Transcript Slide 1

Introduction to
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby
World War I
• Pre WWI Propaganda – everywhere, ingrained
• America went into the war convinced that we would “make
the world safe for democracy”
• America believed it was “the war to end all wars” because
that’s what Woodrow Wilson said
• Soldiers get “over there” and it is hell
– Trench warfare – miles of deep trenches, frequently in
water because of rain, soldiers develop “trenchfoot”, rats
in trenches ate corpses and sleeping men, surrounded by
human & animal waste
– Going “over the top” – out of trench into “no man’s land”
where they are met with machine gun fire, barbwire,
bombs, and mustard gas (1st time used in history)
– Allied forces deaths: almost 2 million Russians, over 1
million French, 900,000 British, 48,909 Americans died
– 10 million soldiers die and almost 10 million civilians die
– The war was NOT what we expected or what we were
told it would be
End of World War I
• Came back on ships and there was the
worst flu in human history (pandemic)
– 100 million people died
– More people died in 24 weeks than all the
people who died in the 24 years that we’ve
been fighting the AIDS virus,
– In Philadelphia during one week 1,000 people
died every day = over 7,000 deaths in one city
in one week; they literally could not bury all of
the bodies
End of World War I
• After soldiers get home they:
– Want to forget the horror
– They don’t want to sacrifice themselves for any cause
– People become very self centered. They go into WW I
idealistic but come back so disillusioned to the
capabilities of humanity and war.
– The world no longer makes sense to people, they
don’t trust science, government, humanity, people
begin to question God
– People think, “well we’re going to die anyways, we
may as well have a good time.”
• Fitzgerald called the 1920s “the most expensive orgy in
history.”
• It makes sense why so many people turned to alcohol,
parties, and excess; they wanted to drown themselves.
Literature ~ Modernism
• Modernism: was a direct response to the
social and cultural changes post WW I
1. Characters in modernist works are almost
always alienated from “mass culture”, they are
unresponsive, withdrawn, hurt, etc.
2. Stream of consciousness writing style developed
– meandering patterns of thought
3. Fragmentation – no traditional beginnings or end
(think Pulp Fiction), OR only getting bits and
pieces of information but not the whole story
More on Modernism
• Modernist writers are as notable for “what they
leave out of their writing as for what they put in”
• Themes are implied rather than overtly stated.
• The reader is left to figure out what is going on.
• This is much more demanding for readers – they
must put the pieces together on their own. There
are no CLEAR answers – just like there were no
clear answers about life for people during this
time period. All of their truths were destroyed
during WW I.
1920-1929: Changing Times
The 1920’s were a time of unprecedented
social and technological change in so many
areas:
Literature
Music
Media / Technology
Women’s Rights
Prohibition
Lifestyles
An economy stimulated by WWI
fueled a massive economic boom.
Enduring Associations
• Fitzgerald has become
identified with the
extravagant living of the
Jazz Age:
“It was an age of miracles, it
was an age of art, it was an
age of excess, and it was an
age of satire.”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
• He felt that aspiration and
idealism defined America
and its people.
• His writing style is known for
being clear, lyrical, and witty.
1920’s Cultural Points
• 1920: 19th Amendment granted women right to vote
• 1921: knee-length skirts became fashionable, 1st Miss
America pageant
• 1922: 5,000 speakeasies in NYC
• 1923: 15 million cars registered in US
• 1925: Scopes Trial (evolution debate)
• 1926: 40 hour work week established; 1 in 6 Americans
owns a car
• 1927: 30,000 speakeasies in NYC, 41 die in NYC New
Year’s Eve due to poisoned booze
• 1929: Stock Market Crash
The Roaring Twenties
The decade of the twenties is always referred to as the
“ Jazz Age”. This has as much to do with the jazzy
atmosphere of the time as with the music!
The Roaring Twenties
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Prohibition
Speakeasies
Bootlegging
Organized
Crime
Jazz Age
Dancing
Flappers
Women’s Rights
Prohibition
Al Capone and a ‘gonnection’
• Introduction of
Organized
Crime
• Bootleggers
– Gangsters
– Bought,
Sold, and
consumed
alcohol
Prohibition
• The Eighteenth
Amendment (1919) to
the Constitution
forbade the
manufacture, sale,
import, or export of
intoxicating liquors.
• The Twenty-first
Amendment (1933)
repealed the
Eighteenth
Amendment.
Women’s Rights Movement
• Suffrage - the right to
vote
• Nineteenth Amendment
(1920)
• Changing attitudes and
fashions help bring
about the new woman
(Jordan Baker – one of
Fitzgerald’s characters
in The Great Gatsby)
Lifestyles and fashions of the
1920’s
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No more Victorian Values
Flappers
Independent women
Fun, celebratory
atmosphere
• Increasing wealth
• Social mobility
• Alcohol consumption
Jazzy Duds
• Flappers were typical
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
Black Bottom.
Music in Gatsby
• Many jazz
musicians came
north from New
Orleans to
Chicago and New
York (big cities
was where the
action was at)
• This was Jazz and
Ragtime
– Louis Armstrong,
– Duke Ellington
King Oliver
Jazzy Talk -Twenties
Slang
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All Wet - wrong
Bee’s Knees - a superb person
Big Cheese -an important person
Bump Off - to murder
Dumb Dora - a stupid girl
Flat Tire - a dull, boring person
Gam - a girls leg
Hooch - bootleg liquor
Hoofer - chorus girl
Torpedo - a hired gunman
Gee I wish a torpedo
would bump off this
flat tire
Dumb
Dora
Origins of the American
Dream
• European explorers and the Puritans—Doctrine
of Predestination
• The Declaration of Independence—life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness
• American Revolutionary War—promise of land
ownership and investment
• Industrial Revolution—possibility of anyone
achieving wealth & the nouveau riche
• Individualism and self-reliance
• Westward expansion and the Gold Rush
• Immigration
American Dream continued…
• Prolific dime novel writer
Horatio Alger, Jr. became
famous for his novels
that idealized the
American Dream. His
rags-to-riches stories
glorified the notion of the
down-and-out who were
able to achieve wealth
and success and helped
entrench the Dream with
the popular culture.
American Dream continued…
• Near the 20th century, major
industrialists became the new
model of the American Dream,
many beginning life very poor,
but later controlling enormous
corporations and fortunes.
• Perhaps the most notable were
the great American capitalists
Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller.
• This acquisition of wealth
demonstrated to many that if
you had talent, intelligence,
and a willingness to work hard,
you were likely to be a success
as a result.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Born in Minnesota in 1896
• Descendent from “prominent” American
stock
• Attended Princeton but left without graduating
• On academic probation, Fitzgerald joined the
army as a 2nd lieutenant in 1917
• Just missed WWI
• Published This Side of Paradise in 1920 at the age of 24:
instant stardom
• Captured the emptiness and emotions of his
times in his stories
• He wrote many stories for the
Saturday Evening Post describing
the free-thinking flappers of the 1920’s.
Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
• June 1918: While on
assignment in Montgomery,
AL he fell in love with Zelda
Sayre, daughter of an
Alabama Supreme Court
judge.
• She broke off their
engagement in 1919
because she was unwilling
to live on Scott’s small
salary, but went back to
him in 1920 after This Side
of Paradise was published.
• They were married one
week later in 1920 since
Fitzgerald was now rich
and famous.
Extravagant Living
• He and Zelda were associated
with high living of the Jazz Age -a term Fitzgerald coined.
• Scott & Zelda begin to live as
young celebrities, socializing and
drinking heavily.
• They take their first trip to Europe
in 1921. They eventually live in
Paris, the Riviera, and have a
mansion near Wilmington,
Delaware.
• October 1921: Their first and only
child, Frances Scott (Scottie)
Fitzgerald is born.
• Wrote what is considered his
masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, in
Europe in 1924-25.
Further Estrangement
• During the 1920’s, Scott
and Zelda’s relationship
continues to be strained
due to his drinking and
her mental instability.
Zelda is eventually
diagnosed with
Schizophrenia and
Institutionalized.
• Even though Fitzgerald
earns about $4,000 per
story (equal to about
$40,000 today), he and
Zelda continue to run into
debt.
The Last Years
• Summer 1937: Fitzgerald
goes to Hollywood with a
screenwriting contract
earning $1,000/ week.
• Despite earning $91,000
from MGM, he is unable
to save any money.
• Zelda broke down, in and
out of institutions.
• 1938: He falls in love
with Sheila Graham, a
movie columnist.
• Dec 21, 1940: Fitzgerald
dies of a heart attack in
Graham’s apartment.
• 1948: Zelda dies in a fire
at Highland Hospital.
Fitzgerald’s Legacy
• Although Fitzgerald’s drinking gave him a reputation as
an irresponsible writer, he was a painstaking reviser.
• While he endured a lot of criticism just after his death,
his reputation grew in the 1960’s.
• Today, he is considered one of the great American
novelists, and The Great Gatsby is considered his
masterpiece.
The Great Gatsby
• Time period – early 1920’s
• Settings – East Egg, West Egg, NYC
• Main Characters from three social classes:
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Nick Carraway (narrator) (upper-middle)
Tom Buchanan (wealthy)
Daisy Fay Buchanan (wealthy)
Jordan Baker (wealthy)
Jay Gatsby (wealthy, but rags to riches)
George Wilson (working)
Myrtle Wilson (working)
The Great American Novel
• Fitzgerald’s life is successfully
told in this novel. The main
theme is the American Dream:
the rise above poverty to
wealth and the winning of a
love.
Fitzgerald’s Delineating of Character
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Naming
Description of physical appearance, including clothing
Association with objects, surroundings, possessions, or images
Direct discussion and analysis of the character by the narrator
Actions and behavior, whether described or represented:
a) talk by the character, including
b) talk as performance (lying, boasting, betraying, flattering)
c) talk as self-defining via vocabulary, dialect, rhetoric
6. Self-analysis by the character (“I am…”) whether accurate or not
7. Talk about the character by others, accurate or not. Such talk
both characterizes the talker and the character talked about
Setting
The Very Rich…
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are
different from you and me. They possess and
enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes
them soft where we are hard, and cynical where
we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were
born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They
think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than
we are because we had to discover the
compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.
Even when they enter deep into our world or sink
below us, they still think that they are better than
we are. They are different.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald