed by the rituals of Catholicism and by certain saints—like Ignatius—and other Catholic personages who were in his pantheon of heroes. Fitzgerald was keenly aware of his misdeeds and their relation to his religion.
