Intro to great gatsby

1. The Great Gatsby
Historical Background and Literary
Information
"It was an age of miracles," Fitzgerald wrote
of the Jazz Age. “It was an age of art, it was
an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.

2. Review of Time Periods
• View of God: All Sovereign
• Man is depraved
• Predestination
• Pray for perfection
• Theocracy
• Man is good
• God in man
• Man is divine
• God in nature
• Irony
• God is detached
• Fate unpredictable
• Nature is violent at times
Puritan/Age of Reason Romanticism/Realism
Modernism
• disillusioned – no spiritual
connection
• Lost generation

3. World War I
•World War I ended in 1918.
•Disillusioned because of the war, the
generation that fought and survived
has come to be called “the lost
generation.”

4. The Roaring Twenties
•While the sense of loss was readily apparent
among expatriate American artists who
remained in Europe after the war, back home
the disillusionment took a less obvious form.
•America seemed to throw itself headlong into a
decade of madcap behavior and materialism, a
decade that has come to be called the Roaring
Twenties.

5. The Jazz Age
•The era is also known as the Jazz Age, when the
music called jazz, promoted by such recent
inventions as the phonograph and the radio,
swept up from New Orleans to capture the
national imagination.
• Improvised and wild, jazz broke the rules of
music, just as the Jazz Age thumbed its nose at
the rules of the past.

6. The New Woman
•Among the rules broken were the age-old
conventions guiding the behavior of women.
The new woman demanded the right to vote
and to work outside the home.
• Symbolically, she cut her hair into a boyish
“bob” and bared her calves in the short skirts
of the fashionable twenties “flapper.”

7. Gambling
•Another gangland activity was illegal gambling.
•Perhaps the worst scandal involving gambling
was the so-called Black Sox Scandal of 1919, in
which eight members of the Chicago White Sox
were indicted for accepting bribes to throw
baseball’s World Series.

8. The Automobile
•The Jazz Age was also an era of reckless
spending and consumption, and the most
conspicuous status symbol of the time was a
flashy new automobile.
•Advertising was becoming the major industry
that it is today, and soon advertisers took
advantage of new roadways by setting up huge
billboards at their sides.
•Both the automobile and a bizarre billboard
play important roles in The Great Gatsby.

9. The 1920s – The Jazz Age
• Fitzgerald himself coined the term
• Reaction to the death/destruction/loss of
innocence from WWI (post-war prosperity)
• During this time, there was a mass
migration from rural areas to cities where
“parties were bigger, the pace was faster,
the buildings were higher, the morals
looser” (Fitzgerald)
• Some called it the first truly modern
decade
• Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were
popular musicians of the day
• Dances like the Charleston, the Shimmy,
and the Toddle were popular
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAO
Htmy4j0)

10. Prohibition
•Another rule often broken was the Eighteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, or Prohibition,
which banned the public sale of alcoholic
beverages from 1919 until its appeal in 1933.
•Speak-easies, nightclubs, and taverns that sold
liquor were often raided, and gangsters made
illegal fortunes as bootleggers, smuggling
alcohol into America from abroad.

11. Prohibition
• Meant to improve lives of
Americans (faith-driven initiative)
• Instead, liquor consumption grew
exponentially
• Created criminals (lots of $$ to be
made) – Gatsby?
• Speakeasies were the places to
consume liquor (bars)
1920-1933 – sale of alcohol was prohibited in
the United States; mandated by
Constitutional amendment

12. Women’s fashion of the 1920s

13. Men’s fashion of the 1920s

14. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Born September 24, 1896
• Died December 21, 1940
• Only son of an “aristocratic
father” and “energetic mother” –
named after Francis Scott Key, a relative of his father’s
• Went to private schools and attended college at Princeton
• Leading figure in a dramatic society, The Triangle Club
• Neglected his studies – flunked out and joined the army

15. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Met his wife, Zelda, while
stationed in Alabama
• She refused to marry him due
to his lack of success
• 1920 - published his first novel
• This Side of Paradise – it made him famous!
• Zelda agreed to marry him
• Called the “prince and princess” of the generation
• The couple had a daughter, Scotty, in 1921

16. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The family moved to
the French Riviera
• Wrote Gatsby there
• Part of a group of ex-pats that included Ernest Hemmingway
• In 1930, Zelda had the first of several mental breakdowns
• Sent to sanitarium in Switzerland; she spent the rest of her life in both
inpatient and outpatient care
• The couple returned to America for good in 1931

17. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Although Fitzgerald
was a famous author, the
couple spent the money much faster
than he earned it.
• 1935-37 is known as the “crack up” in Fitzgerald life
• Decent into alcoholism
• In debt
• Unable to be a present father for Scotty (sent to boarding schools)
• Fitzgerald went to Hollywood in 1937 to try his luck at
screenwriting
• He won a substantial contract with MGM, but still wasn’t financially
viable due to his debt
• Met and fell in love with Sheilah Graham
• Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment in 1940
• Zelda died in a fire in 1948

18. Famous Works
Novels
• This Side of Paradise (1920)
• The Beautiful and the Damned
(1922)
• The Great Gatsby (1925)
• Tender is the Night (1934)
• The Last Tycoon (unfinished)
Magazines, Newspaper Short Stories
• Featured in Esquire, The
Saturday Evening Post
• All the Sad Young Men (best
collection of short stories)

20. The Great Gatsby
Characters
• Nick Carraway - narrator
• Jay Gatsby – a pun on the slang term gat (pistol)
• Tom & Daisy Buchanan – “old” $$
• Jordan Baker – based off Edith Cummings, 1923 women’s golf champion;
combines two car names – the sporty Jordan and conservative Baker
Electric
• George & Myrtle Wilson – Tom’s mistress and her husband; live in the
valley of ashes
• Meyer Wolfshiem – based on Arnold Rothstein, a real-life gangster

22. Jay Gatsby
The title character.
Jay Gatsby is a former
mid-westerner who
moved East in order
to win over Daisy
Buchanan, the love
he lost five years
earlier.
His desire to win over
Daisy leads him from
poverty to extreme
wealth. He is
considered “new
money.”

23. Nick Carraway
The novel’s narrator. Nick is also a
mid-westerner who moved East.
He happens to be Daisy’s cousin.
Nick happens to move to a small
house next to Gatsby’s mansion in
West Egg.
His mid-western sensibilities give
us an outsiders perspective on
how the wealthy socialites like the
Buchanans lead their lives.

24. Daisy Buchanan
Daisy is beautiful and “delicate”. Gatsby is obsessed
with winning Daisy back. Even the sound of her
voice he finds absolutely mesmerizing.
She grew up in a wealthy and privileged family. She
married a very wealthy man, Tom Buchanan, who is
considered part of the “old money” elite.

25. Tom Buchanan
Daisy's hulking brute of a husband.
Tom comes from an old, wealthy
Chicago family and takes pride in his
rough ways.
He leads a life of luxury in East Egg,
playing polo, riding horses, and
driving fast cars. He commands
attention through his wealth,
physical size, and obnoxious
behavior.

26. Jordan Baker
Professional golfer known for her
questionable integrity.
A friend of Daisy’s, she also represents
women of this elite social class. She is
used to being admired by women
wherever she goes.
Fitzgerald often wrote about athletic
women who played sports such as golf or
tennis. This was considered very modern
at the time.

27. Meyer Wolfshiem
Gatsby's business associate
and link to organized crime.
A professional gambler,
Wolfshiem is attributed
with fixing the 1919 World
Series.

28. George and Myrtle Wilson
A local auto mechanic George’s wife (Tom’s mistress)

29. The Great Gatsby
Setting
The East and West Eggs – fictionalized
peninsulas on Long Island Sound
East Egg – representative of “old money”; Tom and Daisy
live here
West Egg – the newly rich live here – not quite accepted
into the folds of the old moneyed; Gatsby’s mansion is
here

30. The Great Gatsby
Setting
Gatsby’s mansion: set on 40 acres; colossal, flashy, garish
• Symbolic of Gatsby’s success and the “American Dream”
• Also symbolic of the hollowness of money, success
• Serves as Gatsby’s lure for Daisy

31. The Great Gatsby
Setting
Valley of Ashes - where George and Myrtle live
• Considered to be Flushing, in Queens, NYC
• Dead, gray, powdery
• People passed through the area in cars and on trains on their way to and from
Manhattan

32. The Great Gatsby
Setting
New York City and Plaza Hotel – symbolizes excess of the times
Where much of the irresponsibility (adultery) and excess (drunkenness) of the novel take
place

33. The Great Gatsby
Symbols
• The green light at the end of Buchanan’s
dock
• Gatsby’s library/books
• Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes on the billboard
• Owl Eyes
• Valley of Ashes
• East Egg/West Egg

34. Symbols in The Great Gatsby
Green Light-
at the end of Daisy’s dock and visible from Gatsby’s mansion.
Represents Gatsby's hopes and dreams about Daisy.

35. Symbols in The Great Gatsby
The Valley of Ashes-
the area between West Egg and New York City. It is a desolate area
filled with industrial waste. It represents the social and moral decay
of society during the 1920’s. It also shows the negative effects of
greed.

36. Symbols in The Great Gatsby
The Eyes of Dr. T. J. Ekleburg-
A decaying billboard in the Valley of Ashes with eyes advertising an
optometrist. There are multiple proposed meanings, including the
representation of God’s moral judgment on society.

37. Important Quotes
“I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world,
a beautiful little fool.”
- Daisy’s description of her daughter
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
the past.”
–the last line of the novel

38. Important Quotes
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things
and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast
carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other
people clean up the mess they had made."
– Nick’s description of Tom and Daisy

39. The Great Gatsby
Motifs
• Money
• Hypocrisy
• Friendship
• Carelessness
• Dishonesty
• The American Dream
• Cars/Driving
• Ashes/Dust
• Time/Clocks
• Colors: green, white, yellow, silver, gold

40. WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM?
It describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the
fulfillment of human wishes and desires.
“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.”

41. The American Dream
Gatsby is the ideal image of one
who has achieved the American
Dream.
What is the American Dream and
who has achieved it in our time?

42. Old Money Vs. New Money
New Money
• Someone who has achieved the
American Dream
• Not as respected in the 1920’s
Old Money
• Money from family wealth
• Born rich
• Not earned through work done
by yourself
• Respected above all in the
1920’s