Cultural Context of The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties While the sense of loss was readily apparent among expatriate American artists who remained in Europe after WWI, back home the disillusionment took a less obvious forms. World War I ended in 1918. Disillusioned because of the war, the generation that fought and survived has come to be called the “lost generation.” America seemed to throw itself headlong into a decade of madcap behavior and materialism—a decade that has come to be called the Roaring Twenties.

The Jazz Age The era is also known as the Jazz Age, when the music called jazz, promoted by such recent inventions as the phonograph and the radio, swept up from New Orleans to capture the national imagination. Improvised and wild, jazz broke the rules of music, just as the Jazz Age thumbed its nose at the rules of the past.

Jazz The birth of Jazz in the multicultural society of America has led intellectuals from around the world to hail Jazz as "one of America's original art forms". Jazz makes use of improvisation, European classical harmony, African rhythm, the brass band tradition, American popular music and the Blues, and elements like “swing.” Europe and Africa meet in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th century—first originated in African-American communities.

The New Woman Among the rules broken were the age-old conventions guiding the behavior of women. The new woman demanded the right to vote and to work outside the home. Symbolically, she cut her hair into a boyish “bob” and bared her calves in the short skirts of the fashionable ’20s“flapper” style. Women get right to vote with passing of 19th Amendment in 1920

Prohibition Another rule often broken was the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, or Prohibition, which banned the public sale of alcoholic beverages from 1919 until its repeal in 1933. Speakeasies, nightclubs, and taverns that sold liquor were often raided, and gangsters like made illegal fortunes as bootleggers, smuggling alcohol into America from abroad.

Gangsters & Mobsters The Chicago Syndicate was the country's largest and most powerful organized crime operation. Its chief, Al Capone, controlled all underworld operations: bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution. Throughout the 1920s mobsters engaged in street battles over issues of control. Gang warfare reached its climax in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On February 14, 1929, seven men were killed in a Chicago garage by five unknown men wearing police uniforms. Perhaps the worst scandal involving gambling was the so-called Black Sox Scandal of 1919, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were indicted for accepting bribes to throw baseball’s World Series.

The Automobile The Jazz Age was also an era of reckless spending and consumption, and the most conspicuous status symbol of the time was a flashy new automobile. Advertising was becoming the major industry that it is today, and soon advertisers took advantage of new roadways by setting up huge billboards at their sides. Both the automobile and a bizarre billboard play important roles in The Great Gatsby.

Radio In East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, KDKA was the first radio station to be broadcast to the entire nation. This station was also scheduled to play everyday. Over the course of a few months, licensed radio stations grew from 1 to 576. The sale of radio equipment climbed steadily, reaching $400 million in sales in 1925. Sports, especially baseball, gain popularity through national broadcasting.

Sports Popular sports of the decade: baseball, football, hockey, basketball, tennis, boxing, golf, swimming. American Gertrude Ederle swam across the English Channel in 1926—not only the first woman to do it, but her time of 14 1/2 hours was nearly 2 hours faster than any man. Babe Ruth played for the New York Yankees and set many MLB records: home runs (714), RBIs (2,213), etc. One of the original 5 inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. 7x World Series champion, 3x in 1920s: ’23, ‘27, ’28.

Literature The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume, Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein. Term embraces writers of different styles, backgrounds, and genres, many who made Europe (esp. Paris) a center of their literary activities and companionship. The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its social, political, artistic, and spiritual alienation from the U.S.

Critical Overview of The Great Gatsby While fellow writers praised Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, critics offered less favorable reviews.

Fellow Writers Fellow novelist Ernest Hemingway remarked, "If he could write a book as fine as 'The Great Gatsby' I was sure that he could write an even better one." Gertrude Stein wrote to Fitzgerald, “Have read your book and it is a good book. I like the melody of your dedication and it shows that you have a background of beauty and tenderness and that is a comfort.”

Newspaper Reviews The Baltimore Evening Sun called the plot “no more than a glorified anecdote” and the characters “mere marionettes.” The New York Times called the book “neither profound nor durable.” The London Times saw it as “undoubtedly a work of great promise” but criticized its “unpleasant” characters.