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Wealth, parties, and connections, were three things that were important to anyone looking to be a part of the exclusive high society of East New York in the Roaring 20’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald captured all three with his literary voice. He made impressions everywhere with the supreme achievement of his third novel, The Great Gatsby. This novel is a tale of people’s sensational lives in the 1920’s. Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby to exemplify the American identity during the early twentieth century. Fitzgerald uses symbolism and other narrative techniques to illustrate the materialistic chase of the American dream by upper-class society in the 20's.
Before one can fully analyze the way in which Fitzgerald wrote, it is important to understand the time in which he came from. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived and wrote in the time of the Roaring 20’s and the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald’s most prominent piece, The Great Gatsby, took place during this time. In the 1920’s life was extravagant, it was a time of partying, money, and drinking. Prohibition, the ban on the sale, production, and transportation of alcohol, went into effect in 1920 and lasted until 1933. Ironically, during this time drinking was at an all-time high and played a big role in making parties larger and wilder. People were not only spending money on alcohol, but also new automobiles. The automobile industry was blooming in the 1920’s, also making the era known as “The Age of the Automobile” (Kemp). While alcohol and cars were big fads of this time, there were also significant historical events taking place in the United States. The growing U.S. was also improving with innovations such as women gaining the right to vote. In 1920 women won the long battle of suffrage in the states...
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...aper because it gave me new insight on the details of this classic and how the symbolism and other narrative techniques are so relevant in everyone’s life. This is what makes this book so important to people every age and everywhere.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Harper, Jay. Fitzgerald: Man of All Ages. Cincinnati: 2002: eLibrary, Dec. 2002. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Kemp, Bill. "Jazz Age." Pantagraph (Bloomington) 17 Aug. 2008: eLibrary. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
King, Taylor. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." American Cultural Leaders 2001: eLibrary. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Schneider, Daniel J. Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby. Ed. Martin Steinmann, Jr. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. Print.
Thomas, Devin. "Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Critical Review." MacMillan General Reference (1963): eLibrary. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
The Great Gatsby displays how the time of the 1920s brought people to believe that wealth and material goods were the most important things in life, and that separation of the social classes was a necessary need. Fitzgerald’s choice to expose the 1920s for the corrupt time that it really was is what makes him one of the greatest authors of his time, and has people still reading one of his greatest novels, The Great Gatsby, decades
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
San Diego CA: Greenhaven Press Inc, 1998. Schneider, Daniel J. - "Standard" “Color Symbolism in the Great Gatsby.” Critical Insights on the Great Gatsby. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004.
The 1920s was of time of class, rich people thrived, woman started to revolutionize, music, and everything started to change. Major things happened during this time period including, discrimination against minorities and women pushing for natural rights. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of, The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota during the 1920s into a family with high social aspirations but little wealth. He attended Princeton University in 1913 in hopes of becoming something more in life but failed to graduate. After serving for the army Fitzgerald wrote his first book and became wealthy and famous( Wiggins, Grant. The American Experience: California. 2010.pp 729). Two of many themes in the The Great Gatsby are resistance to change and the “new woman”. There were numerous events that led to these changes in the 1920s and many had a huge significance to the nation and still affect us today.
Eble, Kenneth. F. Scott Fitzgerald Limited Edition. Ed. Sylvia E. Bowman. N.p.: Twayne Publishers, 1977. Print. Twayne’s United States Authors Series.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print. The.
In the past century in America, one of the decades that has stood out most as a time of change is the 1920s. In a post-war economic boom, the decade was a time of cultural and societal change. Among the parties and the more relaxed way of life, Americans experienced new wealth and luxury. Capturing the essence of the Roaring Twenties is a daunting task, especially because of the many different factors contributing to the decade’s fame. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to capture and define the spirit of the 1920s through his novel. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the characters and events of the novel manifest the trademark qualities of America in the 1920s.
Stern, Milton R. The Golden Moment: The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1971.
For most people, a certain colour may represent something meaningful to them. While in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the colours used in the novel are meant to represent something. The novel’s setting is in East and West Egg, two places in New York. Our narrator, Nick Carraway, lives in the West Egg. Along with living in West Egg is a friend of Nick’s, Jay Gatsby; a character that is in love with Daisy Buchanan. Unfortunately, Daisy is married to Tom. As the plot unravels, the reader notices the connection between certain colours and their importance to the novel. The use of colours within The Great Gatsby symbolizes actual themes, as grey symbolizes corruption, blue symbolizes reality, and green symbolizes jealousy and envy.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925
The 1920’s were a time of social and technological change. After World War II, the Victorian values were disregarded, there was an increase in alcohol consumption, and the Modernist Era was brought about. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a perfect presentation of the decaying morals of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald uses the characters in the novel--specifically the Buchanans, Jordan Baker, and Gatsby’s partygoers--to represent the theme of the moral decay of society.
nela Sljoka Casperson 5 AP English 3 28 January 2015 The Reflection of the Roaring Twenties in The Great Gatsby The Roaring 20’s or the Jazz Age is memorable for many Americans in terms of big achievements in many aspects of people’s lives and their American dreams. However, there are multiple points that reveal undertones of roughness and superficiality, which eventually lead to disillusionment. The Great Gatsby echoes with era depictions of the 1920s and portrays the contrast between traditional and corrupted values which are made prevalent through relations and descriptions of the characters, the theme of the novel, and the setting as a whole. Fitzgerald lived in the time after WWI where the novel takes place; American life had major changes, the people started to become more materialistic, women obtained the right to vote, parties became a typical routine, but most importantly the desire for the American Dream was in full swing. In the Roaring 20’s, people wanted to obtain money by any means, assuming it would bring them a considerable amount of joy.