Transcript F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Jazz Age

F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Jazz Age
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Born Francis Scott
Key Fitzgerald
• September 24, 1896
• St. Paul, Minnesota
• Descendant of
famous patriot,
Frances Scott Key
who wrote “Star
Spangled Banner”
Education
• Attended St. Paul
Academy
• The Newman School
• Princeton
• Dropped out of
Princeton to join the
Army in 1917
Zelda
• Stationed in
Montgomery, Alabama
• Met Zelda Sayre
• After his first novel This
Side of Paradise was
published he had the
literary and monetary
success to marry Zelda
in 1920
• Were the “it” couple
• Moved frequently (Rome,
Paris, Long Island)
• Had a chaotic relationship due
to his alcoholism, depression,
and insecurity and her
infidelity and mental
instability.
• Fitzgerald sold many short
stories to pay for their lifestyle
and Zelda’s medical bills
• Had one daughter named
Frances Scott “Scottie.”
• Fitzgerald sent Scottie to
live at a boarding school
when Zelda was
hospitalized for mental and
physical breakdowns and
he was battling with
alcoholism.
• Zelda died in a hospital fire
in 1932.
• Fitzgerald died in 1940 at
44 of a heart attack.
The Jazz Age
The Party That Lasted a Decade
Period between
the end of World
War I and the
Stock Market
Crash in 1929,
which led to the
Great Depression.
“The Jazz Age”-coined by Fitzgerald
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Automobiles
Radios
Prohibition
Flappers
Gangster
Talkies
The Charleston
Jazz
The Moderns (1900-1950)
• WWI Changed the voice of American
Fiction
• Before the war, American lit was
youthful, and even as uncertain as an
adolescent.
• After the war the country seemed to
have lost its innocence.
Post-war Writing
• Idealism turned to cynicism and a few
American writers began to question
the authority and tradition that was
America’s bedrock
• The war introduced new moral codes,
short skirts, bobbed hair, and new
slang
• America’s sense of the past was
deteriorating.
Modernism
• American writers began being
influenced by the modernist
movement
• The movement in literature, music and
arts – swept along by disillusionment
with traditions that seem to have
become spiritually empty – called for a
bold experimentation and a wholesale
rejection of traditional themes and
styles.
The American Dream: The Pursuit
of a Promise
• If we try to identify our uniquely American
beliefs, we find three central ideas that we
have come to call “The American Dream”
#1 Admiration for America as the
new Eden
• America is a land of beauty, bounty,
and unlimited promise. There are
unlimited resources and endless
opportunities.
• This is one of the major themes of the
Great Gatsby – as it captures the
American Dream seen through Jay
Gatsby and Nick Carraway’s eyes.
#2 Optimism
• The ever-expanding opportunity and
abundance that many people have
come to expect.
• Americans have believed in progress
– that life keeps getting better and
better and that we are moving
toward an era of prosperity, justice,
and joy that seems just around the
corner.
#3 The Importance and Ultimate
Triumph of the Individual
• The independent, self-reliant person will
triumph. Everything is possible for the
person who places trust in his or her own
powers and potential.
• American dreamers believed that the
could overcome their birth and become
whoever they wanted to be with a little
luck and hard work.
• Trust in the universe and trust in yourself.