The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is told from the perspective of one of the main characters, Nick Carraway. Nick tells the story of a man named Jay Gatsby, who is his neighbor in the West Egg. Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a man who everyone wants to know and copy but deep down are very envious of him. Gatsby trusts few people and those whom he trusts know his life story. To everyone else, he is a mystery. Everyone seems obsessed with Jay Gatsby. For this reason the novel revolves about rumors of Gatsby rather than the truth.

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” (Fitzgerald 44) In the roaring 1920s it was an era of considerable change. The nation was prosperous and the growth of the nation was at an all time high. Music,dance, literature, laws, and many more were changing the way of the world. Many people had not really settled with the changes happening in this time bringing on more hostility than a commemoration. But plenty of the young folks had brought upon the roaring in the 1920s. The 1920s was a time of rising within good and bad, the ratification of the prohibition, the endorsement of the 19th amendment, and the culture and literature with rising artistic value.

“All these materialistic belongings paint a picture of beauty for those chasing this fictitious happiness but in reality they bring life full of stress, jealousy, hubris, and corruption…” (St. Rosemary Educational Institution). When looking back at the exhilarating, and wild 1920’s, it is easy for one to presume it was a time full of economic growth, entertainment, and leisure for the people of America. But alas, hidden underneath the glow of its prosperity, lies a time span full of deceit, fraudulency, and law breaking. Author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, expertly captures this corruption as well as the deluded hopes and dreams of the people in his book, The Great Gatsby. So, During the Roaring Twenties, the decade where The Great Gatsby was depicted,

The Great Gatsby may appear as a novel containing dramatic, twisted relationships; however, the main theme has to do with the culture of the 1920s, and how it leads to the downfall of the American Dream. The 1920s were an age of change: politically and socially. The nation’s wealth nearly doubled, leading many Americans into a prosperous society, while others experienced extreme poverty (The Roaring). People began performing, women wore flapper dresses and smoked; it was very much a popular time to be bold. One major event that contributed to the culture change in the 1920s was the ban on alcohol. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution banned the manufacture and sale of liquors, which closed every bar and tavern around. Even though it was illegal to sell alcohol, people still found a way to purchase it through speakeasies. Young people had the time of their lives during the early 1920s by attending parties every weekend containing excessive alcohol. Many of the older generations, however, were unsure of this new culture because it was so different from the norm. Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the contemporary city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back to an earlier time.

The Great Gatsby takes place in the heat of the nineteen-twenties where countries, especially the United States, were economically booming after having recovered from World War One. This novel tells the tales of the fabulously rich while acknowledging, in part, the poor, working class who live during this time. In his work, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the characters and their actions in an unexpected fashion. He does not illustrate the triumphs of the twenties in a positive light, but, instead, mocks societal views by portraying them as full of: greed, falseness, and carelessness.

Although Anzia Yezierska’s novel Breadgivers (1925) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby have many differences, I believe that the similarities between the two are the most important to understanding the 1920’s in American culture. These novels excellently represent two completely different sides of American culture during this period of time while also making a unified statement about the issues and concerns facing Americans, particularly young, impressionable adults, at the time.

In 1920s, America undergoes a period of cultural and social revolution. After the shocks by the chaos and violence of WWI, with a burst of economy which brought unprecedented levels of prosperity to the country, the generation turned into a lifestyle of wild and extravagant. Both published in 1925, the time when the jazz age at it’s peak, “The great Gatsby” by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway depict the fragmentation of the soared society by narrating the experience of characters.

The 1920s were a time of big dreams, moral decline, and hardships in America . The Roaring Twenties were a different time altogether with its bootleggers and speakeasies, women becoming more independent, the poor becoming poorer, but through all this was The American Dream keeping the hope afloat. F. Scott Fitzgerald captured this era in his book, The Great Gatsby. Through his many symbols he illustrates the hopes, the forgotten God, and the oppressed Americans of the Twenties. The symbols in The Great Gatsby help convey several different themes, from wealth to loss of morals, to poverty.

The main characters in both F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and William Shakespeare's Macbeth appear stable and successful on the outside, but inside they are engaged in a constant struggle with their dreams. Gatsby tries to win back the girl of his dreams by becoming something he's not, a member of high society; while Macbeth believes the prediction of the witches that he will be king and spends his life trying to make it come true. Both characters are willing to risk everything in pursuit of their respective dreams, including committing crimes. Both are motivated to take these risks by a woman. And both inevitably suffer premature demises.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is ultimately a love story, which portrays the 1920’s also known as the roaring twenties, as an era focused on money, greed, corruption, obsession, and the pursuit of pleasure in the American people. Gatsby proceeds to criticize the atmosphere in American at the time in regards to the current way of life through the American dream of prosperity and material excess.

The era known as the Roaring Twenties was a time of immense joy, opportunity and prosperity. Unfortunately, the 1920’s was also a period where greed, corruption and organized crime took a firm foothold. The exuberant happiness of the time was only trumped by its gap between the rich and the poor. The novel shows the true face of the so-called Age of Wonderful Nonsense with the writer’s own personal conflict. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s groundbreaking novel The Great Gatsby has stood the test of time with its messages of how corruption, extravagance, and overindulgence can destroy people’s lives and relationships.

The 1920s was a time of dramatic change, innovations, and political revolutions, all which sparked an uprise in society. During this timeframe, the upper class continued to prosper, while the lower class remained poor. The “roaring twenties” took place between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1930-1945) F. Scott Fitzgerald displays these unavoidable changes, such as the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, younger people, such as main character, Jay Gatsby making “new money”, the passing of older money to younger generations, causing a gap between social classes and a break between the war period in his novel, The Great Gatsby.

During the 1920s in America, our ‘great’ country was the land of golden opportunities. The 1920s have a reputation for being a glamorous decade where people lived in prosperity and happiness. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Great Gatsby’ touches on this era and embodies the so-called “Roaring Twenties”. It got the name ‘Roaring Twenties’ because of its riotous fun, loud music and seemingly carefree and wild enjoyment attitude towards everyone. I have written this essay to explore whether or not if the 20s really ‘roared’ for everyone as it lead on, as well as which groups found the 1920s to be a time of wealth and indulgence, and which groups found this to be a time of poverty and intolerance..

Consumption and materialism were both taken to new and extreme heights on the eastern coast of America in the Roaring Twenties. Consumption, and especially materialism were always hallmarks of the elite upper class aristocracy of any culture in any time period, but with the new technology, urbanization, the consolidation of funds via the world stock market, and a brand new breed of elite, called millionaires, evolved the upper class culture beyond anything any human had seen before. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald imbues a story with many themes and qualities from his own life, reflected in the parallels between his own history and that of Gatsby and Nick Carraway. With new, unbridled, booming economic growth, what started as the Great American Dream became a vulgar, empty, greedy pursuit of material goods. On top of this rise in national wealth, the addition of disillusioned World War I veterans looking to grab the American Dream and use it to hoist themselves up in the world, and the 18th Amendment’s creation of a thriving and powerful organized criminal underworld gave birth to a new America, with unprecedented levels of consumption and wealth.

The 1920s was a decade of superficial affluence, poverty, and disillusionment among American society. The Great War of the previous decade caused a lot of distress and made many Americans rethink their role in the world and how they viewed themselves. One of the greatest critics of the decade was a man named F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote many novels that evaluated the decade and many of its societal norms. In his greatest novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald follows the life of a man named Gatsby through the eyes of the narrator, Nick Carraway. Despite the fact that this novel was written in a time long gone where the circumstances of life were very different, Fitzgerald’s novel is very relevant to 2018, and it still should be taught in classes