"The Ice Palace"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)

Pages 48-69

This was the second time I read this particular short story--in fact, The Ice Palace was my first (and therefore my favorite) by F. Scott. It was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in May of 1920 and was included in a collection.

I like how it poetically it begins on a September day:

"The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light."

Can't you just TASTE that?

We are introduced to Sally Carrol of Tarleton, Georgia, (apparently a town F. Scott writes a lot about--it makes me think of the identical twins buzzing around Scarlet O'Hara at the barbecue). She is lovely and nineteen and has all the boys within her grasp, especially Clark Darrow.

But Sally Carrol has an imagination and thirst for life elsewhere, as we learn she is engaged to a Yankee she met in Asheville over the summer. Fie!

In the second section we are introduced to Harry (the Yankee) and he seems respectable enough. We go to one of Sally Carrol's favorite places, a cemetery and visit "Margery Lee 1844-1873"...a woman never known but often imagined as the quintessential Southern Belle.

--"...and then she kissed him until the sky seemed to fade out and all her smiles and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds." What a kiss!

We travel along by train to the great white North, covered in snow and freezing cold. So are the people, as you can imagine--especially the ladies, they are "vaguely Scandinavian."

Sally Carrol wants to play in the snow, build snowmen, and go sledding. They finally indulge her but she realizes all of these things are typical of children, not adults. Ho-Hum.

There is a party and she only has one interesting conversation with a professor (of course!)--and we realize that Sally Carrol may be rethinking her choice:

"You see I always think of people as feline or canine, irrespective of sex."

"Which are you?"

"I'm feline. So are you. So are most Southern men an' most of these girls here."

"What's Harry?"

"Harry's canine distinctly. All the men I've met to-night seem to be canine."

Ouch!

Fast forward to the breathtaking palace built of ice-- "three stories in the air, with battlements and embrasures and narrow icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights inside..."

Now here we get to the "good stuff" because Sally Carrol is "dazzled by the magic of the great crystal walls" and starts repeating lines from Kubla Khan (smart girl!) to herself and my poetry mind starts to drool:

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

F. Scott is a smart one, because if you squint your mind's eye just right you can see the relationship between the poem and his short story. It's so rich!

I can't give away the ending of the story--but I could probably write a scholarly paper about it. What really happens to Sally Carrol? Really? Think about it, look at the subtle hints and get back to me on this...

~~J

p.s. alcohol mentioned? "hard yella licker"....but there is a LOT of coffee-drinking!