Literary Influences Of The 1930's

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby focuses on the excitement and adventure of the roaring twenties, a time filled with great economic success and parties said to last the whole decade. New to Long Island and New York, aspiring bond man Nick Carraway becomes infatuated with the lifestyle of his rich peers living the “American dream”. He gains interest in his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, who lives in an incredible mansion and has a vast amount of wealth. Gatsby uses his money to try and steal his love, Daisy Buchanan from her unfaithful husband, Tom. Characters in The Great Gatsby are unhappy and unfulfilled with their lives due to greed manipulating their view of The American Dream. This skewed perception also affects their unreasonable life expectations and their narcissistic thoughts create a larger potential for failure, such as Gatsby’s extravagant plan to steal Daisy Buchanan.

Using Daisy and Gatsby as illustrations, he implies that the world of the Roaring Twenties was really corrupt, careless, and harmful and that the American Dream is unreachable and unrealistic. Fitzgerald, through Nick Carraway, depicts the wealthy as having a “quality of distortion…beyond [the] eyes’ power of correction” (176). Fitzgerald expends his full opinion of America’s elite through Nick’s disillusionment with Daisy and Tom Buchanan, calling them “careless people….[smashing] up things and creatures and then [retreating] back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together” (179). Basically, Fitzgerald accuses them of being destructive, selfish, and careless, assuming they have the right to be such things because of their wealth and social status. They’re just as destructive and corrupt as anyone else—if not more so—but they have the option to retreat and “let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald, 179) because of their financial and social status. With Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows the unreality of the American Dream. Gatsby “had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”—but “it was already behind him” (Fitzgerald, 180). Though Gatsby planned his future around his dream of Daisy, he died still living in the past. Fitzgerald asserts that the same outcome is destined for all who chase the American Dream. Although it seems so close that they can hardly fail to grasp it, the dream eludes them, receding year by year. They convince themselves that tomorrow they’ll “run faster, stretch out [their] arms father…and one fine morning” they’ll finally seize it—but they really never do (Fitzgerald, 180). Fitzgerald says it’s like “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

The 1920s, or the “Roaring Twenties”, evolved to be known as the “Decade of Prosperity”. This title of the 1920s gave credit to the new technologies, advanced medicine, and a flourishing economy. The “Decade of Prosperity” came about when the younger people of the generation began to rebel against old laws and traditions of the older people’s generation. All of these new and upcoming inventions during this time helped to build up the 1920s and make it prosper as much as possible. Although these profound inventions and technologies helped benefit The Twenties, they had a major downside to them as well. New types of cars and ways of transportation inflicted a major trafficking problem. People who were not used to

The Roaring Twenties were a time of leisure and parties. The media and events surrounding this time period greatly impacted the carefree, extravagant lifestyle. This era was one of the most dramatic and energetic times in American history. To many, the symbols of the roaring Twenties were F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, due to their tales of the young and the wealthy (Hanson 96). The Roaring Twenties influenced many literary works, throughout the 1920s such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.

writer of the 1920s was F. Scott Fitzgerald whose most famous novel, The Great Gatsby,

The materialistic nature during the twenties was everywhere. Some Americans embraced it and some attacked it. For President Calvin Coolidge and his followers it was embraced: “Sharing so visibly in the wealth of society, more and more Americans came to feel that the booming Coolidge economy was working for them”(Nash 379). The wealthy nation satisfied materialistic Americans and Coolidge became a prominent leader. For American writers, materialism was attacked and “they questioned the society that placed more importance on money and material goods…”(Nash 390). Leading to their fame in literature, the writers who were concerned with American materialism moved to Europe. Materialism lead to prominence in 1920s America just as it did in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby’s prominence is an aspect of how Americans used materialism in the 1920s. One way materialism is shown is through fashion.

The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, echoes its era, and predicts its tragic end. In the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald “revealed the negative side of the period’s gaiety and freedom, portraying wealthy and attractive people leading imperiled lives in gilded surroundings” (Danzer 656).It illustrate “the dying American Dream and the corruption of historical values”(Bewley 23). The wealthy characters in the book are careless, materialistic and empty, showing the corrupt side of the American Dream, but Gatsby is different. In the novel, Nick describes him as having “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again” (Fitzgerald 2).He kept believing and fighting for his dreams to the very end, even after it became clear that Daisy would not leave Tom to stay with him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was fascinated by fame and fortune throughout his lifetime. His characters were as well. His modernist writing style often reflected how greed and a materialistic attitude destroyed people and condemned them from the start. Most of his novels were set in the midst of the roaring twenties where action and the city life engulfed people each night to the point where all problems seemed forgotten. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald wrote to expose how materialistic people struggled to find themselves while they lost faith in the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, the main character and narrator, Nick

After World War I ended, America appeared to be a promise land of opportunities for people who are willing to work for it. However, for some, it corrupted them as they set to reach the American dream by acquiring wealth for the only purpose to pursue pleasure. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald showing that no one is unaffected by the corruption. This novel is seen through the eyes of Nick Carraway, who moves from the mid-west to west-egg to chase his American dream. He observes the people and events around him as he follows the attempts of his neighbor Jay Gatsby, to gain back Daisy Buchanan’s love. Through the novel, characters appear to enjoy the freedom of the 1920s, but it comes to an end as characters are

The Great Gatsby a, novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows a cast of characters abiding in the town of East and West Egg on affluent Long Island in the summer of 1922. Each of the characters, while part of the same story line, have different priorities and agendas, each character working towards achieving what they think would benefit them the most. As The Great Gatsby’s plot thickens the characters constantly show their discontent of the American Dream that they are living, always expressing their greed for more, three particular offenders of this deadly sin are Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself. The characters motives stem from a mixture of boredom, a need and longing for the american dream, and simple selfish human

The 1920’s is seen as the great decade of innovation, progress, and economic growth. It is considered a decade in which people could thrive off of. It was the beginning of women’s rights and their participation in politics. The jazz era also thrived but also had some obstacles along the way. During the 1920’s there were innovations of home appliances and the assembly line that was used to manufacture cars. However, these innovations and “progress” only benefitted a specific group of individuals, and those who were not in this group of people, were badly impacted. Although the 1920’s brought progressive changes, such as innovations and economic growth for the higher class Americans, immigrants and individuals of lesser status were not thriving

The roaring twenties, an American era of urban excellence, the rich became richer, the alcoholics became drunker, the war was over and men and women alike were thriving! In the novel The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is writing about his experiences falling into the hands of filthy wealth, a colorful, dazzlingly loud lifestyle of his neighbor Jay Gatsby and his incredible parties. He soon finds himself caught up in a love story from the past of his cousin Daisy Buchanans and his new neighbor’s affairs, even more so, becomes attached to the hip with Gatsby, devoted to him. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together, (154)’ Nick Carraway shouts some of the last words Gatsby would hear. As times were still racist, sexist, and non-accepting of certain identities, F. Scott Fitzgerald possibly added homosexual tendencies within his novel, with a small book with less than two-hundred pages wrote from the perspective of a character’s past there was no room for random coincidences. With metaphors and thrown in ellipses, it was no mistake what the author intended, with the extra mile that Nick was a respectably honest narrator who put details into some interesting places or added in some events with no other information, as if he didn’t intend to speak of it in the first place.

During the 1920's American culture was centered around status and wealth, especially in the east, in hopes of living the true "American dream". Although most people became shallow, empty, and careless in their paths to wealth, often hurting those who have less then them, and making them pay the consequences of their immoral actions. But Jay Gatsby was unlike every other hollow person in the East, because he had something to live for, fight for, and dream for; Daisy Buchanan. His love for her gave him the strength to keep believing in the American dream and the drive to accomplish it. Gatsby restores Nicks faith in the people of the 1920's by showing him that not everyone is shallow and selfish, and that in order to live the American dream, hope and determination can not be lost.

The themes of the American people and idealism can all be found in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby. The novel’s protagonist Nick is a new arrival in New York City and moves into a residence adjacent to the mansion of the novel’s primary focus and namesake, Jay Gatsby. A mysterious aura of speculation, conspiracy, and illegalness surrounds the man and Nick gradually becomes immersed into this world of enormous parties, celebration, and bacchanale; with the formal meeting of Nick and Gatsby, does the past and ambitions of Gatsby come to light as a rags-to-riches tale whose sole presence as the big man of west egg has only one intention: courting his former lover Daisy, Nick’s cousin. Separated by the war, Daisy has assumed a marriage with

Professor Brattoli ”American literature is almost always tied to historical and social events of the era in which it was written.”