Works continued

Context: Zelda was in a mental hospital at the time and she wrote every single day for about two hours as part of her recovery when she worked on Save Me the Waltz. She was in a very scattered state of mind and the novel had to be revised due to Scott’s anger about the novel being too intrusive into their lives and also very similar to his own novels. At the time, America was going through a Great Depression and all of Scott’s money was being poured into Zelda’s treatment

Themes: This novel is a semi auto-biography that really captures the life of Zelda and Scott. It is very closely related to the fantasies of the upper class and the decline of the American Dream and the overall sadness that is covered by the 1920s and their romanticism.

Reflection of Time: This novel by Zelda truly shows the fact that during the first years of the Great Depression many did not want to accept that the Roaring Twenties were gone. Many wanted to have parties and pretend everything was fine and money was not lost, but truly everyone was miserable and frantic and did not know what to do. This truly reflects the 1930’s in a very personal and independent way.

Perception in Another Time Period: While it was a very confusing and jumpy novel, I believe it would be more appreciated in the modern day and age because part of the reason for the criticism for Zelda’s work was based on the fact that she was a woman and it was looked down for women to express themselves in that way. In the Realism time period it would’ve been held up due to the fact that it does reveal everyone’s sadness and how they hide it within the novel. However in earlier time periods, it probably would’ve been looked at the same way, mostly because Zelda was a woman and it was looked down upon to express and think deeply.

Compare Style to Other Artists: She wrote very similarly to Fitzgerald, mostly because they both influenced each other in their writing. She wrote based on her life and so did he. They both use colors to display significance in the story and Scott criticized this novel primarily because he believed it was filled with plagiarism and was too similar to him. On the other hand, she was very dissimilar to Ernest Hemingway because while Hemingway was very into simple sentences and describing ideas, Zelda’s writing was filled with conversation and actions and complex sentences.