Amory Blaine Timeline and Summary
MoreAmory Blaine Timeline and Summary
- Amory Blaine is born in Minnesota and raised by a woman who thinks of him as a little travelling companion. She dotes on him constantly and raises him to think he's superior to everyone else.
- Amory learns in school that he'll have to conceal his feelings of superiority if he wants to have any friends. So he does.
- Eventually, Amory wants to go to school in Connecticut because he'd like to get away from his mom's influence. He ends up at St. Regis, where he continues the process of becoming his own person.
- After St. Regis, Amory heads off to Princeton for his university education. While there, he meets all kinds of interesting people and has lots of adventures. But he also begins to wonder what the point of it all is. He coasts through his classes and doesn't have any real sense of direction in his life.
- Toward the end of his university career, Amory gets called away to fight in World War I. He survives the war, but many of his buddies don't.
- Back in America, Amory keeps trying to figure out what to do with his life. He finds a sense of purpose when he becomes engaged to a girl named Rosalind Connage. But she dumps him because he's not successful enough.
- The breakup with Rosalind nearly kills Amory, as he quits his job and becomes an alcoholic for the next year or so. He takes some time to visit an uncle in Maryland and has a new romance with a girl named Eleanor. But he knows he'll never love anyone as much as he loved Rosalind.
- Amory eventually returns to live in New York after his relationship with Eleanor has ended. He learns that Rosalind is going to marry some high-roller and falls back into his old spiral of self-destruction.
- Amory ends the book by talking politics with a rich man in a fancy car. When Amory gets out of the car, he's no closer to finding a purpose in life than he was a few years ago. All he knows is himself, and we hope that this'll be a good enough starting point for him to start making progress.