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ArchivesRe: Demaine and Ardita
in reply to a message by Bree
Ardita Farnam is the main character in the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Offshore Pirate. This is the first story that develops Fitzgerald's recurring plot idea of a heroine won by her lover's performance of an extraordinary deed.
Ardita is a rich spoiled young lady who is fiercly independent. She has contempt for others and the courage to show it due to her great beauty and privelaged upbringing. Despite of or because of her conceited attitude, all the men she meets fall in love with her. She is more than willing to use these men for her own folly.
She is willingly kidnapped on her uncle's yacht by a dashing young band leader/thief and his band of black musicians/accomplices on the run after a recent heist. They hide out in a secret hidden lagoon of a small island in the Gulf Stream. There Ardita falls in love with the pirate, or at least the excitement and adventure that he creates for her. The pirate and maybe even the reader may fall in love with Ardita for her precocious spirit and courage brilliantly developed by Fitzgerald during a moonlight cliff diving scene.
Fitzgerald writes "But this is not a story of two on an island, nor concerned primarily with love bred of isolation. It is merely the presentation of two personalities, and its idyllic setting among the palms of the Gulf Stream is quite incidental. Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attempt to control one's destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfotunate few. To me the interesting thing about Ardita is the courage that will tarnish with her beauty and youth."
Soon after professing their love for each other, they are captured by the authorities. You will have to hunt for and read this great short story to find out what happens next.
Anyway, like someone else said, Ardita seems to be related to the words "ardent" and "ardor." Like all of Fitzgerald's characters, the name Ardita for this character was selected intentionally. If there was ever a character that best describes the name Ardita, it is Ardita Farnam in The Offshore pirate.
Ardita is a rich spoiled young lady who is fiercly independent. She has contempt for others and the courage to show it due to her great beauty and privelaged upbringing. Despite of or because of her conceited attitude, all the men she meets fall in love with her. She is more than willing to use these men for her own folly.
She is willingly kidnapped on her uncle's yacht by a dashing young band leader/thief and his band of black musicians/accomplices on the run after a recent heist. They hide out in a secret hidden lagoon of a small island in the Gulf Stream. There Ardita falls in love with the pirate, or at least the excitement and adventure that he creates for her. The pirate and maybe even the reader may fall in love with Ardita for her precocious spirit and courage brilliantly developed by Fitzgerald during a moonlight cliff diving scene.
Fitzgerald writes "But this is not a story of two on an island, nor concerned primarily with love bred of isolation. It is merely the presentation of two personalities, and its idyllic setting among the palms of the Gulf Stream is quite incidental. Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attempt to control one's destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfotunate few. To me the interesting thing about Ardita is the courage that will tarnish with her beauty and youth."
Soon after professing their love for each other, they are captured by the authorities. You will have to hunt for and read this great short story to find out what happens next.
Anyway, like someone else said, Ardita seems to be related to the words "ardent" and "ardor." Like all of Fitzgerald's characters, the name Ardita for this character was selected intentionally. If there was ever a character that best describes the name Ardita, it is Ardita Farnam in The Offshore pirate.
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