1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and the Roaring Twenties

2. 1920-1929: Changing Times The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented change in the areas of Literature Technology Prohibition Music Women’s Rights Lifestyles An economy stimulated by WWI fueled a massive economic boom.

3. General Business Conditions Stable prices High employment Prime interest rate averaged less than 5% Stock yield higher than bond yield

4. Income Distribution 1922: Top 1% held 32% of nation’s wealth. 1929: Top 1% held 39% of nation’s wealth. “The rich get richer and the poor get…children.”

5. The Roaring 20’s The decade of the twenties is often referred to as the “Jazz Age.” The term has as much to do with the jazzy atmosphere of the times as with the music!

6. Jazzy Sounds Prohibition brought many jazz musicians from New Orleans and Chicago to New York. Joe “King” Oliver was one of the best. Jazz became the soundtrack of rebellion for a younger generation.

7. Jazzy Duds Flappers were typically young girls of the twenties, usually with bobbed hair, short skirts, rolled stockings, and powdered knees. They danced the night away, doing the Charleston and the Rock Bottom.

8. Twenties Slang All Wet—wrong Bee’s Knees—superb person Big Cheese—important person Bump Off—to murder Dumb Dora—stupid girl Flat Tire—dull, boring person Gam—a girl’s leg Hooch—bootleg liquor Hoofer—chorus girl Torpedo—hired gunman Gee I wish a torpedo would bump off this flat tire! Dumb Dora…

9. Lifestyle and Fashion of the 1920’s No more Victorian values Flappers Collegiate students Independent women Increasing wealth Social mobility

10. Women’s Rights Movement 1920—19 th Amendment— Right to vote Suffrage—the right to vote Jordan Baker— character in the novel who reflects the changing woman

11. Prohibition 18 th Amendment Volstead Act Bootleggers Sold, bought, and consumed alcohol Speakeasies Gangsters

12. Media and Technology Automobile— available to many Mass Media Magazines Time Magazine Reader’s Digest Radios and Advertising Movies—”Talkies” The Jazz Singer

13. F. Scott Fitzgerald Descendent from “prominent” American stock. Attended Princeton but left without graduating. (Just) missed WWI Met Zelda, but couldn’t afford to marry her. Published This Side of Paradise in 1920 at the age of 24; instant stardom. Married Zelda, his “golden girl.” Wrote “money making” fiction for most of his life. He and Zelda were associated with the high living of the golden age.

14. Fitzgerald (cont.) The Fitzgeralds had a daughter named Scotty. Wrote The Great Gatsby in Europe in 1924-25. Zelda had an affair and Gatsby was poorly received. Fitzgerald fought his reputation of being a drunk. Zelda became mentally unstable. Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter; he dies almost forgotten at age 45. Zelda died in a mental hospital fire in 1948. Fitzgerald didn’t become a literary “great” until the 1960’s.

15. Literature of the 1920’s Author’s wrote about their personal lives as something “knowable.” Gatsby contains a great deal of auto- biographical material. Fitzgerald was influenced by the modern movement in art.

16. Modernism in the 1920’s

17. The Modernist Era Rejection of Romanticism and the advent of moral uncertainty (WWI). Embracing the “new” and industrialization Using new means of representation.

18. Modernism and Romanticism Nick CarrawayGatsby

19. Fitzgerald and Modernism Modernists mistrusted the possibility of absolute truth. In modernist literature, loose ends were embraced rather than resolved clearly. What does this suggest about the “truth”?