The Rich Boy
A privileged young New Yorker drifts through love and money, hesitating until the women he might have married slip away, leaving him secure, charming, and profoundly alone.
Anson Hunter has everything: old money, easy charm, and the unshakable confidence of a man who has never wanted for anything. Yet his certainty becomes his trap, as he hesitates over the woman he loves until she marries another, then watches a second chance crumble too. Fitzgerald asks what wealth does to the heart of a man who assumes the world will always wait for him.
What happens
Narrated by a friend who insists that the very rich are fundamentally different from everyone else, the story follows Anson Hunter, eldest son of a wealthy New York family. Raised with a sense of superiority and security, Anson falls deeply in love with Paula Legendre, but his drinking, his pride, and his inability to commit keep him from marrying her, and she finally weds someone else. He later has an affair with the spirited Dolly Karger, whom he coldly abandons once he senses her manipulations. Anson devotes himself to family duty, even intervening to end his aunt's affair, while remaining the trusted center of his social world. As friends marry and settle, Anson grows lonely, clinging to his status and his memories. A chance reunion with the now-married Paula reveals what he lost; soon after, she dies in childbirth. Adrift and aging, Anson is sent abroad to recover, drawing vitality from the admiration of a young woman aboard ship, still needing others to confirm that he matters.
Timeline the story arc, beat by beat
- Premise The very rich
The narrator argues that the rich are a breed apart and introduces Anson Hunter as their representative.
- First love Paula Legendre
Anson falls in love with Paula, but his drinking and proud reluctance to commit erode her trust.
- Loss Paula marries another
After repeated hesitations and a humiliating drunken episode, Paula gives up and marries Lowell Thayer.
- Affair Dolly Karger
Anson pursues and then coldly discards Dolly when he detects her schemes, asserting his control.
- Duty Guardian of the family
Anson becomes the responsible center of his clan, even breaking up his aunt Edna's affair to protect appearances.
- Reunion Meeting Paula again
A chance encounter with the remarried, pregnant Paula exposes the depth of what Anson let slip away.
- Drift Alone and abroad
After Paula dies in childbirth, the lonely Anson is sent on a voyage, reviving only under a young woman's attention.
Characters and how they connect
Anson Hunter
Protagonist
A wealthy, charming New Yorker whose superiority and indecision cost him love and leave him isolated.
Paula Legendre
First love
A serious, devoted young woman whom Anson loves but cannot bring himself to marry in time.
Dolly Karger
Second romance
A lively, scheming socialite Anson pursues and then ruthlessly rejects.
The Narrator
Observer
A friend of Anson who frames the tale and argues that the very rich are essentially different.
Edna
Anson's aunt
A married relative whose affair Anson intervenes to end, asserting his role as family guardian.
Relationship map
- Ansonloves yet fails to marry herPaula
- Ansonpursues then coldly rejects herDolly
- The Narratorobserves and interprets his lifeAnson
- Ansonends her affair to guard the family nameEdna
- Paulaweds him after Anson hesitatesLowell Thayer
Themes what the story is really about
Wealth and difference
The story argues that great inherited wealth shapes character itself, breeding a superiority that isolates the rich from ordinary feeling.
Pride and indecision
Anson's certainty that the world will wait for him leads him to hesitate until every chance at love is gone.
Loneliness beneath privilege
For all his security and charm, Anson is profoundly alone, dependent on others' admiration to feel real.
Lost opportunity
The narrative is haunted by the love and life Anson might have had if he had been able to commit.
Symbols & motifs
Anson's superiority
His ingrained sense of being a class apart symbolizes the insulating, isolating power of inherited wealth.
The unmarried Anson
His bachelorhood among married friends embodies the emptiness his pride has produced.
Paula
She represents the genuine love and settled happiness Anson forfeits through hesitation.
The ocean voyage
The trip abroad stands for Anson's restless rootlessness and his need to keep finding new admirers.
Recurring motifs
Admiration and reassurance. Anson repeatedly draws life from being looked up to, needing others to confirm his importance.
Drinking. Alcohol recurs as both Anson's social glue and the agent of his most damaging failures.
Memory of Paula. Paula returns again and again in Anson's mind as the measure of what he has lost.
Conflicts
Person vs. Self
Anson's pride and indecision war against his genuine desire for love and connection.
Person vs. Society
The expectations and insularity of his wealthy class shape and constrain his choices.
Person vs. Time
Anson struggles against the passing of opportunities as friends marry and the women he loved move on or die.
Literary devices
- Frame narration
- An observing friend tells Anson's story, lending it the air of a studied character analysis.
- Thesis-driven opening
- The famous claim about the very rich sets a thematic argument the narrative then tests.
- Irony
- The man who seems to have everything ends with nothing that matters, secure yet empty.
- Characterization through contrast
- Anson is defined against the women he loses and the friends who find ordinary happiness.
- Symbolic structure
- The arc from confident youth to lonely drift embodies the corrosive effects of privilege.
Important quotes
““Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.””
““They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful.””
““There was a sort of superiority in his very fault, in his disinclination to commit himself.””
““He wanted to renew his life, to start over.””
Anson, left lonely after Paula's death in childbirth and the steady marrying-off of his friends, is sent abroad by colleagues worried about his health and drinking. On the voyage he revives almost instantly when a pretty young woman shows interest in him, and the narrator observes that Anson needs this admiration, this confirmation that he is still desirable and important, to feel alive. The ending crystallizes the story's verdict: Anson's wealth and charm have left him fundamentally dependent and hollow, forever seeking reassurance from new admirers because he cannot sustain real intimacy. He has not learned or changed; he simply finds another mirror. Fitzgerald closes not with tragedy or redemption but with a quiet, devastating portrait of a man condemned to repeat his pattern, secure in everything except the love he threw away.
Common misreadings
MythAnson is a villain who cruelly uses women.
ActuallyHe is colder and prouder than cruel; the story presents him as a product of privilege, more pitiable than wicked.
MythAnson ends up happy and settled.
ActuallyHe ends lonely and adrift, reviving only on the attention of a stranger, his deepest love long lost.
MythThe opening line is just narrator opinion with no bearing on the plot.
ActuallyThe claim that the rich are different is the story's central thesis, demonstrated through Anson's whole arc.
Test yourself
1. Who does Anson love but fail to marry?
Anson loves Paula Legendre but hesitates until she marries someone else.
2. What is the narrator's famous claim about the very rich?
The story opens with the assertion that the very rich are different from ordinary people.
3. How does Anson respond on the ocean voyage at the end?
Anson comes back to life when a young woman aboard ship admires him, showing his need for reassurance.
Anson is a rich young man in 1920s New York who has so much confidence that he assumes everything will always go his way. He loves a woman named Paula but keeps putting off marrying her until she gives up and marries someone else, and the same kind of pride wrecks his other chances too. By the end he is wealthy and charming but lonely, needing strangers to admire him just to feel okay. The story shows how growing up with too much can make it hard to truly love anyone.
Ask the story
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Compare & connect the story universe
A Rose for Emily
Both portray a proud figure shaped by class and the past who clings to a lost love and ends in isolation.
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Each uses an observing narrator to study an emotionally withdrawn man he cannot fully reach or understand.
The Story of an Hour
Both examine how marriage, freedom, and social expectation shape a character's hidden inner life.
The Metamorphosis
Both trace a privileged or central figure who ends profoundly alone, estranged from genuine connection.
Key questions students ask
- What is The Rich Boy by Fitzgerald about?
- What does 'the very rich are different from you and me' mean?
- Why doesn't Anson marry Paula?
- How does wealth affect Anson Hunter's character?
- What is the meaning of the ending of The Rich Boy?
- What are the main themes of The Rich Boy?
This study record draws on the public-domain text of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Rich Boy, first published in Red Book Magazine in 1926 and collected in All the Sad Young Men.