F Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby

and The Roaring Twenties

1920-1929: 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● Number of firms

increased annually until 1929

● Steady failure rate● Prime interest rate

averaged less than 5%● Stock yield higher than

bond yields

Income Distribution

●Equalizing effect of income tax during the war but

●1922: Top 1% held 32% of nation’s wealth

●1929: Top 1% held 38% of nation’s wealth

●“The rich get rich and the poor get… children”

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

● Joe “King” Oliver” was one of the best

● 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

Symphonic Jazz and Gatsby● George Gershwin wrote both

classical and popular music

● He was the first composer to combine jazz and classical music with Rhapsody in Blue in1924

● Was this Vladimir Tostoff’s “Jazz History of the World”?

Lifestyles and fashions of the 1920s

●No more Victorian Values●Flappers●Collegiate Students● Independent women●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

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

F Scott Fitzgeraldand Zelda Sayer

● 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

Fitzgerald Continued● A daughter, Scotty● Wrote what is considered his masterpiece, The Great

Gatsby, in Europe in 1924-25● 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

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.

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

Modernism and Nick Carraway

● Because of the chaos there was a longing for order.

● The modernist generation produced utopian ideologies such as communism, fascism, and futurism.

● Nick Carroway sums it up in the begining of the novel, “I wanted the world to be in uniform and to stand to a sort of moral attention forever”

Modernism and RomanticismNick Carraway Jay Gatsby

Fitzgerald and Modernism

● Modernists mistrusted the possibility of absolute truth and idealism. This includes the ideas of religion.

● Consider the multiple and limited points-of-view employed in Gatsby. What effect does this have on the concept of absolute truth?

● How does Nick force us to view the “reality” that he portrays?

● In modernist literature “loose ends” were embraced rather resolved clearly. What does this suggest about the truth?

Archetypes

The archetypes character can be seen to some degree as a stereotype. It is when a character can be described in terms of a common concept that often includes stereotypical behavior. Here are a few classics from the novel.

The MartyrThe Damsel in Distress

The MagicianThe Lover

Many of the characters fit more than one type or model, given any particular situation. Gatsby could easily be both Magician (creates the perfect environment) and Martyr (won't leave Daisy as a lost cause)

Symbols and Color

Characters, places, inanimate objects and the like can be attributed with symbolic significance. Here are several from Gatsby.The Green LightGatsby's Yellow CarThe Mound of OrangesThe Grey Asheaps

Notice how the use of color also comes into play here. Fitzgerald doubled up on the tone of his idea by applying a color with certain symbolic ideas. Gold, Silver, and Green are used with exceeding frequence...what else is Gold, Silver, and Green...???$$$