F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby and The Roaring Twenties

Author Background  Francis Scott Fitzgerald born September 24, 1896  Member of the Princeton Class of 1917  Joined the Army-stationed in Montgomery Alabama where he met Zelda Sayre  Refused to marry him until he could publish This Side of Paradise  Published 3/26/1920, week later the couple married  Part of the literary party scene with Ernest Hemmingway playwright Gertrude Stein

Author Background Cont.  Known as an alcoholic, led to slow writing speed  Critics called him an “irresponsible writer.”  Main themes focused on aspirations and the American Dream and domesticity  Great Gatsby put him on the literary map  Wrote it in France- Zelda had affair  Zelda began dancing led to her mental breakdowns  Died believing himself a failure  Zelda died 1948 in an asylum fire

Author Background Cont.  Descendent from “prominent” American stock  Attended Princeton but left without graduating  Missed WWI (just)  Wrote “money-making” popular fiction for most of his life, mainly for the New York Post: $4000 a story (which equates to about $50,000 today)  He and Zelda were associated with high living of the Jazz Age  A daughter, Scotty

: Changing Times An economy stimulated by WW1 fueled a massive economic boom. The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented social and technological change in so many areas:

General Business Conditions  Stable prices  High employment

 The wealth of the 1920s however, belies careless disregard for responsible spending (and the importance of hard work and perseverance) and for moral principles.  “The Party has to End”: lavish spending and disregard for family and more traditional values (such as fidelity to one’s spouse) contributed to economic collapse and a decline in national morale.

The decade of the twenties is often referred to as the “ Jazz Age’. However, the term has much as much to do with the jazzy atmosphere of the time as with the music! The Roaring Twenties

Jazzy Sounds  Prohibition brought many jazz musicians north from New Orleans to Chicago and New York  Jazz became the soundtrack of rebellion for a younger generation

Jazzy Duds  Flappers were typical young girls of the twenties, usually with bobbed hair, short skirts, rolled stockings, and powdered knees!  They danced the night away doing the Charleston and the Black Bottom.

Jazzy Talk -Twenties Slang  All Wet - wrong  Bee’s Knees - a superb person  Big Cheese -an important person  Bump Off - to murder  Dumb Dora - a stupid girl  Flat Tire - a dull, boring person  Gam - a girls leg  Hooch - bootleg liquor  Hoofer - chorus girl  Torpedo - a hired gunman Gee I wish a torpedo would bump off this flat tire Dumb Dora

Music in Gatsby  m/watch?v=4wbNZFS3M DA Gatsby’s music during the parties is described as the “yellow cocktail music”  This was Jazz and Ragtime  Louis Armstrong,  Duke Ellington King Oliver

Lifestyles and fashions of the 1920s  No more Victorian Values  Flappers  Collegiate Students  Independent women  Gaiety  Increasing wealth  Social mobility  Alcohol consumption

Women’s Rights Movement  Suffrage - the right to vote  Nineteenth Amendment (1920)  Changing attitudes and fashions help bring about the new woman e.g. Jordan Baker

Prohibition  The Volstead Act  18th Amendment (1919)  Bootleggers  Sold, bought, consumed alcohol.  Gangsters Al Capone and a ‘gonnection’

Prohibition Creates Bootlegging Industry  Crime increased because people rebelled against laws prohibiting alcohol. ● Numerous “speak- easies”—nightclubs where alcoholic drinks were sold— cropped up.

 Defiance of the Prohibition Act, women gaining the right to vote, relaxing of social mores, the rise in organized crime, the influence of Hollywood, advertising, and the fashion industries, all contributed to the advent of the Roaring 20s— a time of reckless spending, get- rich-quick schemes and an abandonment of the noble ideals of hard and honest work.

Media and Technology  Automobilisation  the car is available to many  from courting to dating  Mass Media  Magazines and literacy  Reader’s Digest  Time  Radios and advertising  New forms of narrative  Movie - “talkies” e.g. The Jazz Singer  Popular Sports

Literature of the 1920s  Authors wrote about their personal lives as something “knowable”.  Gatsby contains a great deal of autobiographical material and references to the 1920’s.  Fitzgerald was also influenced by Modernist theories about art.

Modernism in the Twenties

The Modernist Era  Rejection of Romanticism and the advent of moral uncertainty  the catastrophe of World War I  (the wasteland and valley of ashes)  Embracing the new i.e. mechanization and industrialization  (Gatsby’s car)  new (replaceable) fashions  mass entertainment  Using new means of Representation  the development of cinema,  the mass media and advertising

Modernist Era  Modernism was an artistic trend that sought to find new ways to communicate  Writers stripped away descriptions of characters and setting and avoided direct statements of themes and resolutions  This “fragmented” style of writing enabled the reader to choose meaning for himself, believing life had no meaning.

Modernist Era  This period has been referred to as “The Lost Generation”.  Hemingway, in his novel “The Sun Also Rises” depicts a group of expatriate Americans, wandering aimlessly through Europe, sensing that they are powerless and that life is pointless in the aftermath of the Great War.  “The Great Gatsby” can be seen to encapsulate this perception of life without purpose, of restlessness, dissatisfaction and drifting. It was published in the middle of the decade and reveals a mindless quest for pleasure and a loss of direction in life.

 East Egg (where the old money families live) and West Egg, Long Island (where the nouveau riche [newly rich] reside.  The Valley of Ashes (Industrial section): the depression and grime symbolize the wealthy’s exploitation of the working class. Myrtle Wilson feels trapped in the “ash heap.” Modernist Era

 The nouveau riche (new rich) emerged: a generation of wealthy individuals who did not inherit their social and financial status, but who became suddenly well-off due to lucrative business ventures (some were illegal). “The American Dream” was attainable without “hard work” or “perseverance.” Modernist Era

Modernist Literature  A focus on alienated individuals, rather than heroes who stand for ideals of society  Frequent themes of impermanence and change  The use of understandment and irony to reveal important emotions and ideas  The use of symbols and images that suggest meanings, rather than statements that explain meanings.

What is The Great Gatsby about?  A novel about the aspirations of one man, and his quest to obtain the American Dream  The novel is an exploration of our national myth  The novel follows Jay Gatsby as he pursues his dream  Focus on parties, carelessness, the American Romance with cars, $ mobility  The novel also chronicles the process of change that the narrator Nick Carraway goes through  It captures the beauty and tragedy of the 1920’s, and age of excess

Themes/Main Ideas presented  The relative disillusion of The American Dream  Position of women have in a rapidly changing society  Prohibition & organized crime: The effect/affect on society  Success & failure/Hope & sense of purpose  Conflict between Illusion & reality  Wealth/materialism  Time/desire to repeat the past  Fidelity and friendship  Society/the spirit as wasteland

Symbolism and Motifs  Eyes  The East & the West  Dust & ash  Money & wealth (old vs new)  Significance of colours  Domesticity is impossible to escape even with independence  The American Dream can be found, but at a price  The unfulfilled dream of the past can ruin the present but may provide insight towards the future  Glamour in the Prohibition Era  PTSD and the Aftermath of war  Omnipresence of Society

Is The Great Gatsby a period piece, or does the novel step outside its time and address universal themes?