1. Bridging the Gap: The Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties
The Cultural and Historical Context of The Great Gatsby

2. 1905 1915 1900 1910 1920 19th Amendment Grants women the Right to VOTE
(1920)
Chicago”s
Columbian
Exposition
(1893)
Sigmund Freud
lectures on
psychoanalysis
(1909)
World War I
(aka “The Great War”
( )
1905
1915
1900
1910
1920
The Infamous
1919 World Series
White Sox vs. Reds
(1919)
Einstein forms
the
Theory of
Relativity (1905)
The Titanic
sinks
(1912)

3. 1st trans-Atlantic flight
Charles Lindbergh
1st trans-Atlantic flight
(1927)
The Jazz Singer, 1st
Talking picture (1927)
1930
1925
Flapper Dresses
In Style
(1925)
Fitzgerald publishes
The Great Gatsby
(1925)

4. The Great War (World War I)
“The war to end all wars.”
If the casualties are averaged, they come out to 230 soldiers dying every hour, every day, for over four years.
During the summer and fall of 1914, France lost as many men on the battlefield as the U.S. Army lost in all of the 20th century.
After the war there were so many trenches that if you added them up together, end to end, they would go around the Earth once.

5. Europe came out of WWI far worse than America
Europe came out of WWI far worse than America. Many countries suffered severe and lasting damage to both cities and countryside.
Europe also lost almost an entire generation of young men.

6. Those who survived were severely traumatized
Those who survived were severely traumatized. This trauma can be seen in the literature and art of the time, which typically contained shockingly graphic portrayals of suffering and death.
Otto Dix – German Expressionist. best known for his artistic depictions of the brutality of war. Dix's dark paintings of war came from first hand experience. Otto Dix volunteered for the German Army When the First World War began and was assigned to a field artillery position and later assigned to a machine-gun unit in the Western front.

7. The absence of meaning, honor, faith, and humanity were all popular themes.
Many artists and poets who had survived the war later went insane or committed suicide.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Self-Portrait as a Soldier

12. While European nations were dealing with economies that were in shambles, hyperinflation, and record unemployment, America experienced only a short depression followed by a period of great prosperity in the 1920’s.

13. Lasting Effects of WWI - A new moral code
Deteriorating ties to the past and tradition
A “loss of innocence”

14. During the war, the government had implemented rationing and oversight in nearly every aspect of life.

15. (People were fine with the power trip because it was “for the war”)
In other words… there was an increase of government power
FOR THE WAR.
(People were fine with the power trip because it was “for the war”)

16. President Warren Harding and Babe Ruth
But… afterwards, the American people were sick of it, and wanted a return to a MINIMALIST GOVERNMENT.
President Harding’s 1920 campaign slogan was to return to “normalcy.” (i.e. a time before, the glory days, a time when the government backed off of everything--Laissez-Faire).
President Warren Harding and Babe Ruth

17. “The Business of America is Business” – Calvin Coolidge

18. Chrysler 1920’s radiator cap
2nd Industrial Revolution
Centers around the automobile (like the railroad, it connected many industries).
Chrysler 1920’s radiator cap

19. America is rapidly becoming a consumer society, as things like cars, radios, ice makers, deodorants, cosmetics, and toasters are now mass produced.
Shorter work days + Better Wages = MORE LEISURE TIME!
Easy credit + Advertising = CONSUMPTION GALORE!
Mass Production = Uniformity & Standardization of Goods

20. Art Deco
Geometric and futuristic, it was influenced by new machine technology and Egyptian art