The Great Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Great Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald
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The Roaring Twenties

• Age of decadence
• Flappers
• Time of prohibition (1920-1933)
• Herbert Hoover
• Jazz Age

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Images of Flappers
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Ford Model T
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More Images of Flappers
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The Great Gatsby

• Novel invites the reader to enter the Jazz Age
  fast cars, wild parties, and shady business
  dealings
• Promotes discussion of values-glittering world of
  the Roaring Twenties as well as the artificiality
  and moral bankruptcy of the society Fitzgerald
  depicts
• Gatsbys world is characterized by excessive
  opulence

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Novels Structure

• Excellent example of the first person
  retrospective point of view Nick
• Technical demands on author when uses a central
  intelligence effective in charting growth in the
  insight of a narrating character
• Uses complex chronology, shifts back and forth
  between the present and the past
• Provides a complete picture of the protagonist
  only at the end of the work
• Typical of modern literature
• Uses imagery clusters can easily trace the
  patterns of images that Fitzgerald emphasizes

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Short Stories Major source of income before
  moving to Hollywood in 1937
• Lived off of income from stories-stories only
  financed his novels
• Wrote with The Fitzgerald Touch wit, sharp
  observations, dazzling descriptions or the felt
  emotion
• Resented the work that went into his novels
• Most of his readers only knew him as a writer of
  short stories
• His concern was the deterioration of the American
  Dream

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The Lost Generation

• Group of post WWI writers who became
  disillusioned with society
• Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, TS Eliot
• Ex-Patriots
• Disliked Victorian notions of morality

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• "That was always my experience-- a poor boy in a
  rich town a poor boy in a rich boy's school a
  poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton ... .
  However, I have never been able to forgive the
  rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire
  life and works."
• -F. Scott Fitzgerald