Transcript The Great Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby and
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Roaring Twenties
•Age of decadence
•Flappers
•Time of prohibition
(1920-1933)
•Herbert Hoover
•Jazz Age
Images of Flappers
Ford Model T
More Images of Flappers
The Great Gatsby
•Novel invites the reader
to enter the Jazz Age:
fast cars, wild parties,
and shady business
dealings
•Promotes discussion of
values-glittering world of
the Roaring Twenties as
well as the artificiality
and moral bankruptcy of
the society Fitzgerald
depicts
•Gatsby’s world is
characterized by
excessive opulence
Novel’s Structure
• Excellent example of the first person
retrospective point of view: Nick
• Technical demands on author when uses a
central intelligence effective in charting
growth in the insight of a narrating
character
• Uses complex chronology, shifts back and
forth between the present and the past
• Provides a complete picture of the
protagonist only at the end of the work
• Typical of modern literature
• Uses imagery clusters: can easily trace
the patterns of images that Fitzgerald
emphasizes
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Short Stories: Major source of income
before moving to Hollywood in 1937
• Lived off of income from stories-stories
only financed his novels
• Wrote with “The Fitzgerald Touch” – wit,
sharp observations, dazzling descriptions
or the felt emotion
• Resented the work that went into his
novels
• Most of his readers only knew him as a
writer of short stories
• His concern was the deterioration of the
American Dream
The Lost Generation
• Group of post WWI writers who
became disillusioned with society
• Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, TS Eliot
• Ex-Patriots
• Disliked Victorian notions of morality
• "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 Princeton ... .
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