1) The document analyzes how F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby accurately portrays various aspects of 1920s America, including the lavish parties of the Jazz Age, the domineering behavior of men towards women, and women embracing their newfound independence and superficiality. 2) It discusses how the novel depicts the men like Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby as possessive and controlling, as was common for men in the 1920s. The women like Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle are shown as foolish, careless and manipulating men, reflecting the flapper culture of the time period. 3) Elements of the booming economy and new inventions, wealth and Prohibition are

1. Amanda Iliadis
Ms. Maynard
ENG3UI-O4
April 2nd
, 2013
The Great Gatsby: 1920s America
Many great authors in the history of literature have attempted to express the view of the 1920s
within their writing. There happens to be one specific author who has achieved that accomplishment.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has many themes illustrating America in the 1920s. The ‘Jazz
Age’ was the period of time that sparked excitement and celebration during this decade. Music,
dancing, glamour, and carelessness made people feel more alive. In the novel, Jay Gatsby holds most of
the rich, expensive parties, which signifies the extravagance of the 1920s. Men in that era were over
possessive, controlling, and sometimes even abusive. The characters; Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are
men who truly portray what men were like in that era. Their behaviour depicts a possessive attitude
towards Daisy Buchanan, and a controlling nature towards everyone else. The behaviour of women in
this era, was completely opposite to that of men, in that they were emotionally and physically weak.
They presented themselves in a selfish, careless, and artificial manner. In the 1920s, women caught on
to the idea that their behaviour was attractive to men, so they decided to manipulate them by using this
method to obtain whatever they wanted out of life. In the novel, all the women including Daisy
Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Myrtle Wilson had the same qualities as if they were all raised together
when they were growing up. They always present themselves as vulnerable and superficial to try to be
more appealing. The economy was booming in the ‘Roaring 20s’. New money was being introduced,
along with new rules and inventions. In the novel, there is much controversy about wealth in West Egg
and East Egg. A major aspect had to do
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2. with Jay Gatsby and his relationship in the Prohibition; which only became known two years prior to the
year the novel was set. The Great Gatsby is a perfect representation of the ‘Jazz Age’, men, women, and
the economy of 1920s America.
The ‘Jazz Age’ which was introduced in 1920 and carried on for the remainder of the decade,
was a time when the parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the morals were looser, and the liquor
was cheaper. In The Great Gatsby everyone was either; giddy, drunk, or sleazy during the elaborate
parties in which they all attended. The ‘Great War’ was finally over and everybody wanted to celebrate
the coming of a decade filled with happiness rather than total depression. No one bothered to care who
were at the parties, only that they had a good time. Finally, people started to regain their wealth and
popularity. The Roaring Twenties, the Boom, the ‘Jazz Age’ was a period of “wild economic prosperity,
cultural flowering, and a shaking up of social morals” (F. Scott Fitz…). Jay Gatsby holds a party every
fortnight to increase his popularity hoping that one day Daisy Buchanan will walk through the front
door. In the 1920s era, parties were constantly being held however most people would just show up
without being invited, knowing the host, or being introduced to any of the other guests. During
Gatsby’s first party of the summer, guests would “[come] and [go] without having met Gatsby at all,
came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket for admission” (Fitzgerald, 45).
The morals also became a lot looser. People would engage in inappropriate frivolity with one another,
without a thought to who that person really was. The air always seems alive “with chatter and laughter
and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meeting[s] between
women who never knew each other’s names” (Fitzgerald, 44). One woman named Lucille at Gatsby’s
party said that she ‘likes to come… [she] never care[s] what [she] [does], so [she] always [has] a good
time” (Fitzgerald, 47). In this era, everything was more expensive and gaudy. The rich bought
everything in their reach and put out an enormous presentation of food,
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3. decoration, and design into their parties to give the highest of good impressions to their guests. Jay
Gatsby arranges his home in this exact way. He makes sure that he has servants and caterers ready
every second weekend to help him prepare his celebrations. Usually a corps of caterers came down
“with several hundred feet of canvas and enough lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous
garden.” (Fitzgerald, 44). Food was also an important gesture for parties in the 1920s. Gatsby’s cooks
set up buffet tables, “garnished with glistening hors d’oeurve, spiced baked hams crowded against salads
of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold” (Fitzgerald, 44). The ‘Jazz
Age’ was thoroughly expressed in The Great Gatsby and therefore matched perfectly to that of America
in the 1920s.
Men in 1920s America had a domineering and over-possessive disposition towards their women
which verifies that men did not treat women right. The differences between males and females in this
era is what set them apart, causing females to flee to other, new men. In The Great Gatsby Tom
Buchanan and Jay Gatsby have an over-bearing possessive and controlling demeanor. Gatsby is obsessed
with Daisy Buchanan and Tom is always trying to control her. Before the prohibition act, men were
much worse because they “would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to
provide for their children” which was completely unfair (Teaching with…). However since the ban of
alcohol, men lost their selfish attitude and rebelled more-so causing other problems with their wives
then in the past. In the novel, Nick Carraway goes to East Egg to visit his cousin Daisy. Tom Buchanan
has the spotlight during his first introduction which already sets the mood for his controlling and
domineering personality throughout the rest of the novel. Tom is a “sturdy…man…with a rather hard
mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes have established dominance…a body
capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body” (Fitzgerald, 11). Later on, Tom and Nick go to meet Myrtle’s
family at a party she put
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4. together with her parents. Tom, being the prime example of a man who loses his temper, is abusive
toward Myrtle. After Myrtle repeatedly mentions Daisy’s name, “making a short deft movement Tom
Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand” (Fitzgerald, 41). This shows how quickly a man in that
day could lose his temper. Fitzgerald made it more descriptive when he described the scene. There
were “bloody towels upon the bathroom floor and women’s voices scolding, and …a long broken wail of
pain” (Fitzgerald, 41). Jay Gatsby is the other man in the novel who seems to really portray a possessive
and controlling behaviour. Jay Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan to the point of having a whole
photo album full of her pictures. However this possession continues to escalate throughout the novel to
a peak point in which he controls her future decisions. He claims “You’re not going to take care of her
anymore…Daisy’s leaving you” to Tom during their fight in the hotel room (Fitzgerald, 140). This is
when it looks like Gatsby is losing his mind because this obsession has gone on for too long. Therefore
Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are exactly the male personas taken up by American men during the
1920s.
Women, who were known as ‘Flappers’ in the 1920s carried themselves in a superficial way, were
sexually-free, and only cared about their personal success. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, and
Myrtle all possess these characteristics which are a code to how women should have been acting in that
time period. The typical woman (or Flapper) “in America…has always been a giddy, attractive and
slightly unconventional young thing who was a somewhat foolish girl, full of wild surmises and inclined
to revolt against the precepts and admonitions of her elders” (Rosenburg). Daisy Buchanan talks to
Nick about her and Tom’s daughter Pammy and what she said when the nurse told her that Pammy was
a girl. She claims she is “glad it’s a girl” and she “hopes she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can
be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald, 21). This shows that during the 1920s, women were
always classified as fools because of their behaviour and attitude towards others. They put themselves
into that category and
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5. therefore the children being born into the 20s were going to fall into that category as well. Later on in
the novel, Nick describes how Myrtle Wilson completely ignores her husband George to see Tom
Buchanan…the man involved in her affair. Nick describes it that “she smiles slowly and walking through
her husband as if he were a ghost [shakes] hands with Tom…wet[ing] her lips” (Fitzgerald, 30). Another
example of a woman who is careless is Jordan Baker. She and Nick were at Gatsby’s party and as with
all the other women, she rather partake in inappropriate things. Once it is midnight, she wants to “get
out” because “this is too polite for [her]” (Fitzgerald, 49). There is another woman at the party with
whom Jordan and Nick sit with at the table. She is “a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest
provocation to uncontrollable laughter” (Fitzgerald, 51). In actual fact, the message Fitzgerald is trying
to get across is that this girl is drunk not just a girl who loved to laugh. She is not even a ‘little girl’.
However she is a woman depicted as a little girl because of her uncontrollable laughter and childish
disposition. Women were illustrated as naïve, young, impressionable fools in the 1920s. Women in The
Great Gatsby are a precise translation of women from America in the 1920s.
America in the 1920s was a very prosperous time when new rules and inventions were coming
into motion including; new cars, new money, and the Prohibition. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby
drives a Rolls-Royce which was an extremely fashionable car at that time. He is also involved in the
smuggling of alcohol during the Prohibition. The 1920s were ruled by “fashions and fads…of the
youthful glow of America. During this time prohibition was instituted, and prohibition was ineffective.
Everything about the 1920s symbolized an intense feeling of rebellion and breaking away from society’s
boundaries. The 1920s was simply an explosion of self-expression, the automobile being one of the
biggest” (Smiley). There is a huge contrast between West Egg and East Egg in Long Island which
showed the contrast of old money versus new money during the decade. West Egg was “the less
fashionable of the two” which refers
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6. to the old money (Fitzgerald, 9). However across the bay “the white palaces of fashionable East Egg”
stood as the new money (Fitzgerald, 10). There is contrast between West and East Egg, and the Valley
of Ashes being as the Valley-depicted as a large, grungy, garbage site- is completely different than the
wealthy Eggs. The Valley of Ashes is described as being “about halfway between West Egg and New
York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad…away from a desolate area of land” (Fitzgerald, 27).
Fitzgerald continues by saying it is a “farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and
grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke…crumbling
through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald, 27). The Prohibitionwhich lasted from 1920 to October of 1929
banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol in America. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is
involved with the smuggling of alcohol, therefore he was known as a bootlegger. This is how he gained
his wealth in the novel. Near the climax of the novel, Tom Buchanan tells Jordan, Nick and Daisy that
“Gatsby and…Wolfshiem brought up a lot of side-street drug stores… in Chicago and sold grain alcohol
over the counter” (Fitzgerald, 41).New Cars were a huge part of the growing prosperity of the era. Jay
Gatsby owns a new car model called the Rolls-Royce which happened to become very popular for
wealthy people to own in the 1920s. It is described as a “rich cream colour, bright in nickel, swollen
here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes, and super-boxes, and tool-boxes and
terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns” (Fitzgerald, 68). During the 1920s
in America, a lot of new ideas were becoming materialistic possessions and were coming to life along
with the Prohibition Act. All of which were presently happening in The Great Gatsby.
In The Great Gatsby there are many elements that bring 1920s America to life including the
‘Jazz Age’, men, women, and the economy. The ‘Jazz Age’ made the 1920s the best decade for people to
be living through if they were alive at that time. It was fun, exciting, and risqué for both men and
women and
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7. was time for dancing, drinking, and letting loose. In the novel, Gatsby holds many parties, each of them
signifying the rich, overdone life in the 20s. Men, who like women, went “on a spree and [made] a fool
of [themselves], were the complete opposite of women because of their over-controlling manner
(Fitzgerald, 138). Tom admitted to going on frequent sprees and it’s quite possible that other men in
the novel have done the same. Women in the 1920s were completely artificial and had barely any self-
respect. This led them to cheat on their husbands, to act careless, and to try to amount to something
through their wealth. Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle all act careless, and all have an artificial attitude which
they thought was attractive. The 1920s was a time for innovations and rules, two of which were the
Rolls-Royce and the Prohibition. People had new money and became wealthy through smuggling
alcohol, working in bonds, or business type fields. Nick Carraway worked in the bonds industry, Tom
Buchanan worked in more of a business environment, and Jay Gatsby smuggled alcohol. The 1920s has
taught the world a lot of useful things. Without the progress that the 1920s made, the future currently
being lived would have been altered.
Works Cited

8. Fitzgerald, Frances Scott. The Great Gatsby. Toronto: Scott & Schuster, 1991.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Jazz Age.” Shmoop: we speak student. Web. March 26, 2013.
<www.shmoop.com/f-scott-fitzgerald/jazz-age.html>
Rosenburg, Jennifer. “Flappers in the Roaring Twenties.” About.com: 20th
Century History. Web. March
26, 2013.
<www.history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/a/flappers.html>
Smiley, Gene. “The U.S. Economy in the 1920s.” EH.net. Feb 1, 2020. Web. March 26, 2013.
<www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/smiley.1920s.final>
“Teaching With Documents: The Volstead Act and Related ProhibitionDocuments.” National Archives.
<www.archives.gov.education/lessons/volstead-act/>
Amanda Iliadis