Chapter 25, Section 3: The Roaring Twenties

Main Idea: While new lifestyles and new ideas affected fashion and music, a new generation of writers rebelled by criticizing American life.

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A. New Fads & Fashions

The “Era of Wonderful Nonsense”

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Following the Latest Fads

Fad = activity or fashion that is very popular for a short time  flagpole sitting, dance marathons, mah jongg, crossword puzzles, the Charleston

Flappers Set the Style

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Flappers

- young women who rebelled against tradition  Wore their hair and dresses short & bright red lipstick, smoked in public, drank alcohol in speak-easies, drove fast cars …  Their appearance & behavior was shocking to the older generation, who thought it was immodest & immoral.

 Others viewed them as trend-setters who gave women a new sense of freedom.

B. The Jazz Age

 

Jazz

- combined African rhythms with African American spirituals & European harmonies  originated in New Orleans & spread to Chicago, Kansas City, & Harlem, NY   Louis Armstrong – Trumpet “Jelly Roll” Morton  Bessie Smith Jazz led to new dances- the Charleston  Many worried that jazz music was a bad influence on young people (kind of like rock in the 50s, rap in the 80s …)

   

C. New Writers

Some writers from this era left the US to live in Europe as expatriates.

 Said US was too $ driven.



Hemingway & Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway 

A Farewell to Arms

(WWI) 

The Sun Also Rises

 F. Scott Fitzgerald 

The Great Gatsby

(best captures the mood of the Roaring Twenties)

Other Writers

Sinclair Lewis (Nobel) 

Babbit

&

Main Street

Edna St. Vincent Millay  Poet - “First Fig” Eugene O’Neill - playwright

 D.

Harlem Renaissance

In the 20s, large numbers of African American musicians, artists, & writers settled in the Harlem section of NYC.

 This led to a rebirth of African American culture in the US. For the first time, white Americans noticed black art, music & lit.

Langston Hughes

 Langston Hughes- poet & writer  “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”  Connected Mississippi R. (US) to Nile R. (Africa)  Encouraged black pride & protested racism & violence in works about black experience.

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Other Writers

Countee Cullen – poet (NYU; Harvard)  Claude McKay – “If We Must Die”  Zora Neale Hurston – novelist 

Mules and Men –

southern black folklore

E. An Age of Heroes

Sports Figures

   Bobby Jones - golf Bill Tilden & Helen Wills - tennis Jack Dempsey - boxing  Gertrude Ederle – swimming  Red Grange - football  Babe Ruth - baseball

“Lucky Lindy”

  Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (from NYC to Paris) in May 1927. He piloted the

Spirit of St. Louis

for over 33 hours with no map, no parachute & no radio.

 He became the hero of the decade

Lucky Lindy

· In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis on a solo flight across the Atlantic from Long Island (Roosevelt Field) to France.