The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

Learning Objectives Fitzgerald: life and major works Historical background: the Roaring twenties* The Lost Generation writers Storyline and major characters (Nick, Gatsby, Daisy in Chapter 9) Themes/Motifs: American dream and its disillusionment; East vs. West; dealing with the past Symbol: green light

Historical Context: The Roaring Twenties What do you know about the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age? The Second Industrial Revolution Henry Ford and the Automobile The Airplane Prohibition and Alcohol The Birth of the Suburbs Modern U.S. Cities Radio and the Jazz Age Hollywood movie industry Lost Generation Literature Women’s Suffrage ….

Historical Context: The Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age: 1920–1929 The 1920s in America, known as the "Roaring Twenties", was a time of celebration after a devastating war. It was a period of time in America characterized by prosperity and optimism. Culturally and socially, the Roaring Twenties were a heady time of rapid change, artistic innovation, and high-society antics. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity and a break with traditions. (During the time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity. As such, the period is also often referred to as the Jazz Age. " Fitzgerald wrote, "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire." )

The Lost Generation “That is what you are. That’s what you all are…all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.” - Gertrude Stein The term originated with Gertrude Stein who, after being unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a "lost generation" — une génération perdue.[2] The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph. The novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation.[3] However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.[4] In his memoir A Moveable Feast, published after his death, he writes "I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage owner with one from Ecclesiastes." A few lines later, recalling the risks and losses of the war, he adds: "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought 'who is calling who a lost generation?'"[5] Pictured: Gertrude Stein with Ernest Hemingway’s son, Jack

The Lost Generation The phrase was coined by Gertrude to describe the generation of American writers active immediately after World War I .The generation is: Dissatisfied with American social values Disillusioned by World War I/Lost belief in the idea of human progress Pioneered new ways of writing, rebelling against the traditional Victorian literary style. Tell them to write this down in their notes. Explain what difficult words mean (hedonism, futility, etc.).

What makes a “Lost Generation” story? Sense of futility and despair hedonism Presence of War “Iceberg Theory” Economy of Language Symbolism – colors, nature, etc. Alcohol Jazz Rejection of Victorian era style …… You can reference back to Faulkner. You can allude to the idea that we’ll explore Hemingway’s style in more detail. You can reference back to Victorian era novels they have read. You can describe how some of these elements will be more present than others, but that the idea of Modernism – more spartan language, etc. – is really a dominant element.

Famous Writers of the Movement The Lost Generation mostly includes expatriate writers who left the United States for Europe after WWI: Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitzgerald T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Explain that Williams was influenced heavily by Pound in the States and Owen was basically the definitive poet of WWI, so even though they didn’t roll with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others, they made valuable contributions.

Group work Find parallels between the author and his characters Complete the characters map

Who is F. Scott Fitzgerald? Watch the video clip and consider? In what sense does Fitzgerald’s life connect to his character Jay Gatsby & Nick Caraway? Born in 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. attended Princeton University. joined the army in 1917. Met his wife Zelda. Published The Great Gatsby at 23 in 1925. Regarded as the speaker of the Jazz Age. Drinking and wife’s schizophrenia Died in 1940.

Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby Nick Carraway Jay Gatsby Thoughtful young man from Midwest Educated at an Ivy League school Moved to New York after the war like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath Sensitive young man who idolizes wealth Falls in love with a beautiful young woman while in army fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted

Major Works This side of Paradise (1920) Tales of the Jazz Age(1922) The Great Gatsby (1925) Tender is the Night (1933)

The Great Gatsby:Pre-reading Questions 1. Some people think that having money leads to happiness. Do you agree? Why or why not? What are the advantages or disadvantages of being wealthy? 2.Have you ever wanted to relive a moment from your past, to redo it? Describe the situation. How and why would you change the past?

The Great Gatsby: Representative Passage "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – to- morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning--So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"

Chapter 9: Study Questions Describe the appearance of Mr. Gatz. How would you describe the relationship between Gatsby and his father? What does Klipspringer’s decline to come to the funeral and request for his shoes underline about the way people treated Gatsby? Wolfsheim speaks very warmly of Gatsby but One word in his account betrays what he really felt about him. What is it? What moral judgement does Nick make upon Tom and Dasiy? Explain the irony behind the funeral of Gatsby. What is the significance of the Owl-eyed man appearing and Gatsby’s funeral? What do the details given suggest about the main points of Gatsby’s plan? Was there anything wrong with Gatsby’s plan?

Setting New York City The Valley of Ashes: Where the Wilsons’ gas station is West Egg- where Nick and Gatsby live East Egg- where Daisy lives

East Egg: "old money" ;established aristocracy(Tom and Daisy Buchanan); West Egg: "new money" ; self-made rich(Gatsby) Valley of Ashes: desolate, desperate New York City: chaos

CHARACTERIZATION “I called up her half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.” “Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.” “I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone.” "The picture was more real to him than the house itself”

Character: Jay Gatsby Why is the character called “The Great Gatsby”?

Motif: East vs. West Nick describes the novel as a book about Westerners, a "story of the West.” What does the East and the West stand for? The East is associated with: a hollow quest for money The West and the Midwest are associated with: traditional values (like what?)

Theme: American Dream “Gatsby represents both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted/disillusioned Dream.” What is the American dream in its original sense? How has it changed over the centuries? How do you understand the “disillusion” of the American dream? In what sense does Gatsby represent the original, uncorrupted American Dream? In what sense does Gatsby represent the corrupted American Dream?

Why does Gatsby’s dream end in failure? His methods are criminal. The impossible divide separating Gatsby and Daisy. (different background and social contexts.) His new identity is largely an illusion.

Theme: dealing with the past Why is "past" important in the novel? For America: For Gatsby: For Nick:

Analyze the concluding sentence “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” -- Nick The apt metaphor is the novel’s concluding line characterizes both Gatsby’s struggle and the American dream itself.

It focuses on humans’ struggle to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. The past is their source of our ideals about the future and cannot be escaped Humans are unable to move beyond the past

Symbol: The Green Light The green light is located at___________ In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to ___________________. For Gatsby, what does the green light represent? In a broader sense, the green light represent___________.