The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald was written and set in the 1920's, a decade known as the "Jazz Age." Fitzgerald described it as a time when "the parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser." 1 It was just after the 1st World War and the young generation began to rebel. The young women (known as the flappers) would have their hair styled into short bobs, would wear clothes that were much shorter than before and smoke of freely in public. The men and women would go to all night parties and dance to dances such as The Charleston, One Step and Black Bottom. The 1920's was also a time were wealth and status was everything. There was two types of wealth though, there was the "old wealth", people who had been born into families of excessive wealth and the "nouveaux riches", people who had made their money through crime and bootlegging. This was a big issue during the 1920's, due to the 18th Amendment to the Constitution: Prohibition. This law banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol, but with the "Jazz Age" being a time of big parties, alcohol was widely sought after and brought in much money for those who supplied it.
The "Jazz Age" was also a time when the whole meaning of the American Dream changed for good. The real idea of the American Dream was to work hard, support the family and to own land, but the corruption of the 1920's saw people thinking that the dream was to have money and be rich. This changed because people saw others with money and wanted what they had. They had to get rich quick and it didn't matter how this was achieved. The American Dream is a major theme in The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald uses this to explore society, especially at the two different parties (Myrtle's & Gatsby's).
The first of the two parties is at Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson's New York apartment, which they use for their sordid affair. In the events leading up to the
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald was written and set in the 1920's, a decade known as the "Jazz Age." Fitzgerald described it as a time when "the parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser." 1 It was just after the 1st World War and the young generation began to rebel. The young women (known as the flappers) would have their hair styled into short bobs, would wear clothes that were much shorter than before and smoke of freely in public. The men and women would go to all night parties and dance to dances such as The Charleston, One Step and Black Bottom. The 1920's was also a time were wealth and status was everything. There was two types of wealth though, there was the "old wealth", people who had been born into families of excessive wealth and the "nouveaux riches", people who had made their money through crime and bootlegging. This was a big issue during the 1920's, due to the 18th Amendment to the Constitution: Prohibition. This law banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol, but with the "Jazz Age" being a time of big parties, alcohol was widely sought after and brought in much money for those who supplied it.
The "Jazz Age" was also a time when the whole meaning of the American Dream changed for good. The real idea of the American Dream was to work hard, support the family and to own land, but the corruption of the 1920's saw people thinking that the dream was to have money and be rich. This changed because people saw others with money and wanted what they had. They had to get rich quick and it didn't matter how this was achieved. The American Dream is a major theme in The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald uses this to explore society, especially at the two different parties (Myrtle's & Gatsby's).
The first of the two parties is at Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson's New York apartment, which they use for their sordid affair. In the events leading up to the