the diamond as big as the ritz and other stories

At the same time, certain elements clearly prefigure Fitzgerald’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby (which we have analysed here), a novel which Fitzgerald began working on shortly after completing ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’. It is unusual in Fitzgerald’s canon in containing so many different borrowings from various literary genres and traditions.

Other key ingredients of the Gothic genre – the family harbouring a dark ancestral secret, the strange noises heard and shadows glimpsed at night, the mysterious disappearance of those who visit the castle – are also present.īecause of these disparate influences, it is difficult to categorise ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’. In other respects, ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ represents Fitzgerald’s take on the Gothic novel, and the story can be analysed as an updating of the Gothic tale, with the mysterious castle set amidst a forbidding landscape being transformed into the Washingtons’ chateau in the mountains.

Indeed, the story is often analysed as a modern fairy tale, with Kismine representing the princess in the palace whom the relatively obscure (and less wealthy) hero, John, falls in love with.Ĭertainly, the idea of a castle where people mysteriously disappear echoes a number of classic fairy tales, such as in the tale of Bluebeard’s disappearing wives it’s worth bearing in mind, too, that the Washingtons’ house on the mountain is described as a ‘chateau’, from the Old French meaning ‘castle’. But in fact, the genres which Fitzgerald plundered for ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ are even more numerous than this.

The diamond as big as the ritz and other stories