The 1920's bore witness to the mingling of Jews and Palestinians after World War I. It watched as Italy adopted fascism, and it gazed at the beginnings of the second worldwide conflict. In addition, the 1920's observed Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, as he used his past experiences and hardships to mold his latest character, Jay Gatsby. With the resemblances between the two so abundant, one would guess, Fitzgerald would have easily identified with Gatsby on many accounts.

The similarities the two men shared were numerous, and ranged from the obvious to the profound. One of the most basic instances, for example, is that both men had the experience of growing up in a small town within Minnesota (Bruccoli 1, Fitzgerald 175). In addition, the pair gained the mutual experience of an elite school without being accepted in a conventional fashion. "[Fitzgerald] appeared before the Admissions Committee [of Princeton] and convinced...