The Roaring Twenties
F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term "Jazz Age" to describe the decade of decadence and
prosperity that America enjoyed in the 1920s, which was also known as the Roaring Twenties.
He said “it was an age of miracles, an age of art, excess, and satire.” After World War I ended in
1918, the United States and much of the rest of the world experienced an enormous economic
expansion. The surging economy turned the 1920s into a time of easy money, hard drinking
(despite the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution), and lavish parties. Fitzgerald’s view of
the 1920s was serious and complex, because he recognized the glamour as well as the waste, the
charm as well as the self-destruction. Although the 1920s were a time of great optimism,
Fitzgerald portrays the much bleaker side of the revelry by focusing on its indulgence, hypocrisy,
shallow recklessness, and its dangerous - even fatal - consequences.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Fitzgerald was famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s) in his most acclaimed
novel The Great Gatsby (1925).
He was the only son of an unsuccessful, aristocratic father and an energetic, provincial mother.
As a result, he had typically ambivalent feelings about American life, which seemed to him at
once vulgar and dazzlingly promising.
He also had an intensely romantic imagination, what he called “a heightened sensitivity to the
promises of life,” and he was determined to realize those promises. He studied at Princeton
University, but left in order to join the army.
In 1920, he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and married Zelda Sayre. The novel
marked the beginning of Fitzgerald's career as a novelist (it was built largely around experiences
and observations he made while he was at Princeton).
Fitzgerald became famous, and this fame opened to him both magazines of literary prestige and
high-paying popular ones. This sudden prosperity made it possible for him and Zelda to play the
roles they were so beautifully equipped for (young, successful, apparently carefree). However,
although they loved these roles, they were frightened by them, too, as the ending of Fitzgerald’s
second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), shows.
The Beautiful and Damned is the story of a young couple whose relationship slowly disintegrates
as they age, as they are waiting to inherit a large fortune. Ironically, when they finally get it,
there is nothing of them left worth preserving.
To escape the life that they feared might bring them to this end, the Fitzgeralds moved in 1924 to
the Riviera, where they joined a group of American expatriates. Shortly after their arrival in
France, Fitzgerald completed his best novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). It took him another
almost ten years to publish his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), which depicts the
society on the Riviera that he and Zelda frequented in the 1920s.
At the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon (1941), a novel
based upon his experiences in Hollywood. Besides novels, Fitzgerald authored over 150 short
stories, published in national publications and in three collections during his lifetime: “Flappers
and Philosophers” (1920), “Tales of the Jazz Age” (1922), and “All the Sad Young Men” (1926).
In addition to his novels and short stories, at three distinct points in his career, Fitzgerald earned
his living as a screenwriter in Hollywood (in 1927, 1931, and 1937). Between 1939 and 1940, he
worked as a freelancer for several major studios in Hollywood, while writing his final novel.
Nevertheless, at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald had slipped into relative obscurity.
After World War II, interest in his work began to grow, and by the 1960s, he was considered one
of the great twentieth-century American authors. Together with Zelda, his personal life has
become a part of the American landscape, linked forever with the youthful exuberance of the
1920s. Professionally, his works provide a valuable voice for exploring themes of ambition,
justice, equity, and the American dream — themes that are still current in American literature.
Themes in The Great Gatsby
The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman, but also a
symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the
American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess (the American Dream
had been corrupted as it was no longer a vision of building a life; it was just about getting rich).
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its
cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The decadent parties and wild jazz music—
epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday
night—were a symbol of the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure that surpassed more
noble goals.
As Fitzgerald saw it, the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the
pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social
values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel
reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their
respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the
rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Therefore, Gatsby symbolizes both the
corrupted American Dream and the original uncorrupted American Dream. He sees wealth as the
solution to his problems, until he becomes hollow and disconnected from his past, yet his corrupt
dream of wealth is motivated by an incorruptible love for Daisy.
Social Class (Old Money, New Money, No Money)
The Great Gatsby portrays three different social classes: “old money” (Tom and Daisy
Buchanan); “new money” (Gatsby); and “no money” (George and Myrtle Wilson). “Old money”
families have inherited their fortunes; they have powerful and influential social connections. The
“new-money” class made their fortunes in the 1920s economic boom and have no social
connections (The Great Gatsby shows the newly developing class rivalry between “old” and
“new” money in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy). The “no money” class does
not really matter.
The Superficiality of the Upper Class
In the novel, the residents of the West Egg represent the newly rich (vulgar, ostentatious, no
social graces and taste), while those of the East Egg, particularly Tom and Daisy, represent the
old aristocracy (possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, but they are careless, superficial
and inconsiderate towards others). Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from
criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart (a great pretender and a great dreamer).
Past and Future
The past haunts Gatsby (he thinks with the help of money he can recreate the past) and the future
weighs down on Nick (his fear of the future foreshadows the economic bust that plunged the
country into depression and ended the Roaring Twenties in 1929). When Gatsby’s dream
crumbles, all that is left for him is to die; Nick can only move back to Minnesota, where
American values have not decayed yet.
Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby
instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses.
Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the
1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure.
Writing Style:
The Great Gatsby epitomizes the Jamesian novel of selection, where every detail fits and nothing
is superfluous: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
