The Rich Boy

by Scott F. Fitzgerald

"The Rich Boy" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was included in his
1926 collection All the Sad Young Men. "The Rich Boy" originally appeared in two parts, in the
January and February 1926 issues of Redbook.
Fitzgerald wrote "The Rich Boy" in 1924, in Capri, while awaiting publication of The Great
Gatsby. He revised it in his apartment at 14 Rue de Tilsitt in Paris the following spring, at what he
described as a period of "1000 parties and no work." By May 28, 1925, he wrote his literary agent,
Harold Ober, that the story was "at the typist." Five weeks later, he sent his editor Max Perkins a
proposed list of stories for his third collection, describing "The Rich Boy": "Just finished—serious
story and very good."

The Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli (he was an American professor of English at the
University of South Carolina. He was the preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also wrote
about writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and John O'Hara, and was editor of the
Dictionary of Literary Biography) describes the story as "an extension of The Great Gatsby,
enlarging the examination of the effects of wealth on character." The story of Anson Hunter and
his love for the "dark, serious beauty" Paula Legendre, Fitzgerald modeled the Rich Boy of his
title on Princeton classmate Ludlow Fowler, who'd stood as best man at Fitzgerald's wedding.
Fitzgerald sent Fowler the story before publication, explaining, "I have written a 15,000 word story
about you called 'The Rich Boy'—it is so disguised that no one except you and me and maybe two
of the girls concerned would recognize, unless you give it away, but it is in large measure the story
of your life, toned down here and there and simplified. Also many gaps had to come out of my
imagination. It is frank, unsparing but sympathetic and I think you will like it—it is one of the best
things I have ever done." Fowler requested excisions that Fitzgerald made before the story was
collected in All the Sad Young Men the following year.
Fitzgerald's friend the writer Ring Lardner—dedicee of All the Sad Young Men—was such an
admirer he told Fitzgerald he wished he could have expanded the story to novel length. Fitzgerald
wrote Max Perkins, this "would have been absolutely impossible".
In The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bruccoli calls the story "Fitzgerald's most important
novelette" and "one of Fitzgerald's major stories." Bruccoli continues:
‘The Rich Boy’ is a key document for understanding Fitzgerald's much-discussed and much-
misunderstood attitudes toward the rich. He was not an envious admirer of the rich, who believed
they possessed a special quality. In 1938 he observed: 'That was always my experience—a poor
boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton...I
have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.'
He knew the lives of the rich had great possibilities, but he recognized that they mostly failed to
use those possibilities fully. He also perceived that money corrupts the will to excellence.
Believing that work is the only dignity, he condemned the self-indulgent rich for wasting their
freedom."
Bruccoli also notes the story contains Fitzgerald's "most promiscuously misquoted sentence: 'They
are different from you and me." Fitzgerald's actual passage runs,
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy
early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we
are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think,
deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations
and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they
still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
The creation of social discourse during the first half of the twentieth century pointed out the
division of classes within society. The rich were given a position of power, not just because of
their money, but also because of the emphasis that society placed on money in a new industrialized
world. In short, society made the rich and gave them their power within the structure of social
discourse.

An Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Rich Boy”

Fitzgerald’s short story “The Rich Boy” (like his novel The Great Gatsby) utilizes an outside
narrator to tell the story of a wealthy protagonist in a sympathetic but still somewhat distanced
way. Here the protagonist is Anson Hunter, a well-to-do young New Yorker, who would seem to
have the whole world ahead of him and the streets paved in gold.

By his early twenties, he has found his ideal woman as well: the exquisite—and very rich— Paula
Legendre. On the surface, Paula would not seem to be the type of girl that would exert such a pull
on Anson. Anson seems to have a lot of oats to sow, and Fitzgerald describes Paula as being
“conservative and rather proper.” But he is, nonetheless, obsessed by her, not because she
represents the money he wants—after all, he already has enough of his own—but because she
represents the social system that justifies his existence. In his world, responsible older men (like
his uncle Robert) hold the reins of government and business; chaste and proper women (like Paula
and her mother) maintain the rules of propriety and etiquette; and, until they get old enough to
assume the mantle of responsible older manhood, playboys like Anson play. That is all Anson
thinks he is doing right now. Just as he sees in himself the undeveloped kernel of a future leader,
he sees in Paula the kernel of a future society matron. He thinks they would make a good pair.

What he doesn’t realize, however, is that his virtually unlimited wealth has within it the power to
corrupt him, and it’s already doing a good job. His first problem is that he sees himself as superior.
He carries himself that way; Fitzgerald says that “…He had a confident charm and a certain
brusque style, and the upper-class men who passed him on the street knew without being told that
he was a rich boy and had gone to one of the best schools…. Anson accepted without reservation
the world of high finance and high extravagance, of divorce and dissipation, of snobbery and of
privilege.”

Anson doesn’t see any reason why, being young and rich, he has to play by anyone else’s rules. If
he wants to drink himself under the table, why shouldn’t he have the right to do that? And
regardless of where or with whom he happens to be when he acts drunkenly, or obscenely, or
boorishly, why should he apologize for his behavior? He’s rich, and the rich make the rules, don’t
they? People should just accept his natural superiority, regardless of how he behaves.

It would seem very difficult to sympathize with a character who holds these beliefs and acts upon
them so wholeheartedly; but we do, because we sense that he is headed for a fall. His first mistake
lies in his inability to commit himself to Paula. Fate gave Anson every opportunity to take Paula
as his own. In doing so, he would be asserting his adulthood; he would be taking his place alongside
the other well-to-do movers and shakers of New York. But, true to his status as a tragic hero, he
constantly tries to defy fate. The role ordained for him is to be a wealthy, responsible scion of
business, a lord of some suburban manor, the benefactor of deserving charities; for far too long,
he refuses. Anson doesn’t want to grow up. He gets a job, “entering a brokerage house, joining
half a dozen clubs, [and] dancing late.” Even as he moves up the corporate ladder, there is still that
part of him that is unable to give up the schoolboy carousing, the indifference toward the
responsibilities that fate has laid upon his shoulders as the wages of being rich.

His second mistake is in self-righteously condemning his aunt Edna for having an affair. Anson,
of all people, ought to be the last person to condemn anyone for moral lapses, and certainly not
lapses of the heart; Anson’s heart is far more lapsed than Edna and Cary’s. He himself had just
broken up with Dolly Karger, whom he dated all the while knowing she meant nothing to him, and
her careless behavior merely mirrored his own. He has no right to threaten to expose Edna and
Cary, and he is thus directly responsible for Cary’s suicide. But “Anson never blamed himself for
his part in the affair [because he believed] the situation which brought it about had not been of his
making.” But there, of course, he is wrong.

His third mistake lies in the belief that when he is ready, Paula will be waiting. He is disturbed
when he hears she has married someone else, but, as we have pointed out, Anson lives in a world
characterized by “divorce and dissipation,” and he seems to feel Paula will come around on his
timetable. What this basically amounts to is a belief that fate is on his side; it must be, because he
was born rich. But the overriding lesson of Anson’s life is that of those to whom much is given,
much is asked. Anson does not seem to realize that payback is a lifelong process.

Paula gives Anson every opportunity to claim the birthright that should have been his. She even
gives him a second chance when she divorces the man she married on the rebound; Anson— who
certainly should have been mature enough to “grow up” by then—does nothing, and Paula goes
on to marry someone else. His fate is sealed when she reports to him that she is happy with her
new life, and finally, when he learns she has died. She lived a whole lifetime in the period that
Anson spent trying to grow from a rich boy to a man.

In this tragic but accurate depiction of the flip side of the American Dream, “The Rich Boy” is one
of Fitzgerald’s most poignant stories.

A Failure to Love: A Note on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Rich Boy"

HELGE NORMANN NILSEN, University ofTrondheim
It has been argued that "In The Great Gatsby, as in 'The Rich Boy' written immediately after,
Fitzgerald clung stubbornly to his point of view, the mature view of a disinterested observer gifted
with an acute sense of the 'fundamental decencies'."' But on this point there are important
differences between the novel and the short story. The unnamed narrator in "The Rich Boy" (1926)
is far less involved with Anson Hunter than Nick Carraway is with Gatsby, and also less critical
and more indulgent towards the hero. The distance between author and narrator is greater in the
story than in the novel, so that there is more room for the author's point of view than in the novel,
where Nick's perspective is dominant.
In "The Rich Boy" Fitzgerald gives us an unsparing portrait of the essential shallowness of a certain
type of American upper-class man, the millionaire Anson Hunter. He is a second generation rich
boy who lacks some of the more important virtues of his father, the Golden Age entrepreneur who
combined his accumulation of wealth with a puritan morality which, however narrowminded, did
involve a sense of responsibility to something greater than the individual self.
The story is about the failure of love on Anson's part, his inability to respond to the genuine
devotion that his fiancée Paula Legendre gives him. His selfish and undeveloped personality is to
blame, and Fitzgerald persistently underlines Anson's easy self-confidence and suggests, with
subtle irony, that it is out of proportion to any actual quality or accomplishment in the man. Though
charming and affable, he is self-indulgent, drinks too much, and seems to have no intellectual or
artistic interests. He becomes a successful businessman, but his personality develops and matures
little, if at all. This is the basic criticism of his hero that the author conveys, indirectly, by having
his anonymous narrator observe Anson's life and comment on it in an affectionate as well as
detached manner. The ironic and even judgmental view of Anson is thus expressed by the implicit
author rather than the narrator.
At the same time, Anson Hunter is also seen as a victim of his own circumstances, even though he
was born into a rich family. To be rich means to run the risk of being damaged, though in a different
and less drastic way than is the case among the poor. Even as a child Anson is made to feel the
difference between himself and the other children in the village where the family has a summer
house: "Anson's first sense of his superiority came to him when he realized the halfgrudging
American deference that was paid to him in the Connecticut village. The parents of the boys he
played with always inquired after his father and mother, and were vaguely excited when their own
children were asked to the Hunter's house. He accepted this as the natural state of things, and a
sort of impatience with all groups of which he was not the centre—in money, in position, in
authority— remained with him for the rest of his life. He disdained to struggle with other boys for
precedence—he expected it to be given him freely, and when it wasn't he withdrew into his
family." The result of this sense of superiority is to impair Anson's growth as a complete human
being. To speak of victimization may seem out of place with regard to Anson Hunter, rich and
popular as he is, but his stunted development is to be deplored because he is endowed with the
potential for something greater and better than what he finally settles for. His siblings are clearly
more ordinary than himself, and he is equipped with leadership qualities and perhaps also an ability
to love a woman which never get much chance to flourish.
The passage about the rich who are "different from you and me" (p. 139) provides certain clues
concerning the reasons for Anson's failure to develop his relationship to Paula: "They possess and
enjoy, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we
are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand" (p. 139).
Taught to value wealth and family dynasties above everything else, the rich have accustomed
themselves to arranged marriages and have become cynical and hard about human affection and
love, regarding them as commodities of secondary importance. One of the ironic effects of the
story is to show the consequence of this attitude as we watch the decline of Anson into an isolated
and even pathetic figure. But others are ready to support Anson in his false self-image because
they worship his background, the enchanted realm of the rich. In America everyone cooperates in
upholding this myth and thus shielding people like Anson from the kind of criticism which he
needs.
"The Rich Boy" is primarily about the failure of personal relations, and the essence of this failure
is the abortive romance between Paula and Anson. The sensitive description of their relationship
shows the superior awareness of the woman in a manner which is in close accordance with some
current feminist thought and its claim that women have an intuitive understanding of the meaning
of love which many men lack. Paula is rich, like Anson, yet somehow she has preserved a capacity
for love which he never really understands or is capable of reacting to on an equal basis. He realizes
that "on his side much was insincere" (p. 143) in their relationship, and he is even said to despise
the "emotional simplicity" (p. 143) of her feelings for him. At the same time, and in spite of
himself, he is drawn to her sincerity and the "enormous seriousness" (p. 143) of what is called their
"dialogue" (p. 143).
With a part of himself, Anson is aware of what Paula has to offer him and what is at stake, but he
values neither her nor his own feelings highly enough to grant love the central place it might have
occupied in their lives. In the course of their courtship, he squanders his own emotional potential
and rejects, without understanding it, Paula's love for him. The relation to her is the only thing that
could have "saved" Anson from his superficiality and made it possible to develop other and more
deeply human qualities in him, but the arrogance behind his relaxed self-confidence precludes any
such change. Failing to see any need for adjustment in himself, he makes real interaction and
communication with Paula impossible, and she is not the sort of person who is willing to submit
her will and wishes totally to those of a future husband. Thus, after their first argument, when
Anson has been drunk at a dinner party, he apologizes to Paula and her mother but shows no real
remorse and makes no promises. Consequently, as it is stated, "the psychological moment had
passed forever" (p. 148). In other words, the chances of establishing a genuine dialogue, a process
of give and take, are lost.
Anson and Paula then go their separate ways, he to become an established businessman and
popular bachelor, she to get married and remarried and have three children. They meet again after
a lapse of several years, and this encounter demonstrates that Anson still doesn’t understand what
has happened to either of them. Paula makes it clear that her love for him had stayed with her for
a long time in spite of her other men. She tells Anson, woundingly but with understandable
bitterness, that she now has found love for the first time, with her second husband, but then she
dies in the attempt to bring this man's child into the world. Thus her short life comes to a tragic
end at least partly due to Anson Hunter's failure to live up to her sincere expectations.
Their final dialogue is revealing:
"I was infatuated with you, Anson—you could make me do anything you liked. But we wouldn't
have been happy. I'm not smart enough for you. I don't like things to be complicated like you do."
She paused. "You'll never settle down," she said.
The phrase struck at him from behind—it was an accusation that of all accusations he had never
deserved.
"I could settle down if women were different," he said, "If I didn't understand so much about them,
if women didn't spoil you for other women, if they had only a little pride. If I could go to sleep for
a while and wake up into a home that was really mine—why, that's what I'm made for, Paula, that's
what women have seen in me and liked in me. It's only that I can't get through the preliminaries
any more." (p. 179)
Because of Anson's immaturity, their love could not develop beyond the stage of infatuation,
although Paula had been aware of the power of her emotions and had been willing to do anything
for him. Anson likes the idea of marriage and claims that he is made for the role of husband and
head of the home, but he is not ready to make the emotional effort that is required, or, as he puts
it, get on with the preliminaries. Without seeming to be aware of it, he reveals his spiritual laziness
in his wish that he might go to sleep and wake up in a home of his own without having to work for
it in any sense. This laziness is Anson Hunter's great misfortune, and though he is never made to
understand himself clearly, his underlying feelings of despair and loss emerge on two occasions.
When Paula becomes engaged to her first husband, he breaks down and cries, even in public,
several times, and after their last meeting he suffers from "depression" (p. 180) and "intense
nervousness" (p. 180) and goes to Europe on a three months' vacation.
When Paula dies, his depression seems to lift as he sets out on his voyage, suggesting that her
ceasing to function as a reminder to him of his weakness makes him capable of forgetting it and
resuming his old role as a charming but superficial ladies' man. On the ship he returns to this role
and becomes involved with a girl wearing a red tam-o-shanter. He likes and needs women, but
only to "spend their brightest, freshest, rarest hours to nurse and protect that superiority he
cherished in his heart" (p. 182). Anson remains a child, emotionally speaking, attractive but
unreliable, and ultimately egocentric in a manner which probably will spoil his chances of
achieving the happy marriage he seems to want. The suggestion is that he will always need new,
admiring women to affirm the sense of superiority that has become the essence of his identity.
Through the figure of Anson Hunter, Fitzgerald has delivered a damaging blow against the
American rich and their frequently inflated image of themselves as the leaders of their nation.

New York Times

In 1926 Fitzgerald published one of his finest stories, ''The Rich Boy,'' whose narrator
begins it with the words ''Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from
you and me.''

Ten years later, at lunch with his and Fitzgerald's editor, Max Perkins, and the critic
Mary Colum, Hemingway said, ''I am getting to know the rich.'' To this Colum replied,
''The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more
money.'' (A. Scott Berg reports this in ''Max Perkins, Editor of Genius.'') Hemingway,
who knew a good put-down when he heard one and also the fictional uses to which it
could be put, promptly recycled Colum's remark in one of his best stories, with a
revealing alteration: he replaced himself with Fitzgerald as the one put down. The
central character in ''The Snows of Kilimanjaro'' remembers ''poor Scott Fitzgerald and
his romantic awe of [ the rich ] and how he had started a story once that began, 'The
very rich are different from you and me.' And how someone had said to Scott, yes, they
have more money.''

Fitzgerald was naturally offended by this patronizing use of his name by a person he
had thought of as his friend, and he wrote Hemingway, asking him to ''lay off me in
print,'' adding that ''Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest
charm or distinction.''
 He wrote Perkins as well, asking that his name be deleted when the story was reprinted,
and Perkins saw to it that it was.

But Fitzgerald also made a very unfortunately worded entry in his notebook: ''They
have more money. (Ernest's wisecrack.)'' When Fitzgerald's friend Edmund Wilson
came to put together ''The Crack-Up,'' the volume of Fitzgerald miscellany that
appeared in 1945, five years after Fitzgerald's death, he included this entry, explaining
in a footnote that ''Fitzgerald had said, 'The rich are different from us.' Hemingway had
replied, 'Yes, they have more money.' '' The legend is not complete: Fitzgerald has
been put down by Hemingway in an exchange that actually occurred.

Lionel Trilling repeated the ''famous exchange'' which ''everyone knows'' in his review
of ''The Crack-Up,'' and when Harry Levin also included it in ''Observations on the
Style of Ernest Hemingway'' it became virtually canonical.

It is a history that says much about these two writers, their saddening relationship to
each other, and the ways they transmuted their lives into fiction. It also shows how
even the best critics may be led to confuse literature with biography, fiction with fact,
art with life, for the sake of a good story, especially when the story corroborates the
received view of the writers who figure in it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/13/books/l-the-rich-are-different-907188.html