1920's Literature
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
When World War 1 neared its end, Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. While there he fell in love with a seventeen year old named Zelda Sayre and she agreed to marry Fitzgerald but she postponed their wedding until he proved that he could make money. He was able to convince Zelda in marrying him after earning some fame and money from his novel “This Slide of Paradise” in 1920. When his most famous novel, “The Great Gatsby” was published in 1925 he portrayed Jay Gatsby as himself, where Gatsby is a young man who enjoys wealth and luxury and falls in love with a woman when he was stationed at a military camp from the south. Fitzgerald’s life becomes wild and reckless with parties and trying to please Zelda with his writing and earning money is similar to Gatsby’s own way in acquiring money and throwing parties to earn Daisy’s affection. A theme covered in “The Great Gatsby” is that money and riches can one day lead to corruption and disaster. Fitzgerald uses Nick and Jay to portray how the 1920s become an era of decayed social and moral values with cynicism, greed, and the empty pursuit of pleasure and how the American dream became corrupted from money and pleasure.
2. Langston Hughes (Weary Blues)
Langston Hughes’s devotion to black music led him to novel fusions of jazz and blues with traditional verses that were a part of his first two books, The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jew. Hughes put an emphasis on lower-class black life in his books and it led to harsh attacks on him from the black press. With these books, Hughes established himself as a major force in the Harlem Renaissance. The central theme in Weary Blues is what the African American community had to struggle for and the racism they faced. Hughes’s works help to show how the African American community had to come up with ways to release their pain and it was by creating the Blues. Blues
When World War 1 neared its end, Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. While there he fell in love with a seventeen year old named Zelda Sayre and she agreed to marry Fitzgerald but she postponed their wedding until he proved that he could make money. He was able to convince Zelda in marrying him after earning some fame and money from his novel “This Slide of Paradise” in 1920. When his most famous novel, “The Great Gatsby” was published in 1925 he portrayed Jay Gatsby as himself, where Gatsby is a young man who enjoys wealth and luxury and falls in love with a woman when he was stationed at a military camp from the south. Fitzgerald’s life becomes wild and reckless with parties and trying to please Zelda with his writing and earning money is similar to Gatsby’s own way in acquiring money and throwing parties to earn Daisy’s affection. A theme covered in “The Great Gatsby” is that money and riches can one day lead to corruption and disaster. Fitzgerald uses Nick and Jay to portray how the 1920s become an era of decayed social and moral values with cynicism, greed, and the empty pursuit of pleasure and how the American dream became corrupted from money and pleasure.
2. Langston Hughes (Weary Blues)
Langston Hughes’s devotion to black music led him to novel fusions of jazz and blues with traditional verses that were a part of his first two books, The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jew. Hughes put an emphasis on lower-class black life in his books and it led to harsh attacks on him from the black press. With these books, Hughes established himself as a major force in the Harlem Renaissance. The central theme in Weary Blues is what the African American community had to struggle for and the racism they faced. Hughes’s works help to show how the African American community had to come up with ways to release their pain and it was by creating the Blues. Blues