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'.