F. Scott Fitzgerald & The Great Gatsby

- Born September 26, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota - lost 2 sisters to the flu - Led mother to be overprotective - Family was poor, but had some social status - Mother had high social ambitions for her son

-Went to private Catholic school, then to Princeton -Developed fascination with the very rich -Writings from college show his self-conscious nature

- Commissioned as 2Lt in the Army in Worked on revising his 1 st book - At age 22, met Zelda Sayre, a local debutante - Got engaged, but broke it off after 2 nd rejection

- Published This Side of Paradise in praised for its originality - Hailed as “the story of the youth of our generation” - Zelda & Fitzgerald restarted engagement - daughter Frances Scott born in October 1921

Fitzgerald’s life in the ’20s was a mirror for what was happening nationally - Challenge to the established order - personal indulgence - self-destructive excess - Fitzgerald was self-proclaimed spokesman and symbol

Roaring Twenties  Economy booming  America partied  Organized crime  Prohibition Act  Decline of moral standards

A Time of Optimism  Laissez faire economy  Rapid growth of industry and mechanization  Wide distribution of blessings of civilization  Electricity  Automobile  New “Golden Age” of America

A Time of Optimism  Laissez faire economy  Rapid growth of industry and mechanization  Wide distribution of blessings of civilization  Electricity  Automobile  New “Golden Age” of America

Critics  “decline and degradation”  Caught up in a “surge of materialism;” people failed to grasp the meaning and significance of life  Disillusioned, disenchanted, lost faith in life and possibility of social progress  Total lack of interest in politics

Social Atmosphere of Change  Prohibition  18 th Amendment prohibited production & sale of alcohol  Still sold & produced illegally  Bathtub gin  Speakasies  Bootleggers  Rise of gangsters like Al Capone

Social Atmosphere of Change  Women’s Rights  19 th Amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote  9 million women in the workforce  Women “bobbed” their hair  Could drink & smoke in public  Liberated women called “flappers”

-Fitzgerald and his wife had fallen to this lifestyle -Loose morals, and nothing left to believe in -Excessive drinking, partying, & spending -Well-known for their glamorous and “unsettled” lives - Wrote The Beautiful and the Damned” highlighting this lifestyle

-Wrote two collections of short stories; both critical failures -Changed focus to serious, even tragic works addressing broad historical and social issues -The Great Gatsby born of this - A quintessential story of not only the 1920’s, but the American experience, the novel chronicles the exuberance and the malaise of the decade -Shows how America’s fascination with material things erodes values - shows ultimate failure of the American Dream The Great Gatsby

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM?   It describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulfillment of human wishes and desires. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

FAILURE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM   Poverty   Discrimination   Exploitation   Hypocrisy   Corruption   Suppression

- Alcoholic since age 22 - earned dubious title “America’s Drunkest Writer” Later Life - as ‘20s came to a close, so did Fitzgerald’s career - wife Zelda suffered many complete mental breakdowns - 4 th book, Tender is the Night, based on his wife’s mental illness -Wrote short stories, magazine articles, screenplays to pay wife’s mounting medical bills -Died from heart attack December 21 st, 1940, at age 44 - Zelda died in hospital fire in 1948 at the age of 48 - wasn’t until after WWII that Gatsby became popular

Fitzgerald and Zelda are buried together in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. The last sentence of The Great Gatsby is inscribed on their grave marker. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

1949 – starring Allan Ladd, Betty Field, Shelley Winters, MacDonald Carey. Gatsby in film

1974 – starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Sam Waterson. Screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola.

1995 – A&E made-for-TV movie starring Mira Sorvino, Toby Stevens, Paul Rudd.

- Dec. 21, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey McGuire, Isla Fisher. Blu-Ray, 3D, DVD - 2 Oscar wins

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