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F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby , and the Roaring Twenties. 1920-1929: Changing Times. The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented change in the areas of Literature Technology Prohibition Music Women’s Rights Lifestyles.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and the Roaring Twenties
1920-1929: Changing Times The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented change in the areas of • Literature • Technology • Prohibition • Music • Women’s Rights • Lifestyles An economy stimulated by WWI fueled a massive economic boom.
General Business Conditions • Stable prices • High employment • Prime interest rate averaged less than 5% • Stock yield higher than bond yield
Income Distribution • 1922: Top 1% held 32% of nation’s wealth. • 1929: Top 1% held 39% of nation’s wealth. • “The rich get richer and the poor get…children.”
The Roaring 20’s The decade of the twenties is often referred to as the “Jazz Age.” The term has as much to do with the jazzy atmosphere of the times as with the music!
Jazzy Sounds • Prohibition brought many jazz musicians from New Orleans and Chicago to New York. • Joe “King” Oliver was one of the best. • Jazz became the soundtrack of rebellion for a younger generation.
Jazzy Duds • Flappers were typically 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 Rock Bottom.
Gee I wish a torpedo would bump off this flat tire! Twenties Slang Dumb Dora… • All Wet—wrong • Bee’s Knees—superb person • Big Cheese—important person • Bump Off—to murder • Dumb Dora—stupid girl • Flat Tire—dull, boring person • Gam—a girl’s leg • Hooch—bootleg liquor • Hoofer—chorus girl • Torpedo—hired gunman
Lifestyle and Fashion of the 1920’s • No more Victorian values • Flappers • Collegiate students • Independent women • Increasing wealth • Social mobility
Women’s Rights Movement • 1920—19th Amendment—Right to vote • Suffrage—the right to vote • Jordan Baker—character in the novel who reflects the changing woman
Prohibition • 18th Amendment • Volstead Act • Bootleggers • Sold, bought, and consumed alcohol • Speakeasies • Gangsters
Media and Technology • Automobile—available to many • Mass Media • Magazines • Time Magazine • Reader’s Digest • Radios and Advertising • Movies—”Talkies” • The Jazz Singer
F. Scott Fitzgerald • Descendent from “prominent” American stock. • Attended Princeton but left without graduating. • (Just) missed WWI • 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” fiction for most of his life. • He and Zelda were associated with the high living of the golden age.
Fitzgerald (cont.) • The Fitzgeralds had a daughter named Scotty. • Wrote The Great Gatsby in Europe in 1924-25. • Zelda had an affair and Gatsby was poorly received. • Fitzgerald fought his reputation of being a drunk. • Zelda became mentally unstable. • Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter; he dies almost forgotten at age 45. • Zelda died in a mental hospital fire in 1948. • Fitzgerald didn’t become a literary “great” until the 1960’s.
Literature of the 1920’s • Author’s wrote about their personal lives as something “knowable.” • Gatsby contains a great deal of auto- biographical material. • Fitzgerald was influenced by the modern movement in art.
The Modernist Era • Rejection of Romanticism and the advent of moral uncertainty (WWI). • Embracing the “new” and industrialization • Using new means of representation.
Nick Carraway Gatsby Modernism and Romanticism
Fitzgerald and Modernism • Modernists mistrusted the possibility of absolute truth. • In modernist literature, loose ends were embraced rather than resolved clearly. What does this suggest about the “truth”?
