The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

Background… The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 Fitzgerald and his wife had moved to Great Neck, Long Island – a suburb that sparkled with the parties typical of the excessive times. 1929 Great Depression

Cultural Context WWI ended in 1918. Disillusioned from the war, the generation that fought and survived has come to be called the “Lost Generation” America threw itself into materialism which developed into a decade called the “Roaring Twenties” The era is known as the Jazz Age – promoted by the recent inventions of the phonograph and radio

Cultural Context… Jazz broke the rules of music Other rules broken were the age old conventions for women – work outside the home, the right to vote, short skirts, short hair styles etc. 18th Amendment – Prohibition – banned the sale of alcohol from 1919-1933 Gangsters made fortunes as bootleggers

Cultural Context… Illegal gambling was rampant – the 1919 World Series was “fixed”. Gamblers bribed the White Sox to lose the series against the Cincinnati Reds. The Jazz Age was an era of reckless spending and conspicuous consumption and the status symbol became a flashy new car Advertising was just becoming a major industry

The Novel… The novel is semiautobiographical The Setting – wild parties, pop music, flashy cars – portrays the extravagance of the Jazz Age circles in which Fitzgerald traveled.

The “EGGS”… East Egg – the fashionable, socially correct side – OLD MONEY – (Buchanans) West Egg – Socially Inferior – NEW MONEY! (Gatsby) The conflicting attitudes of the two eggs mirror the conflict between the old society and the upstart “nouveaux” rich that Fitzgerald observed in the 1920s in America

Central Theme The corruption of the American Dream by selfish materialism