The Beautiful and Damned

'The victor belongs to the spoils.' Fitzgerald's ironic epigraph to The Beautiful and Damned exemplifies his attitude toward the young rootless post-World War One generation who believed life to be meaningless and who pursued wealth despite its corrosive effect. Gloria and Anthony Patch party until money runs out; then their goal becomes Adam Patch's fortune. Gloria's beauty fades and Anthony's drinking takes its horrible toll. Fitzgerald here once again displays a wariness of the upper classes, 'an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class - not the conviction of a revolutionist but the smouldering hatred of a peasant'.