1. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. 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

3. Cultural Context
WWI ended in 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

4. 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
Gangsters made fortunes as bootleggers

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. Central Theme
The corruption of the American Dream by selfish materialism