The Four Fists

Name: The Four Fists
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Samuel Meredith, a man past fifty, has spent his life being struck in the face at four decisive moments, each blow reshaping his character. As a young man over fifty recalling his history, he tells reporters chasing a "success" story that the truth is not one story but four, and that the public would not want to read about a man walloped into prominence. The first blow lands at Phillips Andover Academy when Samuel is fourteen. Raised on caviar and pampering by a nervous mother, he arrives at school stuck-up and imperious, alienating his small roommate, Gilly Hood, with French phrases and demands about open windows and who should sit on whose bed. When Samuel objects to Gilly's friends sitting on his bed, Gilly hauls off and hits him in the nose in front of the assembled boys. Samuel flees rather than fight back, and endures a miserable month of ostracism and mockery. Sent home, he sees a nerve specialist. Returning the next autumn having learned to keep his mouth shut, he is soon forgotten as a target and, over his remaining years there, becomes one of the best-liked boys in his class — with Gilly Hood becoming his close friend. At university Samuel becomes a leader of fashionable college society — driving tandems and coaches, valuing "good form," playing football, rowing, and despising anyone who was a sportsman without being a gentleman or vice versa. The second blow comes on a New York horse-car in his junior year. When a tired, garlic-smelling laborer fails to give up his seat to a standing lady, Samuel sneers at him for it after they disembark; the laborer, explaining he has been working all day, knocks Samuel into the gutter. Recognizing the same feeling as with Gilly, Samuel realizes he was wrong again and stops his friends from retaliating. The episode gradually dissolves his class's need to impose its code on others, and within a year his classmates stop calling him a snob. After graduating into a family fortune diminished by a decline in the sugar market, Samuel works as a runner for a bank and pursues several women, including a married woman named Marjorie whom he meets on a ferry after helping her find a dropped package. Their friendship deepens through lunches at Taine's and walks to her house in Jersey City, especially as her marriage strains under quarrels with her husband, a work-keeper. Samuel becomes convinced he loves her; one evening he goes inside her house and kisses her. The next day, as they embrace again at her home, her husband arrives. Samuel confronts him self-righteously about "the right to happiness," and the husband orders Marjorie upstairs. Outside, the husband declares "That's my wife" and strikes Samuel — the third blow. Samuel, rising to fight back, suddenly recognizes himself as the intruding cad rather than the wronged party, and leaves without swinging back. This blow ends his selfish pursuit of women; afterward he avoids such entanglements until he meets his future wife, seeking only the kind of woman worth protecting, as Marjorie's husband had protected her. In his thirties, Samuel becomes a trusted associate of the powerful financier Peter Carhart, a friend of Samuel's late father who had watched him for six years before hiring him. To test whether Samuel has grown "stale" after a decade of inside office work, Carhart sends him on an outside assignment: traveling to San Antonio to meet Hamil, who is engineering the forced buyout of seventeen adjoining New Mexico ranches for an oil deal, and then to a village near Pueblo to personally manage the squeeze. The ranchers have no legal way to resist and most are resigned, but one, an old rancher named McIntyre, embodies the strongest opposition. On the day set for signatures, McIntyre confronts Samuel in his makeshift office, denouncing Carhart as a "money-swine" and describing the life he built on his land — the house he built at seventeen, his marriage there, and the death of his son there. When Samuel answers with cold talk of business and progress, McIntyre calls him a "long-winded dude" and knocks him down — the fourth blow. Struck by the same clarifying force he felt after the previous blows, Samuel announces to the assembled ranchers that McIntyre has convinced him the Carhart interests are wrong, and that they may keep their ranches. He sends telegrams calling off the deal to both Hamil and Carhart, expecting the end of his career. Hamil furiously protests and is later summoned to New York, where he breaks with the Carhart interests entirely. Instead of ruining Samuel, the episode leads to his becoming, in effect, Carhart's partner within months. The narrator closes by noting that Samuel still carries a jaw lump from one of the blows — he isn't sure which — and that he strokes his chin before making decisions, not from nervousness but to recall the "gorgeous clarity, the lightning sanity" that each of the four fists gave him.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald · First published 1920 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Social Commentary · 4 chapters · 7,150 words

First lines

At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all his hitable qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a girl's lips.

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The Four Fists is listed on Textopian as a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, dated 1920 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Date: 1920 CE
Language: English
Genres: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Social Commentary, Drama, Historical Fiction
Length: 7,150 words
Structure: 4 chapters, 158 paragraphs
Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)

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Discussion starters

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Genres

Literary Fiction — The book explores complex characters and themes of social class, identity, and personal growth, typical of literary fiction.
Coming-of-Age — The protagonist, Samuel Meredith, undergoes significant personal development and self-discovery throughout the narrative.
Social Commentary — The story critiques social norms and class distinctions, reflecting on the societal expectations of the time.
Drama — The narrative contains intense emotional conflicts and interpersonal relationships that drive the plot.