The document provides an overview of the social, cultural, and economic climate of the 1920s known as the "Jazz Age" in the United States. Key points include: the feeling of disillusionment after WWI led to a break from tradition and focus on fun; jazz music and new technologies like electricity spread widely; authors like Hemingway and Faulkner were influential; women gained more freedom and independence; prohibition led to speakeasies; and Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is considered a prime example of capturing the era.

3. “The Jazz Age”
 Wake of WWI
 Social, artistic, and
cultural dynamic
changing.
 Jazz music blossomed
 “Flapper” redefined
womanhood
 New technologies =
anything possible.

4. Modernity:
A Break from Pre-WWI
Tradition
 Feeling of disillusionment in the U.S.
leads to break from tradition.
 Defiance of the horrors of WWI: fun,
lightness, and amusement takes place
of practicality.
 The end of an era comes with the Stock
Market Crash in 1929.

5. Influence in the Literary
World
 Hemingway:
 Most noted novels The Sun Also
Rises and A Farewell to Arms.
 Heroes in novels disillusioned (post
WWI mentality).
 Faulkner:
 one of America’s most talented
authors.
 Most noted novel, The Sound and
the Fury.
 Known for experimental literary
form

6.  Electricity: Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893.
introduces world to modern wonder of electricity
 1920s: electricity has reached much of rural
America.

7. Music and Dance
 Jazz’s popularity spread
thanks
to first radios
 Jazz = all things modern,
sophisticated and decadent.
 Electric lighting makes
evening social entertainment
more comfortable
 1920s = era of dance halls
and live music

11. Economy
 Introduction of credit (“buy now, pay later”) and
the stock market = rush in spending
 Results in stock market crash and Great
Depression in the 1930s.

12. Automobile Culture
 Assembly line = mass production
 Cars = symbol of wealth and status
 Were also available to nearly every American.

14. Evolving Role
of Women
 19th Amendment,
1920: Women given
right to vote
 Young women begin
staking claim in own
 Sexual liberation of
their generation.
 Sigmund Freud.

16. Rise of the Speakeasy
 Prohibition years
progressed
 Led to the rise of
gangsters such as Al
Capone.
 Commonly operated
with connections to
organized crime and
liquor smuggling.
 Business of running
speakeasies was so
lucrative that
establishments
continued to flourish
throughout nation.

22. The Great Gatsby as a Period
Piece
 Published in 1925, often
acclaimed as “best picture of
the Jazz Age.”
 Offers realistic portrayal of the
artistic, social, political, and
economic climate of the 1920s.

23. Fitzgerald’s era and its
influence on his writing…

24. Fitzgerald
 Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1896
 Family had Catholic, “respectable”
roots, but no money
 Entered Princeton in 1913; polished skills as
writer.
 Left Princeton to become second lt. in Army in
1917. Sent him to Alabama, not Europe.

25.  Met Zelda Sayre,
“darling from a wealthy
Alabama family;”
outgoing, flirtatious.
 Moved to NYC; rejected
for eight months.
 Finally, novel This Side
of Paradise was
published in 1919
 HUGE success.

26.  Married Zelda immediately, they moved into
a NYC apartment,
 Center of “wild, carefree society in which gin
flowed like water and money flowed like gin.”
 1922—moved to Great Neck, Long Island;
community “that was alive with riotous
parties.” Began working on Gatsby.

27. Published Gatsby in 1925—critics loved it,
but it didn’t sell…his drinking spiraled out
of control.
Zelda had affairs and eventually became
utterly insane and was put into an asylum,
where she died.
-Success led to damaged
personal life and marred his
literary production.
-Led to extravagant living and a
need for large income (believed to
have contributed to Fitzgerald’s
alcoholism and Zelda’s mental break
down)

28. Fitzgerald on Status
"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 Yale... . 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 in a letter to Anne Ober, 1938

29. Controlling Idea Practice
 After reading Fitzgerald’s quote, create
a controlling idea about
status/wealth/money
 It could be general, connected to Fitzgerald
himself, or connected to the text
 Find at least two quotes that support
your idea, and fully explain how they
support it in the explanation boxes.

30. Close Look at Cover…
 What do you see?
What are your first
impressions?
 What do you make of
the colors? The eyes?
They are beautiful like
gunny’s
 Is there potential
symbolism in this
artwork?
 What does this cover
lead you to believe will
be present in
Fitzgerald’s novel?