Cultural Context of The Great Gatsby McBain

Understanding the times helps to understand the story Introduction Understanding the times helps to understand the story

World War I 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.”

The Roaring Twenties Sense of loss was very apparent among expatriate Americanswho remained in Europe after the war (“We’re not coming back!!”) Back home the disillusionment took a less obvious form. America seemed to throw itself headlong into a decade of madcap behavior and materialism, a decade that often called The Roaring Twenties.

Old money to…

New money (fast cash)

The Jazz Age The 1920s is also known as The Jazz Age, when 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, so the Jazz Age itself thumbed its nose at the rules of the past.

New Orleans jazz

NYC Jazz orchestra

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 twenties “flapper.”

From this

To this

and this

Prohibition Another rule often broken was the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, or Prohibition, which banned public sale of alcoholic beverages from 1919 until its repeal in 1933. Speak-easies, nightclubs, and taverns that sold liquor became popular – women went too! Became more corrupt because gangsters made illegal fortunes as bootleggers, smuggling alcohol into America from abroad.

Speakeasies:fun!

Bootleggers: shady $

Gangsters: corruption

Gambling Gangland gambling = illegal 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.

From this…

To this

Stats and facts 106,521,537 people in the United States Unemployment 5.2% Life expectancy: Male 53.6, Female 54.6 343,000 in military (down from 1,172,601 in 1919) Average annual earnings $1236; Teacher's salary $970 Dow Jones High 100 Low 67 Illiteracy rate reached a new low of 6% Gangland crime = murder, swindles, racketeering It took 13 days to reach California from New York There were 387,000 miles of paved road.

Critical Overview of the Novel

The 1920s While fellow writers praised Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, critics offered less favorable reviews.

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.

The 1930s Fitzgerald’s reputation reached its lowest point during the Depression, when he was viewed as a Jazz Age writer whose time has come and gone. The Great Gatsby went out of print in 1939. Fitzgerald died 1940 - Time Magazine didn’t even mention The Great Gatsby.

The 1940s Interest in Fitzgerald was revived with the posthumous book, The Last Tycoon. A literary critic was the first to point out that Gatsby, despite its Jazz Age setting, focused on timeless, universal concerns.

The 1950s Fitzgerald’s reputation soared with a new biography entitled The Far Side of Paradise. The London Times affirmed that Gatsby is “one of the best-if not the best-American novels of the past fifty years.”

What is the reputation today? The Great Gatsby’s place as a major novel is now assured. Most high schools study this novel

It’s time for you to decide, Old Sports…

End 1.Why would we still read a book written in the 1920’s? What gives a book its longevity? 2.Review the 1920’s as a reaction to WWI 3.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? 4.What is the "American Dream"? Where did it originate, and how has it changed? 5. Would you ever want to relive a moment from your past, to redo it? Describe a situation that occurred, or one that may occur in your near future (Prom?) that you could see yourself wanting to relive. How and why would anyone change the past?