Secondary school „Busovača“

Busovača
Grammar school

GRADUATION PAPER

TOPIC: THE GREAT GATSBY, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

SUPERVISOR STUDENT
Josip Lukin, prof. Ines Lukin

Busovača, May 2019

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................3
2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR...............................................................................................................4
2. 1. EARLY AGE.........................................................................................................................5
2. 2. ZELDA...................................................................................................................................7
2. 3. ILLNES AND DEATH..........................................................................................................7
3. THE GREAT GATSBY................................................................................................................9
3. 1. SUMMARY............................................................................................................................9
3. 2. CHARACTERS...................................................................................................................13
3. 2. 1. JAY GATSBY..................................................................................................................13
3. 2. 2. DAISY FAY BUCHANAN..........................................................................................14
3. 3. SOCIAL SITUATION IN AMERICA DURING 20S.......................................................16
4. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................18
5. SOURCES....................................................................................................................................19
1. INTRODUCTION

The novel is set in roaring 20s in America, narrated by Nick Carraway who moves to West
Egg to learn the bond business. He rents a modest house near Gatsby's enormous mansion. In
the beginning, he's only known for throwing extravagant parties. As the story unfolds, Nick
learns about Gatsby's purpose that involves the Buchanans.

From my point of view „The Great Gatsby“ is not a romantic novel. The romance between
characters is set in the book only to help develop the plot and to question success, love and
what makes somebody truly wealthy. It's very hard to like any of the characters. All of them,
apart from Gatsby, seem emotionless. The Buchanans are rich, selfish and, together with
Jordan Baker, hollow. Nick Carraway is neither an antagonist nor a protagonist. The only two
times when he emotionally involved was the last time he saw Gatsby alive when he said to
Gatsby that he is better than the Buchanans, which will I discuss afterwards, and the second
time was when he met Tom late in October. Although I like Gatsby, I can't overlook the fact
that he stole from people, and that is what made him rich. I don't like the bitter end because it
caused a strange feeling of unimportance and emptiness in me, but I understand that the end is
what makes the book's meaning. Apart from that, the book has a lot of positive sides. I
understand why is it ranked so high1 in English and world literature. The creative senses in this
novel gave me gorgeous imagery, and inspired me to research more about the 20s, so called
the Jazz Age.

On the following pages, I will take a deeper look on the author, characters and the meaning of
the novel.

1
The Great Gatsby is ranked as third greatests book ever written according to Britannica

3
2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American
fiction writer, whose works helped to illustrate the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age.
While he achieved popular success, fame, and fortune in his lifetime, he did not receive much
critical acclaim until after his death. Perhaps the most notable member of the "Lost
Generation" of the 1920s, Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American
writers of the 20th century. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and
Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last
Tycoon, was published posthumously. Four collections of his short stories were published, as
well as 164 short stories in magazines during his lifetime.

Photo 1. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Source: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/app/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-
517324220-1024x820.jpg

4
2. 1. EARLY AGE

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family, Fitzgerald was named
after his famous second cousin, three times removed on his father's side, Francis Scott Key,
but was always known as Scott Fitzgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise
Scott Fitzgerald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months
before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother lost her other two children ... I think I
started then to be a writer."2

His parents, both Catholic, sent Fitzgerald to two Catholic schools on the West Side of
Buffalo, first Holy Angels Convent (1903–1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academy
(1905–1908). His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unusual intelligence
with a keen early interest in literature. His doting mother ensured that her son had all the
advantages of an upper-middle-class upbringing. Her inheritance and donations from an aunt
allowed the family to live a comfortable lifestyle. In a rather unconventional style of
parenting, Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arrangement that he go for only
half a day—and was allowed to choose which half.

When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing appear in print—a detective story published
in the school newspaper. In 1911, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to
the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Fitzgerald played on the 1912 Newman football team. At Newman, he met Father Sigourney
Fay, who noticed his incipient talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his
literary ambitions.

After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey
to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. He tried out for the college
football team, but was cut the first day of practice. He firmly dedicated himself at Princeton to
honing his craft as a writer, and became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson
and John Peale Bishop. He wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club, the Nassau Lit, and the
Princeton Tiger. He also was involved in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, which ran

2
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Afternoon of an Author: A Selection of Uncollected Stories and Essays", New York:
Scribner, 1957, p.184.

5
the Nassau Lit. His absorption in the Triangle—a kind of musical-comedy society—led to his
submission of a novel to Charles Scribner's Sons where the editor praised the writing but
ultimately rejected the book. Four of the University's eating clubs sent him bids at midyear,
and he chose the University Cottage Club (where Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials are
still displayed in its library) known as "the 'Big Four' club that was most committed to the
ideal of the fashionable gentleman".

Fitzgerald's writing pursuits at Princeton came at the expense of his coursework, however,
causing him to be placed on academic probation, and in 1917 he dropped out of university to
join the Army. During the winter of 1917, Fitzgerald was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and
was a student of future United States President and General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower
whom he intensely disliked. Worried that he might die in the War with his literary dreams
unfulfilled, Fitzgerald hastily wrote The Romantic Egotist in the weeks before reporting for
duty—and, although Scribners rejected it, the reviewer noted his novel's originality and
encouraged Fitzgerald to submit more work in the future.

It was while attending Princeton that Fitzgerald met Chicago socialite and debutante Ginevra
King on a visit back home in St. Paul. King and Fitzgerald had a romantic relationship from
1915 to 1917. Immediately infatuated with her, according to Mizner, Fitzgerald "remained
devoted to Ginevra as long as she would allow him to", and wrote to her "daily the incoherent,
expressive letters all young lovers write".3 She would become his inspiration for the character
of Isabelle Borgé, Amory Blaine's first love in This Side of Paradise, for Daisy in The Great
Gatsby, and several other characters in his novels and short stories. After their relationship
ended in 1917 Fitzgerald had requested that Ginevra destroy the letters that he had written to
her. He never destroyed the letters that King had sent him. After he had passed in 1940 his
daughter "Scottie" sent the letters back to King where she kept them until her death. She never
shared the letters with anyone.

3
Arthur Mizener, “The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scot. Fitzgerald”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
1951, p. 29.

6
2. 2. ZELDA

Fitzgerald was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry and assigned to Camp
Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. While at a country club, Fitzgerald met and fell in
love with Zelda Sayre, a daughter of Alabama Supreme Court justice Anthony D. Sayre and
the "golden girl", in Fitzgerald's terms, of Montgomery society. The war ended in 1918, before
Fitzgerald was ever deployed. Upon his discharge he moved to New York City hoping to
launch a career in advertising that would be lucrative enough to persuade Zelda to marry him.
He worked for the Barron Collier advertising agency, living in a single room at 200 Claremont
Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood on Manhattan's west side.

Zelda accepted his marriage proposal, but after some time and despite working at an
advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince her that he would be able
to support her, leading her to break off the engagement. Fitzgerald returned to his parents'
house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul, to revise The Romantic Egotist,
recast as This Side of Paradise, a semi-autobiographical account of Fitzgerald's undergraduate
years at Princeton. Fitzgerald was so short of money that he took up a job repairing car roofs.
His revised novel was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919 and was published on March
26, 1920 and became an instant success, selling 41,075 copies in the first year. It launched
Fitzgerald's career as a writer and provided a steady income suitable to Zelda's needs. They
resumed their engagement and were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Their
daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

2. 3. ILLNES AND DEATH

Fitzgerald, an alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 1920s for his
extraordinarily heavy drinking which would undermine his health by the late 1930s.
According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Fitzgerald claimed that he had contracted
tuberculosis, but Milford dismisses it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However,
Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring
tuberculosis, and according to Milford, Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that
Fitzgerald suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919. Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks

7
in the late 1930s. Fitzgerald had died of a heart attack at the age of 44. Fitzgerald's body was
moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.

Among the attendees at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who
reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch"4, a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. His body was transported to Maryland, where his funeral was
attended by twenty or thirty people in Bethesda; among the attendees were his only child,
Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith (then aged 19), and his editor, Maxwell Perkins.

4
"Biography in Sound". Time, Monday, July 11, 1955.

8
3. THE GREAT GATSBY

3. 1. SUMMARY

Nick Carraway was a young man from an upper middle-class family. He graduated from New
Haven University and then took part in the First World War. He then joined the bond business
and rented a house in the country, in the West Egg of Long Island, east of New York City. His
house was ugly and small, but stood between two rich and beautiful houses, one of which was
Mr. Gatsby’s home.

One day Nick visited two old friends he hardly knew: Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Tom
attended the same University of Nick and was one of the most powerful football players of the
school, while Daisy was Nick’s cousin. Their house was a beautiful and elaborate colonial
mansion, which once had belonged to Demaine, the oilman. Daisy was a pretty, graceful but
sad woman who was very happy to see Nick. She was with a guest and a friend of hers, Jordan
Baker, who was a well-known golf player. During a conversation with her, Nick found out that
Tom had a mistress in New York. Nick was fascinated by Jordan Baker. Daisy even wished
she could have arranged a marriage between them. Nick left the house confused and a little
disgusted ‘cause he knew about Tom’s lover while Daisy didn’t.

One Sunday Nick went to New York with Tom and met his mistress. She was the wife of a
garage’s owner, George Wilson, but he didn’t know about her wife’s love affair with Tom.
Tom and Mrs. Wilson organized a party at Tom’s apartment in New York. They invited a lot
of people, including Nick, who never got drunk. During the party, Mrs. Wilson told Nick
about her first meeting with Tom: they were sitting in front of each other on the train to New
York.

Meanwhile, Gatsby went on organizing great parties at his house. One day Nick was invited to
one of these parties: there were a dance floor, an orchestra and a rich buffet. Nick noted that a
lot of people had no invitation: they just went to Gatsby’s parties. During the party he met
Jordan Baker and joined her group of friends. Among the guests there were rumors about
Gatsby, and it seemed that nobody actually knew anything about the host: someone said the

9
Gatsby killed a man once, someone else said he was a German spy during the war, a woman
replied he was in the American army during the war.

One day in July, Gatsby visited Nick and asked him to spend the day with him. He wanted him
to know something about his life: he told Nick he was the son of some wealthy people from
San Francisco, who left him a good amount of money; with this sum, he travelled in the
capitals of Europe and lived like a prince. He then joined the army, becoming first an officer
and then a mayor, receiving a medal for extraordinary courage. Nick listened to this story but
didn’t believe a word of it. They went for a lunch together in a little restaurant and there Nick
met a small man with a large head called Mr. Wolfshiem, who was a friend of Gatsby’s and a
gambler. At the restaurant Nick even met Tom Buchanan and introduced him to Gatsby, who
seemed embarrassed and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Nick met Jordan Backer for tea,
and she told him her story: one day in 1917 she was walking along the street where Daisy
lived; she was eighteen and she was a very popular girl. Daisy was sitting in her car with a
young officer: he was Jay Gatsby. After so many years Jordan hadn’t realized he was the same
man who lived next to Nick. After that day, Jordan hadn’t see Daisy for some time, until her
marriage, the year after, with Tom Buchanan. She was a bridesmaid at her wedding, and she
remembered that, before the ceremony, she found Daisy drunk lying on the bed: she had a
letter in her hand, and she told her she had changed her mind. But after a cold bath, she
married Tom and left for a three-month trip to the South Seas. Daisy seemed very crazy about
her husband, even when Tom started to have his affairs. Daisy then had a child and, after a
year in France, they finally settled down in Chicago. Daisy heard from Jordan the name
Gatsby for the first time in years. Jordan told Nick that it wasn’t a coincidence that Gatsby’s
house was so close to Daisy’s. He had actually bought that house to have Daisy just across the
bay. Gatsby wanted Jordan to ask Nick if he could invite Daisy to his house and let him come
over: Nick agreed and then asked Jordan to have dinner with him.

Nick invited Daisy to a tea and informed Gatsby about it. Gatsby sent a man to cut Nick’s
grass and examined the cakes Nick had brought, in order to have everything perfect. He was
very nervous and pale as death. When Daisy arrived, he met her in the living room. They
looked at each other’s eyes for a long time, and they were both very nervous and embarrassed.
Nick decided to leave them alone and went out in the garden. When he came back, there were

10
tears on Daisy’s face and Gatsby was full of joy: he invited Nick and Daisy to his house to
show them around. Daisy was amazed by his huge house. She loved every simple luxurious
room and Gatsby looked at her as he would do everything to please her. Then they went to
visit the gardens until it started raining; so they returned into the house and Gatsby asked his
house guest, Mr. Klipspringer, to play the piano. Gatsby and Daisy were so absorbed in each
other that they forgot about Nick.

Thanks to all the people he invited to his parties, Gatsby was becoming notorious. One day he
told Nick his true story: his real name was James Gatz. He was the son of poor people, but
wanted a brilliant future; at the age of 17, he changed his name and then worked as a sailor, a
secretary and a cleaning man on the yacht of the millionaire Dan Cody. He looked after him
when he was drunk. When he died, he left Gatsby twenty-five thousand dollars but Gatsby
never got the money because Cody’s lover, Ella Kaye, used several legal strategies to inherit
the millions.

On afternoon Gatsby invited Tom Buchanan for a party, and Tom and Daisy were at Gatsby’s
house again on Saturday night. Tom’s presence was arrogant and full of heaviness while Daisy
was very excited: she danced with Gatsby and then they sat together on the steps of Nick’s
house for half an hour. At the end of the party, Tom told his wife he wanted to find out who
Gatsby was and how he made money. Daisy answered he owned many drugstores. Meanwhile,
Nick was talking to Gatsby, and Gatsby told him he wanted Daisy to break up with her
husband, to run away with him and to marry him, as they were supposed to do five years
before.

One Saturday night, a lot of people went to Gatsby’s house for a party, but found the lights
switched off so they came back home. Rumors said that Gatsby had fired all his servants and
replaced them with five or six others. Gatsby explained to Nick that it was because Daisy
came often to his house in the afternoons and he didn’t want his servants to gossip.

One day Nick and Gatsby were invited by Daisy for lunch. During the meal, Tom Buchanan
noticed that Daisy and Gatsby stared at each other in a special way. When Tom was in the
other room, Daisy kissed him and told him she loved him. After lunch, they all decided to go
to town, but Tom, Nick and Jordan Baker would use a Gatsby’s car while Daisy and Gatsby
would drive a Tom’s car. When Tom stopped at Wilson’s garage ‘cause the gas was running

11
out, Mrs. Wilson from the window stared at Jordan with jealousy, thinking she was Tom’s
wife.

They decided to spend the afternoon in a suite in the Plaza Hotel. There Daisy, Tom and
Gatsby started to argue: Gatsby said that Daisy loved him and that she had never loved Tom.
Actually, Daisy loved Gatsby, but she couldn’t say she had never loved Tom, because she did.
Tom was persuaded that with this admission the affair between Daisy and Gatsby was over, so
he told them to go home in Mr. Gatsby’s car.

When Nick, Jordan and Tom drove back home, they found out about the accident: a big,
yellow car had run over Mrs. Wilson while she was running out of the garage. The car didn’t
stop and Mrs. Wilson died instantly. Tom was shocked by his mistress’ death and he and Nick
understood the car was Gatsby’s. Nick went to Daisy’s home and found Gatsby there, who
was waiting for her to go to bed. Gatsby admitted the accident was caused by his car, but that
Daisy was driving; to protect her, he would say he was driving.

Nick couldn’t sleep all night. He was worried about Gatsby, so he went to his house to have
breakfast with him. Gatsby talked a lot about Daisy, about the first time he met her, how he
deeply fell in love with her. Nick didn’t want to leave Gatsby, but he had to go to work: he
went to the city, but he was so worried about something that he returned in the early afternoon.
When he arrived at Gatsby’s house, he, the driver, the butler and the gardener found Gatsby in
the swimming pool, dead. Next to the pool, near the grass, there was also Wilson’s body.

It was clear that Wilson had discovered who was the owner of the car and decided to take his
revenge. Nick wanted to organize a Gatsby’s funeral, but it seemed that all the people he had
dealt with while he was alive had disappeared. One day before the funeral Gatsby’s father
arrived. There were only him and Nick at the funeral: nobody else came; Tom and Daisy had
gone far away without leaving any address.

After the funeral, Nick decided to leave the East and to come back home. He left Jordan Baker
with a shake of hands. One year later he met Tom and found out that he had told Wilson, who
was the owner of the car. Nick understood that Tom and Daisy were careless people who
broke up things and people without feeling guilty for it. He didn’t want to hang out with them
anymore.

12
3. 2. CHARACTERS

3. 2. 1. JAY GATSBY

Gatsby was born “James Gatz”, the son of poor farmers, in North Dakota. He was ambitious
and determined to succeed. He changed his name the moment he informed Dan Cody, a
wealthy man who employed him, that wind might catch him and break up his yacht in half an
hour.

„He smiled understandingly – much more than understandigly. It was one of those rare smiles
with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.
It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an istant, and then concentrated on
YOU with an irresistibble prejudice in your favor, believed in you as you would like to believe
in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you
hoped to convey. ... I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty,
whose eleborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced
himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.“5

Nick's first impression of Gatsby was an „elegant rough-neck6“. Because of the meaning of the
word, it seems that Nick isn't impressed with enormous parties Gatsby throws, moreover, he
thinks Gatsby lacks taste. Despite the big amount of money he has, Gatsby hardly manages to
hide the fact that he is nouveau riche7. Anyways, Nick doesn't judge Gatsby and even admires
him.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll
see."8

5
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 53.
6
n. a construction worker, driller, miner, or roofer, from working outside in the sun, and because they often fit
the definition given above.
7
n. people who have recently acquired wealth, typically those perceived as ostentatious or lacking in good
taste.
8
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 118

13
Gatsby thinks that he can repeat the past and recreate everything that happened since the day
he kissed Daisy. He treats Daisy romantically but, in bigger picture, he sees her as a possesion.
His insistence that Daisy never loved Tom also reveals how Gatsby refuses to acknowledge
Daisy could have changed or loved anyone else since they were together in Louisville.

He doesn't want to repeat past because he misses old times, for instance, but he wants to own
the past so the only way to achieve that is to make Daisy tell him she never loved Tom. That
way, he would be whole and his made-up life would never again feel fake.

„Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It
eludes us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, strech out our arms
farther....And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back
caeselessly into the past.“9

The last image of Gatsby is about a man who believed in a world that was better than the one
he was born on. He represents the 20s in America, the time when the idea of American
Dream10 was created and widely spread, but the old-money aggravated it's realisation.

3. 2. 2. DAISY FAY BUCHANAN

Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the
Gatsby’s love. Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her
home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a
wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won
Daisy’s heart. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom
Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy
lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.

Tom started cheating on Daisy soon after the honeymoon. That made her pessimsitic, saying
that the best thing in the world a girl can be is „beautiful, little fool“ 11. She spends time with

9
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 193
10
Belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their
own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone.
11
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 28

14
her friend Jordan Baker, and is desperate to find something or someone to distract her from
her increasing pessimism. Then, in the right time, comes Gatsby, whom I think Daisy
remembered only as a teen love, that changes her situation.

„She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid and we
locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into
the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish
when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead
and hooked her back into her dress and half an hour later when we walked out of the room the
pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married
Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months' trip to the South
Seas.“12

I believe that the love Daisy felt for Gatsby was a typical, teen love that every person
experiences in their adolescent years. That kind of love stays in memory, but is not of any
significance for a person's future. The problem is that Gatsby's love was of a different kind.

From my point of view, part with pearls symbolises her getting back into her social role.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me
sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before."13

Daisy is a materialist, but this sentence, that was confusing at first, made it even more obvious.

„That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible
charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . High in a white
palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . .“14

Gatsby ties Daisy and her voice to wealth. This particular line is really important, because it
ties Gatsby’s love for Daisy to his pursuit of wealth and status. It also makes Daisy a symbol
of the idea of the American Dream.
12
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 82-83
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 99

13

14
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004, p. 128

15
3. 3. SOCIAL SITUATION IN AMERICA DURING 20S

The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more
Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between
1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but
unfamiliar “consumer society.” People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to
nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the
same dances and even used the same slang. Many Americans were uncomfortable with this
new, urban, sometimes racy “mass culture;” in fact, for many–even most–people in the United
States, the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration. However, for a small handful of
young people in the nation’s big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed.

The most familiar symbol of the “Roaring Twenties” is probably the flapper: a young woman
with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said what might be termed
“unladylike” things, in addition to being more “free” than previous generations. In reality,
most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a
fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some
unprecedented freedoms. They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution
had guaranteed that right in 1920. Millions of women worked in white-collar jobs (as
stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer
economy. The increased availability of birth-control devices such as the diaphragm made it
possible for women to have fewer children. And new machines and technologies like the
washing machine and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgery of household work.

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted.
What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the black
bottom, the flea hop. Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and
the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold
in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to
jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired),
but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

16
Prohibition was not the only source of social tension during the 1920s. The Great Migration of
African Americans from the Southern countryside to Northern cities and the increasing
visibility of black culture—jazz and blues music, for example, and the literary movement
known as the Harlem Renaissance—discomfited some white Americans. Millions of people in
places like Indiana and Illinois joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. To them, the Klan
represented a return to all the “values” that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were
trampling.

Photo 2. Alice Joyce - Flapper

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Alicejoyce1926full_crop.jpg

17
4. CONCLUSION

There is a strong connection between Fitzgerald's life and The Great Gatsby. The Great
Gatsby took place in the 1920’s, a time period in which Fitzgerald lived through. To begin
with, Fitzgerald gave Nick Carraway some background that matched his. They were both from
Minnesota. From Minnesota both Nick and Fitzgerald’s family’s sent them to ivy league
schools. Fitzgerald attended Princeton University and Nick Carraway attended Yale
University. During World War I, both Jay Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with a
woman at the locations they were stationed. Like Gatsby tried to impress Daisy, Fitzgerald did
the same with Zelda. Zelda wanted a rich, successful man. Because of this, Fitzgerald began to
write books so that he could be that man for her. Similarly, Gatsby felt as though he needed to
impress Daisy, and to do this he faulted the fact that he was rich and successful. Both
Fitzgerald and Gatsby have their downfalls. Fitzgerald is an alcoholic whose wife suffers from
nervous breakdowns, and he eventually dies of a heart attack. While in the circumstance of
The Great Gatsby it leads to “extravagant parties, expensive cars, and sprawling homes
providing the backdrop for adulterous affairs, car crashes, and, eventually three deaths.

In conclusion, Fitzgerald was writing about his view of the era he lived in. That was a time of
changes, and as usual, there were conservatives who resisted change, but it was ought to
happen. People had to assimilate but, for more sensitive people – like Fitzgerald, it was a bit
harder to do. Luckily, because of that, he wrote one of the most famous books.

Though Fitzgerald portrayed the American dream as something rare that could never make
you happy, he showed some belief in the idea, and supported the theory that no matter what
class anyone comes from, it is always possible for them to achieve success.

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5. SOURCES

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby", Scribner, 2004

2. https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veliki_Gatsby
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald
4. https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/roaring-twenties-history
5. https://www.gettyimages.com/

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