1. F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby and The Roaring Twenties

2. 1920-1929: Changing Times The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented
social and technological change in so many areas:
An economy stimulated by WW1 fueled a massive economic boom.

3. General Business Conditions
Stable prices
High employment

4. 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.

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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. Jazzy Talk -Twenties Slang
Gee I wish a torpedo would bump off this flat tire
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
Dumb
Dora

9. Music in Gatsby
Gatsby’s music during the parties is described as the “yellow cocktail music”
This was Jazz and Ragtime
Louis Armstrong,
Duke Ellington
King Oliver

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

11. 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

12. Prohibition The Volstead Act 18th Amendment (1919) Bootleggers
Sold, bought, consumed alcohol.
Gangsters

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

14. 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.

15. Media and Technology Auto mobilization Mass Media Popular Sports
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

16. F Scott Fitzgerald Descendent from “prominent” American stock
Attended Princeton but left without graduating
Missed WWI (just)
Met Zelda but couldn’t afford to marry her
Published This Side of Paradise in 1920 at the age of 24: instant stardom
Married Zelda, his “golden girl”
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

17. Fitzgerald Continued A daughter, Scotty
Wrote what is considered his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, in Europe in
Zelda has an affair and Gatsby poorly received
Attempts to earn a clean literary reputation were disrupted by his reputation as a drunk
Zelda becomes mentally unstable
Moved to Hollywood as a screen writer
Dies almost forgotten aged 45
Zelda perished in a mental hospital fire in 1948
Only became a “literary great” in the 1960’s

18. 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.

19. Modernism in the Twenties

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Modernist Era
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.”

24. 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.”

25. 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 understatement and irony to reveal important emotions and ideas
The use of symbols and images that suggest meanings, rather than statements that explain meanings.

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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