Everything you need to understand or teach The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The epigraph of the novel — "The victor belongs to the spoils," which is a paraphrase of Anthony Patch's advice to a friend — sets the tone and thematic thrust of the novel. While a number of themes have been identified in this long novel, there is general agreement that it is a condemnation of American society and, to a degree, life in general. The gloomy atmosphere of the...