In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the 1920s are displayed as a time alcohol, parties, and glamour. The Volstead Act banned the commercial distribution of alcohol making it more appealing than ever before. The ban led to the development of speakeasies, illegal nightclubs where people would gather to drink, dance, and have the time of their lives. The 20s were also a decade of economic prosperity. People bought everything they could afford and even more was bought on credit with little regard for possible future consequences. Women wore short dresses, cut their hair, and dressed much more revealingly than the Gibson Girls of the past decade dressed in floor length dresses and high collars. It was the age of movie stars and radio. Also, …show more content…
This directly relates to the carefree lifestyle and romanticism of the people of the 1920s which will eventually lead to the Great Depression. The author also takes many universal literary ideas and alters them to demonstrate that just as the reader doesn’t expect certain twists in the plot of the novel, the people of the time did not expect the 1920s to experience such a terrible change in fortune. Fitzgerald switches around …show more content…
This is similar to how under the surface, the 1920s was not what it appeared to be. Daisy Buchanan, for example, is rich and beautiful. People see her as just a pretty face and believe that she can’t think for herself. In reality, this is just a front she puts up in order to protect herself from being emotionally damaged by Tom’s affair. George Wilson appears to be lifeless and a pushover, but once Myrtle dies he goes out and murders Gatsby. The best example of this, though, is Jay Gatsby. He is nothing like the audience anticipates him to be. From the moment the reader picks up the book, Gatsby is known as the Great Gatsby and people expect him to be incredible. The first few chapters include rumors that Gatsby murdered someone, is related to the Kaiser, and is a German spy. The perception of Gatsby is that of The Wizard Oz, there is greatness in his mystery. Due to this mystery, rumors spread and build him up to be an incredible and brilliant man. It is brought to light that Gatsby isn’t as great as the title says. He is self-conscious, careless, unhappy, and alone. The moments when he is at his worst are before he dies and is waiting for a phone call from Daisy. The author describes that “...Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had
Considered as the defining work of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in 1925, when America was just coming out of one of the most violent wars in the nation’s history. World War 1 had taken the lives of many young people who fought and sacrificed for our country on another continent. The war left many families without fathers, sons, and husbands. The 1920s is an era filled with rich and dazzling history, where Americans experienced changes in lifestyle from music to rebellion against the United States government. Those that are born into that era grew up in a more carefree, extravagant environment that would affect their interactions with others as well as their attitudes about themselves and societal expectations. In this novel, symbols are used to represent the changing times and create a picture of this era for generations to come. The history, settings, characters, and symbols embedded in The Great Gatsby exemplify life in America during the 1920s.
In the aftermath of World War I, the 1920s twinkled on the horizon with the promise of hope. Bookended by the epidemic of 1920 and the The Wall Street crash of 1929, the decade was a time of decadence, frivolity, and escape. Rich or poor, people lived in the moment, loved anything new and the young partied like there was no tomorrow. A readers look into the decade can be found in the era's greatest memoir: The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald applied the social and political issues of the 1920's and its innumerable characteristics to enhance the plot of The Great Gatsby.
In the novel The Great Gatsby it is greatly seen how the roaring 20’s was a booming society after the World War One. The Roaring Twenties was a period when economic success was sustained. This was a time to rejoice as well as a time to overcome the restrictions of the Victorian era. The fashion in the 20’s was less restricting than the past years and began to wear more comfortable clothes such as short skirts or trousers, the music was all about the jazz and the alcohol and dancing this was rapidly developing in Chicago, the most popular dances during the decade the foxtrot, waltz, and American tango.
...haracteristics it displayed. People were breaking from the norm. Men turned to alcohol and bootlegging while women were becoming carefree and loving life. However, not all times were fun and outrageous. The Great Depression hit which left many families in debt. Still, people did not let that stop them from roarin’ in those 20s. F. Scott Fitzgerald created his characters in The Great Gatsby from peoples’ styles and behaviors in the 1920s.
Materialism has a negative influence on the characters in the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. “The most terrible thing about materialism even more terrible than its proneness to violence, is its boredom, from which sex, alcohol, drugs, all devices for putting out the accusing light of reason and suppressing the unrealizable aspirations of love, offers a prospect of deliverance.” This quote, stated by Malcolm Muggeridge, says that people get bored with the things that they have when they get new things all of the time. When they get bored with these things, they turn to stuff like sex, alcohol, and drugs. In The Great Gatsby, Myrtle, Daisy, and Gatsby are greatly influenced by money, and material things. The negative influence that materialism has on these characters is shown throughout the entire novel.
Romanticism is the idealized view of reality or an optimistic view of reality. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character named Gatsby has an romantic view of the world and he shared this view with his friend and neighbor Nick Carraway. In short. Gatsby’s trait of romanticism led him to believe that he could achieve the “American Dream” ever since he was a poor child growing up in North Dakota, consequently, he met a rich man named Dan Cody and a beautiful rich girl named Daisy on his journey, and he had his first taste of money, but his ambition eventually got him killed when had to risk it all for the girl.
The Roaring Twenties was an era that transformed America's views on women's gender roles and relationship standards. The Great Gatsby is a story of a wealthy man named Jay Gatsby told through the view of Nick Carraway. Gatsby has been living in the past his entire life with his one true goal of reuniting with his first love Daisy Buchanan. Throughout the story we see the ups and downs of being a rich elite in society and the values of life and scandals in the 1920s. Gender roles and relationships of the 1920s influenced F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby because Jordan defies the common girl gender role, Daisy wants her daughter to be a fool, and Tom abuses women physically and mentally.
The Roaring Twenties was a time great spending and extravagance as the rich had no limit to their wealth with the Gilded Age, which produced hundreds of millionaires. Even though there was new rush of modernism into Twenties, there was still traditions that had a big role in during the time period. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald show misogyny, gender roles, feminism and the stereotypes of the Twenties through characters like Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan, Jay Gatsby, and Myrtle Wilson and their behavior’s.
There was also a change in American culture in the 1920s. This was the time when jazz music was introduced to the world, and the roles of women were changed. Jazz music is a new thing for Americans. It was created by African Americans, and it had a huge impact, on the society. This music mainly affected the youth and women of this time period.
The Roaring Twenties was a time of great changes. The Jazz Age began after World War I and ended when the stock market crashed. The economy in that time was through the roof but Americans felt cheerful and carefree after WWI ending which caused people to party everywhere. During the war, women had to take over jobs men had while they fight but after the war, they became free which lead to the time of the flappers. During this time, there was a legal ban on making and selling alcohol which was the prohibition. All of these events tie into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby’s historical background.
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.
Each one of the characters possess thoroughly human traits that are universal, which is why their struggles have a greater impact on the reader. As Nafisi describes it, to read a novel “is a sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel” (Nafisi 111). While some people enjoy light and mindless reading, little value is found in those pursuits and the magical connection between reader and the novel vanishes. As Nafisi describes, it is paramount that the characters in a novel are relatable, even if they are not necessarily likeable. Whether it be Daisy’s flighty and shallow nature, Tom’s arrogance, or even Nick’s aversion to confrontation, characters in The Great Gatsby are memorable because the reader sees bits of their own personality in them. On that same note, the character of Jay Gatsby continues to cause debate and questions concerning the morality of the novel, and whether or not the book glorifies corruption. Touching on the main theme of the subject, Nafisi claimed that “this book is not about adultery but about the loss of dreams ” (Nafisi 133). While there is no denying that Gatsby is an incredibly flawed and mislead character, his redeeming qualities have left readers perplexed about what
Scott Fitzgerald portrays the events in his life, as well as the corrupted morals and behaviors of society in the early twentieth century, in his novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald used his personal experiences with his life including his wife, military career, and social atmosphere for inspirations while writing his novel. The upper class was depicted primarily because of the newly adapted morals they possessed. The prime sources for the change in morals was the rationing of clothing, the prohibition on alcohol, and the sexual promiscuity found commonly among the American soldiers discharged in France. The Roaring Twenties will go down in history for the corrupted morals and behaviors that broke the traditional
The Great Gatsby was written in the midst of the 1920’s, otherwise known as the Roaring Twenties or the “Jazz Age.” This was just after World War I, when the economy was thriving. Fitzgerald portrays multiple characters in Gatsby as wealthy, greedy, and materialistic, thus providing the audience with insight as to how he viewed
The 1920's in the United States was a time of economic growth in which people lived frivolous lives by believing their money would make them happy. It was a time of alcoholic prohibition and a time of emancipation for women. Thus, it was a time of parties, drinking and wild women for those who could afford it. Those who were at the bottom of society were constantly striving for the top of the economic ladder.