The Great Gatsby and the 1920’s

1. The Great Gatsby and the 1920’s The dominant influences on F. Scott Fitzgerald were aspiration, literature, Princeton, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, and alcohol." Matthew J. Bruccoli, A Brief Life of Fitzgerald

2. The Jazz Age or Roaring 20’s • Published in 1925 • Set in NYC and Long Island • During the Prohibition Era • The novel’s star is Jay Gatsby, a young, rich man in love with a society girl from his past. A girl who is married to someone else.

3. Prohibition Era • Regulation accepts that citizens will use a given drug, but imposes extra taxes and certain restrictions – such as age limits, health warnings, or special permits for sellers – on its use. The idea is to reduce use of the drug by increasing its cost and restricting its availability, without criminalizing its use.

4. Prohibition Era • Prohibition, in contrast, simply makes it illegal to sell or use a particular drug. The threat of criminal punishment is intended to deter citizens from using the drug at all.

5. Prohibition • Attempts to impose drug prohibition also date back to the colonial period. • In 1632, the Massachusetts General Court issued a ban on smoking in public places. • Even in that tightly controlled Puritan society, the ban proved largely ineffectual.

6. Prohibition • England’s King Charles II believed coffeehouses had become “the great resort of idle and disaffected persons” and had them closed down throughout the British Empire. • It took less than a week of protests from London’s popular café scene to force Charles to change his mind.

7. The 1920’s Economy • Bubble stocks brought easy prosperity. • The American Dream has always been tied to money – often as much as possible. • More American lived in urban areas. This is where the money was. • Rural farmers suffered terribly – poverty, crushing indebtedness, massive foreclosures.

8. The 1920’s Economy • People made have lots of money, but the barriers to the upper echelon have been education and background. • The nouveau riche were not accepted by the established elite.

9. Fitzgerald’s Life Parallels the Novel • Narrator Nick Carraway is both mesmerized and disgusted by Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle, just as Fitzgerald claimed to be about the “Jazz Age” excesses that he himself adopted. • Fitzgerald was an Ivy League educated, middle-class Midwesterner, Fitzgerald (like Nick) saw through the shallow materialism of the era.

10. Fitzgerald’s Life Parallels the Novel • Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald came back from WWI and fell in love with a wealthy southern socialite – Zelda Sayre. • Fitzgerald’s work and life flowered in the hedonistic excesses of the 1920’s. • Fitzgerald’s life and the lives of his characters echoed the national mood – boldly romantic before 1920, excessive and exuberant in the 1920’s, sober and reflective in the 1930’s.

11. At the End… • When the Great Crash of 1929 rolled around, Fitzgerald and his wife collapsed into their own financial and mental depression. • A lifelong alcoholic who could only write when he was NOT drinking struggled to success in a decidedly sober decade. • He died of a heart attack at the age of 44 believing himself an utter failure; time has judged otherwise.