The Great Gatsby

Everything you need to know before reading

The Great Gatsby

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What do you already know about America in the 1920s?

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Index

07. CHARACTERS

01. Modernism

04. THE American Dream

08. map

02. DISILLUSIONMENT & THE LOST GENERATION

05. THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN

09. timeline

03. Economy & Class

06. The Jazz Age

10. AUTHOR's CRAFT

section 01

Modernism

• What is modernism in literature?

• What are the characteristics of modernist literature?

• Who are some of the most famous modernist authors and poets?

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Modernism in Literature

section 01

• Modernist literature is a genre of fiction writing, popular from roughly the 1910s into the 1960s. Modernist literature came into its own due to increasing industrialization and globalization. New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but specifically World War I) made many people question the future of humanity:

What was becoming of the world?

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Source: Cliffs Notes

Modernism in Literature

section 01

• Writers reacted to this question by turning toward Modernist sentiments. Gone was the Romantic period that focused on nature and being. Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self and consciousness. Instead of progress, the Modernist writer saw a decline of civilization. Instead of new technology, the Modernist writer saw cold machinery and increased capitalism, which alienated the individual and led to loneliness.

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Source: Cliffs Notes

Modernism in Literature

section 01

• Dr. Rebecca Beasley of Oxford explains the appeal of modernist literature: "What’s most inspirational about modernism, in my view, is its determination to question the basic assumptions of our lives, and art’s relation to them. Everything is up for grabs—from how we think, to what kind of world we should live in, from the impact of new technologies, to what kind of role the artist should play in contemporary life. Reading such literature is invigorating and challenging and, sometimes, difficult."

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Source: writersinspire.org

Characteristics of Modernist Literature

section 01

• Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the Modernist story was often more of a stream of consciousness.
• Symbolism: Far from being restricted to symbols per se, this is also evident in language. Symbolism attempted instead to raise language to expression as opposed to explicit communication of ideas.

• Most Modernist fiction was written in first person.
• Irony, satire, and comparisons were often employed to point out society's ills.
• Modernist literature usually critiques some aspect of society.
• Topics often include loneliness, despair, and disillusionment.

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Source: Cliffs Notes

American Modernist Authors & Poets

section 01

• Ezra Pound
• Ernest Hemingway
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Gertrude Stein
• William Faulkner
• Marianne Moore

• T.S. Eliot,
• Ralph Ellison
• John Steinbeck
• E.E. Cummings
• Sylvia Plath
• F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Source: Cliffs Notes

section 02

Disillusionment & The Lost Generation

• What is disillusionment?

• What was the Lost Generation and why were they disillusioned?

• What were some common themes in the works of Lost Generation writers?

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Disillusionment

section 02

• noun
• the loss of hope or of idealistic beliefs; or the state of having lost such hope or beliefs
• synonyms: let down, disappointment, dismay

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The Lost Generation

section 02

• World War I, originally called the Great War, resulted in more than nine million deaths.
• The Great War became a war of attrition due to the use of trench warfare, in which both sides dug elaborate trenches where they could shelter from the enemy's artillery fire. The trench would be protected by barbed wire. In between the trenches stretched No Man's Land, and troops ordered over the top would have to climb up and cross a considerable space unprotected from the enemy's firearms in order to reach their foes and attack.
• Such a charge usually would gain a side only a small stretch of land, if any, and would result in many deaths.

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The Lost Generation

section 02

• While living in the trenches, conditions were deplorable. Disease was rife: Trench foot, in which soldiers suffered from gangrene and fungus as a result of wet, muddy conditions; Trench fever, which included conjunctivitis, rashes, and headaches; and Trench mouth, or acute gingivitis. At least two million deaths in the trenches resulted from disease.
• In the aftermath of the war there arose a group of young persons known as the "Lost Generation." American novelist Gertrude Stein coined the term, which Hemingway later used as an epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926): "You are all a lost generation."
• This accusation referred to the lack of purpose or drive resulting from the horrific disillusionment felt by those who grew up and lived through the war, and were then in their twenties and thirties.

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The Lost Generation

section 02

• Having seen pointless death on such a huge scale, many people in the generation that grew up during WWI lost faith in traditional values like courage, patriotism, and masculinity.
• Some in turn became aimless, reckless, and focused on material wealth, unable to believe in abstract ideals. They were lost.
• In literature, the "Lost Generation" refers to a group of writers and poets who were men and women of this period. All were American, but several members emigrated to Europe. The most famous members were Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T. S. Eliot.

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The Lost Generation

section 02

Common themes in works of literature by members of the Lost Generation include:1. Decadence

• Consider the lavish parties of James Gatsby in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or those thrown by the characters in his Tales of the Jazz Age. Recall the aimless traveling, drinking, and parties of the circles of expatriates in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. With ideals shattered so thoroughly by the war, for many, hedonism was the result. Lost Generation writers revealed the sordid nature of the shallow, frivolous lives of the young and independently wealthy in the aftermath of the war.

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The Lost Generation

section 02

Common themes in works of literature by members of the Lost Generation include:2. Gender roles

• Faced with the destruction of the idea of warfare as a glamorous, noble calling for a young man, a serious blow was dealt to traditional gender roles and images of masculinity.

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The Lost Generation

section 02

Common themes in works of literature by members of the Lost Generation include:3. Idealised past

• Rather than face the horrors of warfare, many worked to create an idealised but unattainable image of the past, a glossy image with no bearing in reality. The best example is in Gatsby's idealisation of Daisy, his inability to see her as she truly is.

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section 03

economy & Class

What was life like in the 1920s...

• For the rich?

• For the middle class?

• For those in rural communities?

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A Great Time To Be Rich

section 03

• The reputation of the 1920s as the epitome of wretched excess may be unduly biased and somewhat inaccurate, BUT the Roaring '20s were, in fact, a great time to be rich.
• Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (who was an extremely successful investment banker) lowered the top income tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 73% to just 25%.

• Meanwhile, there were also lots of opportunities for profitable investment, thanks to the explosion in new mass-production industries fueled by the spread of technologies like electricity and the assembly line.

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Source: Schmoop

A Great Time To Be Rich

section 03

• Since less than 1% of the American people owned any stock, those fabulous returns in the stock market directly benefited only the wealthy. As a result, there was perhaps the HIGHEST rate of income inequality in American history during this era. We say "perhaps" because good statistical measurements of wealth inequality don't exist for the period before World War I. It's also possible that the income inequality of the 1920s may soon be matched by that of today.
• In any case, the Roaring '20s offered a classic case of the rich getting richer. (Much richer.)

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Source: Schmoop

A Good Time To Be Middle-Class

section 03

• However, the fantastic wealth accrued by the rich during the decade shouldn't obscure the real and sustained gains made by the urban working and middle-classes.
• Notwithstanding the near collapse of the labor movement in 1919 to '21, real wages for urban workers increased by about 20% during the 1920s. Their wage gains were stretched even further due to the falling cost of wonderful new mass-production goods.
• Technologically advanced new products like automobiles, washing machines, and radios became much more affordable as manufacturers mastered the assembly-line techniques developed by Henry Ford's auto plants in Detroit.

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Source: Schmoop

A Good Time To Be Middle-Class

section 03

• Ford's Model T, by far the most popular car sold in America in the first three decades of the 20th century, cost almost $1,000 when it was first introduced in 1908. Thereafter, the Model T's cost fell every single year, so that by 1927—the year it was replaced by the more modern Model A—it cost less than $300. Ford ultimately sold more than 15 million Model T's. During the 1920s, the rate of automobile ownership increased from one car per 15 Americans to one per five.
• While the auto industry remains the iconic example, other industries in mass-production goods followed a similar trajectory during the Roaring '20s.

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Source: Schmoop

Rural America: Left Behind

section 03

• The prosperity of the 1920s wasn't universal. In 1920, nearly half the nation's population still resided in rural areas, dependent upon agriculture for survival. And the Roaring '20s were unkind to America's farmers.
• The decade began with the end of a period of great prosperity. World War I, by disrupting the agricultural production of much of Europe, had created enormous demand and high prices for farm products throughout the world. Farmers in America, like other areas that hadn't been turned into trench-lined battle zones, increased production accordingly and reaped great profits.
• However, the war's end allowed the normal European agricultural production to resume, and suddenly, the world faced a huge excess of agricultural products, with no market of buyers.

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Source: Schmoop

Rural America: Left Behind

section 03

• From 1920 to 1921, farm prices fell at a catastrophic rate. The price of wheat, the staple crop of the Great Plains, fell by almost half. The price of cotton, still the lifeblood of the South, fell by three-quarters. Farmers, many of whom had taken out loans to increase acreage and buy efficient new agricultural machines like tractors, suddenly couldn't make their payments.
• Throughout the decade, farm foreclosures and rural bank failures increased at an alarming rate. Agricultural incomes remained flat, with rural Americans' wealth falling far behind their urban counterparts.

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Source: Schmoop

Rural America: Left Behind

section 03

• It's no great exaggeration to say that for rural America, the Great Depression began not in 1929 but in 1920, and it continued for an entire generation.
• The roaring prosperity of America's cities during the 1920s made the hardship of rural life all the more painful, by contrast.
• The divide between "the haves and the have-nots" in the 1920s was the divide between city and country, and the economic resentments created by that divide helped to fuel a powerful traditionalist backlash against modernity, most menacingly through the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan on a nationwide scale.

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Source: Schmoop

Class in The Great Gatsby

section 03

• Of all the ideas Fitzgerald addresses in The Great Gatsby, perhaps none is more well-developed than his commentary on society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power.
• The Great Gatsby is regarded as a brilliant piece of social commentary, offering a vivid peek into American life in the 1920s.
• Fitzgerald carefully sets up his novel into distinct groups based not just on money, but also social class. By creating distinct social classes (old money, new money, and no money) Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the elitism running throughout every strata of society.

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Source: Cliffs Notes

section 04

THe American Dream

• What is the American Dream?

• How did the American Dream originate?

• The American Dream... or the Gatsby Dream?

• The American Dream and Meritocracy

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How did the American Dream originate?

section 04

• The Declaration of Independence states the principles that underlie the American Dream: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
• The Founding Fathers based the U.S. Constitution—the highest law in the land—on these rights. Each person's desire to pursue happiness was not just self-indulgence, but also drove ambition and creativity. By legally protecting these values, the founders of America created an attractive society for those aspiring to a better life.

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Source: The Balance

What is the American Dream?

section 04

• Some consider the American Dream to be the idea that the government should protect each person's opportunity to pursue their idea of "life, liberty, and happiness."
• The government protects the rights of you and every other American citizen to find their path to economic prosperity. Unlike many other countries, you are not required to follow your father’s profession. Your destiny is not legally determined at birth by caste, religion, or gender. While there is still discrimination, the law protects your right to pursue a better life.
• However, some wonder if the American Dream is dead or threatened. As you read The Great Gatsby, consider what Fitzgerald might be saying about the American Dream.

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Source: The Balance

The American Dream... or The Gatsby Dream?

section 04

• Throughout U.S. history, the definition of "happiness" has changed. In the Roaring 20s, the founders' dream of protecting opportunities receded in favor of acquiring material things. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald warns of the consequences of "the Gastby dream" -- a version of the American Dream that involves everyone having the ability to make lots of money and get lots of stuff.
• Happiness based upon greed is not attainable because someone else always has more, Fitzgerald points out. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, which Fitzgerald could not have predicted when he wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925, proved this theory right.
• However, many Americans are still in love with "the Gatsby Dream," and that dream may be increasingly futile. Moreover, does it actually bring happiness?

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Source: The Balance

The American Dream and Meritocracy

section 04

• Today, the beliefs in the American Dream and meritocracy have merged. According to the American Dream ideology, America is a land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can achieve as much as their own merit allows. One common belief about the American dream is that it "is possible through actions that are under the individual’s direct control."
• Merit is generally defined as a combination of factors including innate abilities, hard work, the right attitude, and high moral character. If a person possesses these qualities and works hard they will be successful.
• Americans not only tend to think meritocracy is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work. However, we know there are also many societal factors that contribute to financial success, and the ability to succeed does not depend solely on the individual.

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Source: Ray Williams

section 05

THE SHIFTING GENDER ROLES OF THE 1920s

• In what ways did the role of women change during the 1920s?

• Women in The Great Gatsby

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Shifting Gender Roles of the 1920s

section 05

• In many ways, Fitzgerald's Jazz Age characters are a fairly honest representation of what could be found in the social circles of the country's younger generation. Many of the men in The Great Gatsby had served in WWI, and like their real-life counterparts, they returned from the war changed. They found the ideas and attitudes waiting for them at home to be representative of an outmoded way of thinking, and so they rebelled.
• The women at home, too, found post-war America to be too constrictive for their tastes. Many women had entered the workforce when the men went to war and were unwilling to give up the by-products of their employment—social and economic freedom — when the men returned from the war. In addition, the Nineteenth Amendment, enacted in 1920, gave white women the right to vote. (Voting was not a reality for Black women until 1965.) In the 1920s, young men and women (including Fitzgerald himself) refused to be content maintaining the status quo, and so they openly and wholeheartedly rebelled.

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Source: Cliffs Notes

Shifting Gender Roles of the 1920s

section 05

• Socially, the 1920s marked an era of great change, particularly for women. In a symbolic show of emancipation, women bobbed their hair, that one great indicator of traditional femininity. To complement their more masculine look, women also began to give up wearing corsets (the restrictive undergarment intended to accentuate a woman's hips, waist, and chest) as if to reinvent themselves according to their own rules. Other things women did that were previously unheard of included smoking and drinking openly, as well as relaxing formerly rigid attitudes toward sex.
• No cultural symbol of the 1920s is more recognizable than the flappers--young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral, or dangerous. Designers like Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli ruled flapper fashion: shorter dresses, more revealing necklines, and straight, slim silouhettes.

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Source: Cliffs Notes & History.com

Shifting Gender Roles of the 1920s

section 05

• Women also joined the workforce in increasing numbers, participated actively in the nations new mass consumer culture, and enjoyed more freedom in their personal lives. Despite the heady freedoms embodied by the flapper, real liberation and equality for women remained elusive in the 1920s, and it would be left to later generations of women to fully benefit from the social changes the decade set in motion.
• For the most part, the increase of working women didn't represent a challenge to traditional gender roles. Nearly a third of working women in the 1920s were domestic servants, while the rest were clerical workers, factory workers, and other "feminized " professions.

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Source: Cliffs Notes & History.com

Women in The Great Gatsby

section 05

Fitzgerald picks up on the social rebellion of his peers particularly well in The Great Gatsby. He shows women of all classes who are breaking out of the molds that society had placed them into.

• Myrtle, for instance, wishes to climb the social ladder, and so she is determined to do so at all costs, even at the cost of her own marriage.
• Daisy, a stereotypical wealthy, married, "society" woman, attempts to break away from the restrictive high society in which she was raised.
• Jordan Baker, too, is a liberated woman. She is single and cynical and passes time as a professional golfer, a profession made possible largely because of the social and economic progress of the 1920s.

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Source: Cliffs Notes

section 06

The Jazz Age

• What is the Jazz Age?
• How did jazz represent what was happening on a larger cultural level in the 1920s?

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Image Source: Vexels

The Jazz Age

section 06

• If freedom was the mindset of the Roaring Twenties, then jazz was the soundtrack. The Jazz Age was a cultural period and movement that took place in America during the 1920s from which both new styles of music and dance emerged. Largely credited to African Americans employing new musical techniques along with traditional African traditions, jazz soon expanded to America’s white middle class.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) was actually the one who termed the 1920s "the Jazz Age." With its earthy rhythms, fast beat, and improvisational style, jazz symbolized the decade's spirit of liberation. At the same time, new dance styles arose, involving spontaneous movements and closer physical contact between partners.

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Source: Lumen Learning

The Jazz Age

section 06

• African American jazz was played more frequently on urban radio stations than on their suburban counterparts. Young people of the 1920s were influenced by jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations, a rebellion that went hand-in hand with fads such as the bold fashion statements of the flappers and new radio concerts.
• Dances such as the Charleston, developed by African Americans, instantly became popular among different demographics. With the introduction of large-scale radio broadcasts in 1922, Americans were ablt to experience different styles of music without physically visiting a club. The radio provided Americans with a trendy new avenue for exploring unfamiliar cultural experiences from the comfort of their living rooms.

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Source: Lumen Learning

The Jazz Age

section 06

• In fact, the 1920s was a decade of deep cultural division, pitting a more modernist, urban culture against a more traditionalist, rural culture. The decade witnessed a titanic struggle between an old and a new America as well as the rise of a modern consumer economy and mass entertainment. All of these themes were played out in the nation's music.

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Source: Digital History

section 07, 08 & 09

Characters, Map & Timeline

• Who are the characters of The Great Gatsby?

• Where does The Great Gatsby take place?

• How does the timeline of The Great Gatsby fit in history?

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section 07

Characters of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story. The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby, is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a mansion in West Egg. Daisy Buchanan is Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, Tom, was once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Myrtle Wilson is Tom’s lover, whose husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes.

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section 08

A Map of The Great Gatsby

The action of The Great Gatsby takes place along a corridor stretching from New York City to the suburbs known as West and East Egg. West and East Egg serve as stand-ins for the real life locations of two peninsulas along the northern shore of Long Island. Midway between the Eggs and Manhattan lies the “valley of ashes.” This corridor between New York and the suburbs encompasses the full range of social class.

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Brief Timeline

section 09

1914

1907

1919

1917

James Gatz meets Dan Cody, learns how the rich operate, and becomes Jay Gatsby.

Gatsby is stationed in Lousiville where he meets Daisy. They quickly fall in love, but Gatsby leaves to fight in Europe. The war ends in 1918.

WWI begins.

Daisy reluctantly marries Tom Buchanan.

June 1922

1920

1924

Nov. 1922

Nick moves to New York to learn trading and rents a small house next to Gatsby’s mansion.

Prohibition goes into effect, spurring widespread organized crime.

Nick writes the story of Gatsby and the summer of 1922--the novel that we are reading.

The events of the book end.

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section 10

AUTHOR'S CRAFT TECHNIQUES

• What author's craft techniques does Fitzgerald use in The Great Gatsby?

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Author's Craft

section 10

DICTION

MOOD

SYMBOLISM

Read more

FLASHBACK

ANTIHERO

POINT OF VIEW

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Diction

section 10

• At one point, a "junior version" of The Great Gatsby was released, retold for intermediate readers. Let's take a look at one section from Chapter 1 and compare it to the original:

• Retold version

• Original version

Infinitely better, isn’t it? But why? What good does all that extra writing do?

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Diction

section 10

• First, it gives us a sensory experience rather than merely conveying information. That is, we get to witness this wind for ourselves. We see it, hear it and feel it.

• Second, the imagery in the scene parallels the action of the novel and the characters. Our introduction to Daisy is one of openness and movement. Tom is the one puts a sharp end to the ethereal scene. These details help us infer the dynamics of the story, the characters, and their relationships.

• Third, the precise, vivid, metaphorical language develops the novel’s emotional arc. The room is “bright” and “rosy-colored” and “fragilely bound into the house.” There is also a “wedding-cake” ceiling, which captures that frosted texture perfectly, and contrasts with Tom & Daisy's less than ideal marriage.

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Diction

section 10

• Now, this is only page eight! At this point, readers haven’t been introduced to Gatsby and don't have a true grasp of the complexities being developed here.

• But that doesn’t mean it has no effect. These things build and resonate even when readers aren’t aware of them. That’s why stories so often leave us with an emotional experience we don’t fully understand. It’s why stories can move us even when we can’t explain why we are moved.

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Diction

section 10

• And that’s what gives stories their value—they’re aimed at our hearts, not our heads. Understanding that there is a wind isn’t the same as experiencing it.
• As American author Flannery O’Connor puts it:

" A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. [. . .] When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning. "

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Antihero

section 10

• From jealousy to self-doubt, antiheroes reflect the very mortal weaknesses that can be found within all of us.
• Watch this quick video about the

history and context of the antihero.

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Antihero

section 10

• A protagonist who is notably lacking heroic qualities; often cynical, feels rejected by society, lacks remorse for poor choices, but they have good intentions and are likeable and despite their downfalls.
• Unorthodox in actions—acts contrary to society’s standards. In fact, this is what often makes an anti-hero heroic. They challenge the status quo!

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Antihero

section 10

• Will have the reader’s sympathy—although this is sometimes difficult for us!
• Has significant imperfections; usually somewhat selfish
• His or her conflicts are largely internal – we learn about these during the course of the story.
• Is often an outsider
• Often riddled with paradoxical traits– ex: is a loner, but also seeks friendship
• Usually would not be consiered a role model.
• They often make bad choices because it’s easier. and show little remorse for bad behavior.

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Antihero

section 10

• In what ways is Gatsby an antihero?
• What is the purpose? Why would Fitzgerald write Gatsby as an antihero?
• How does this impact the novel?

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Enjoy reading!