Transcript INTRO TO THE 1920`s and the novel

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
M. Boudreau
English 12
1. Cultural Context
The New American Dream
America inTransition
"The world must be made safe for democracy" Woodrow
Wilson the President had declared, "Its peace must be
planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty." --- a
spirit of idealism Americans entered the war in 1917.
Key influences and events:
• 1922 foreign policy of Isolationism
• 1929 Stock Market Crash
• 1932 New Deal era
WWI and the “Lost Generation”
• World War I ended in 1918.
• The total number of military
and civilian casualties in
World War I was over 37
million.
• Disillusioned because of the
“total warfare”, the
generation that fought and
survived has come to be
called “the lost generation.”
WWI and the “Lost Generation”
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.
The influence of jazz
• 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.
The New Femininity
• 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.”
The New Femininity
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 Canada and
St. Pierre et Miquelon.
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Biographical notes
Who is F. Scott Fitzgerald?
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Born in 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He attended Princeton University.
1917 joined the army.
Met his wife Zelda (his muse).
Published The Great Gatsby in 1925.
Regarded as the speaker of the Jazz Age
Died in 1940.
3. What is the American Dream?
The American Dream
• This concept refers to an attitude of hope and faith
that looks forward to the fulfillment of human wishes
and desires and is intrinsically linked to the
American constitution:
“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.”
4. Themes
The Great Gatsby
Major Themes
• The consequences
of the “American
Dream”
• The impact of
poverty
• Discrimination
• Exploitation
• Hypocrisy
• Corruption
5. Pre-Reading Questions
The Great Gatsby
Pre-reading Questions
1.Some people think that having
money leads to happiness. Do
you agree? Why or why not?
What are the advantages or
disadvantages of being wealthy.
2.What do you think of the
"American Dream"?
3.Have you ever wanted to relive
or redo a moment from your
past? Describe the situation.
Can a person be trapped by the
past?
References
www.stpiusxhskc.com/documents/.../gatsby_pres.ppt
bchsapliterature.files.wordpress.com/.../the-great-gats.
www.lbcc.edu/English/.../Fitzgerald.pptx
www.mtsd.k12.nj.us/cms/lib5/NJ01000127/.../Fitz.ppt