The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald first published in 1921 and collected in the story collection Tales of the Jazz Age, published in 1922.

In this short story about greed and the American dream, we learn the story of young John Unger. He is a young man from Hades, Mississippi, who decides to attend Boston Preparatory School and befriends another young man named Percy Washington.

Percy invites John to spend the summer at his family's home in Montana, and John accepts. The drive to the house itself surprises John, as it is quite a distance and in an uninhabited area.

But what John doesn't expect is to find that the family's wealth is incalculable and that it's all due to a big secret: they have a huge diamond hidden on their property, as big as the Ritz Hotel...

"John T. Unger came from a family that had been well known in Hades—a small town on the Mississippi River—for several generations. John's father had held the amateur golf championship through many a heated contest; Mrs. Unger was known "from hot-box to hot-bed," as the local phrase went, for her political addresses; and young John T. Unger, who had just turned sixteen, had danced all the latest dances from New York before he put on long trousers."