F. SCOTT FITZGERALD• Fitzgerald grew up in the 20’s
• Joined the Army
• Zelda
• The Great Gatsby 1924
• The importance of wealth
• Zelda, Scottie and Paris
• Everyone must have a downfall
"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
"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman...I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."
WAR CHANGES MEN
• "I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."
WEALTH• A booming stock market
• Young, educated Americans with money to spend
• Extravagance
"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.“
"One thing's sure and nothing's surer/ The rich get richer and the poor get - children./ In the meantime,/ In between time--"
WITH WEALTH COMES…..EXTRAVAGANCE
"It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARN6agiW7o
PROHIBITION"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."
THE JAZZ ERA
THE AUTOMOBILE• Everyone MUST have an
automobile!
• “In the ditch beside the road, right side up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe’ which had left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before.”
WOMEN HAVE A VOICE
A BIT ABOUT THE STORY• Nick Caraway is the narrator (watch for a bit ‘o Gatsby in Nick)
• Story takes place in Manhattan (wealth) and West and East Egg
• Between the city and the country lies the Valley of Ashes- an industrial wasteland
A BIT MORE• Nick moves to New York to become a bonds man.
• Lives next door to Gatsby
• Nick is cousins with Daisy
• Nick is friends with Tom, Daisy’s wife
AND NOW THE PLOT GETS ALL SOAP OPERA ON US
• Gatsby loves Daisy
• Tom loves Myrtle
• Nick doesn’t know what he wants
ISN’T THIS THE AMERICAN DREAM?
• What constitutes a dream?
• Has the concept of the American Dream changed much from the Roaring 20’s?
• Can dreams be sold?
• Is the American Dream linked to celebrity?
• How much materialism exists behind the American Dream?
• Do we define ourselves by what we own?
• What values does American society hold?
