The Roaring 20s

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The Roaring 20s
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The Jazz Age

• The 1920s were known as the Jazz Age and the
  era of Prohibition. Fitzgeralds work portrays a
  slice of New York during this time.
• After WWI, the country experienced prosperity
  and optimism. This was especially true in NY.
• The country saw many social and technological
  changes that revolutionized American life
• - telephone
• - movies newsreels
• - electricity
• - radio
• - automobile
• - suburbs
• - time for leisure pleasure
• Americans became obsessed with the frivolous -
  alcohol, music, dancing, and promiscuous
  behavior

3
Post World War I

• Modern warfare (automatic chemical weapons) led
  many people to
• question traditional beliefs Americans left
  with sense of alienation,
• isolation, disillusionment

• Those returning from war experienced
  restlessness and boredom with the status quo.

4
Historic and Cultural Events

• Women were given the right to vote. They
  experienced new freedom and financial
  independence.
• Flappers were this new type of young women who
  wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, wore
  makeup, drank alcohol, smoked and listened to
  Jazz music.
• A bob cut is a short haircut that was created
  in Paris and made popular by the flappers.
• The Waldorf-Astoria began to serve food to women
  who were not accompanied by a man. This was
  unheard of and was scandalous.
• The popular dances of the time were the
  Charleston, the Black Bottom and the Shimmy.

5

• Prohibition brought with it the speakeasy,
  bootlegging, rum running, and organized crime.
  The most famous were Al Capone, Lucky Luciano,
  Bugsy Siegel and Dutch Schultz.
• Dance marathons became the rage starting in 1923
• Harry Houdini and baseball were very popular
  during this time.
• This was the time of the Harlem Renaissance, but
  also when the KKK had it highest enrollment.

6
Historic and Cultural Events

• The Miss America contest started in Atlantic City
  in 1921. The first winner, Margaret Gorman, was
  sixteen.
• Charles Lindbergh flew the first Transatlantic
  flight, from NY to Paris.
• The average income was 1236 yr. and for teachers
  it was 970 yr.
• Life expectancy was 54 yrs. old.
• It took 13 days to go from NY to Calif.
• Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan debate
  evolution in the Scopes trial.
• Leopold and Loeb killed a 13 yr old, just to see
  how it felt. They were defended by Clarence
  Darrow.
• Movies were becoming more popular. The first
  movies were silent movies, but sound was added in
  the 1920s, as a sound track that was played
  along with the movie. The first theatres were
  called Nickelodeons.

7
Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald(1896-1940)

• Fitzgerald began to write this story in 1922 and
  it was published in 1925.
• He based the story partly on his life, where he
  was living when he started it and on the people
  and lifestyle he experienced there.
• Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Mary McQuillan
  Edward Fitzgerald
• He was named after the author of the National
  Anthem, who was a distant cousin.
• Midwesterner whose family had
• social pretensions, but not enough money (his
  mothers family is wealthy but his father is
  unsuccessful at business so money is always an
  issue)
• charm and good looks
• traveled in best social circles but were aware
  of gap in wealth

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• He is poor but he attends prep schools, - St.
  Paul Academy (MN) the Newman School (NJ) but
  feels like an outsider.

• He went to Princeton, and fell in love with
  Ginevra King, a wealthy socialite whom he met in
  1915, but didnt graduate.
• He went into the army in 1917.
• When he was stationed in Alabama, he met his
  future wife, Zelda. She was the daughter of an
  Alabama Supreme Court judge.

King was the inspiration for many of his
characters including Daisy Buchanan
Edith Cummings- friend of King and inspiration
for Jordan Baker
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• At this time he was working on his first novel,
  but it was rejected.
• Zelda would not marry him because he did not make
  enough money.
• He was 24 when his first novel, This Side of
  Paradise, a story which captured the hope of
  success and the fear of failure and poverty, was
  published.
• He became an instant celebrity and was able to
  marry Zelda.
• Fame and fortune went to their heads and they
  lived an extravagant lifestyle- wild, crazy,
  drunk, adulterous. They did have a daughter,
  Scottie.
• They moved to Europe in 1923, so that he could
  write in peace. It was during this time that he
  met Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra
  Pound. They were known as the Lost Generation

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End of life

• When they came back to America, Fitzgerald tried
  to write scripts for Hollywood, but this didnt
  last long. He would later go back to Hollywood.
• Although he wrote and sold many stories, he was
  always in debt. His alcoholism contributed to
  that along with Zeldas behavior. They were not
  getting along and when Zelda wrote her novel it
  caused him bitterness and resentment and they
  grew apart.
• Zeldas behavior became erratic and she was
  hospitalized for mental problems throughout the
  rest of her life. She died in a fire while a
  patient at a hospital in 1948.
• He wrote four novels and was in the middle of his
  fifth when he died in 1940, at the age of 44.

12
Critics say that although Fitzgerald was obsessed
with the romance of a glamorous life, and he
pursued it for the majority of his life, he
understood the corruption such a life produced
and The Great Gatsby was the last stage of
illusion in this absurd chase.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past.