F. Scott Fitzgerald, Taps at Reveille

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication Mar 1935

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

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Taps at Reveille

(1935) was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth collection of short stories and the last and largest to appear in his lifetime. Its title encapsulates the paradoxical mood that runs through the eighteen tales in the book: in the USA, “taps” is a bugle call to put out lights in army quarters, and can also mean a similar call at a military funeral; “reveille” is a military wake-up call, especially one sounded on a bugle or drum. The phrase is thus an oxymoron which combines two contradictory ideas: on the one hand, nightfall, sleep and death; on the other, dawn, awakening and life. Starting with a story about an ardent fourteen-year-old youth and ending with one about a traumatized man of thirty-five,

Taps

could be seen as a modern prose version of the

Songs of Innocence

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4800 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Taps at Reveille". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 August 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1702, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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