Essay, Research Paper: The Great Gatsby's Twenties Image

The Great Gatsby is an excellent embodiment of the
Roaring Twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was often
called the spokesman for the Jazz Age, captured the essence
of this time period in what is considered to be his finest
work, The Great Gatsby.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born September 24, 1896,
in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was named for his famous
ancestor, Francis Scott Key, who wrote "The Star-Spangled
Banner". He enrolled in St. Paul Academy in 1908, when he
was twelve years old. He did poorly, and later, in 1911,
enrolled in the Newman Academy. He barely made it into
Princeton in 1913, by promising he would do better there
than he had at previous schools. However, he continued to
do poorly, and eventually dropped out. He enlisted in the
army and was stationed in Alabama, where he met Zelda Sayre,
a beautiful southern belle from a wealthy family. Fitzgerald
and Zelda were engaged, and he moved to New York to try to
make a living. However, he was unsuccessful, and Zelda broke
their engagement. Then, in 1919, Charles Scribner's Sons
accepted for publication Fitzgerald's manuscript, This Side
of Paradise. The book was a success, and in 1920 Fitzgerald
and Zelda were married. In 1921 Zelda gave birth to a
daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, called Scotty. The
Fitzgeralds lived the rest of their lives hovering close to
the brink of poverty, while Scott Fitzgerald wrote numerous
short stories and four other novels (the last posthumously
in 1941) to support them. He died in Hollywood on December 21,
1940 at the age of forty-four. His wife Zelda died in a
fire at an asylum at which she had been a patient for many
years on March 11, 1947.
Fitzgerald is the most famous chronicler of America in
the 1920's, a decade he called the Jazz Age. Written in the
middle of the decade, The Great Gatsby is very much a Jazz
Age novel. Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz
Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath.There is
of course a sense in which The Great Gatsby is a novel of
manners: it does comment on American society in the 1920s
and it is critical of the corruption and moral disorder of
the period. Many of the main characters in The Great Gatsby
show this emptiness and hypocrisy. For example, if Daisy
Buchanan were analyzed, it would be found that she appears
to be a very empty-headed person. She ignores her marital
problems, even creating her own when she has an affair with
Gatsby, and simply chooses to pretend they never happened.
However, Daisy is very smart and witty, although cynical from
her husband's drunkenness and extramarital affairs. She is
not allowed to use these qualities though, because she is a
woman and would be silenced by her overbearing and domineering
husband, Tom. The character of Jordan Baker is a careless,
irresponsible woman, which is the way many people were in
the 1920s. Fitzgerald critized these qualities in people,
and often satirized them in his novels. However, Fitzgerald
was not the only author to do such. Many authors of this
era criticized the decadent life the people of the Jazz Age
led. The Great Gatsby basically is a book of satire.
Fitzgerald despised the lack of morals people of America in
the 1920s had, and even escaped to Europe, where people acted
slightly more sane, for a few years while writing The Great
Gatsby. Criticism of The Great Gatsby has often been
sidetracked into biography or reminiscence of the Jazz Age.
Fitzgerald obviously meant to criticize peoples' actions in
the Roaring Twenties when he wrote The Great Gatsby, or he
would not have made it so similar to conditions that existed
back then.
The word that can sum up many of the themes in the book
is position. The word encompasses themes like class, wealth,
social standing, and others. Social standing was very
important in The Great Gatsby. For example, Tom's social
standing allowed him to treat everyone, including his own
wife, like dirt, except on rare occasions when he felt like
being accommodating. Gatsby's social standing allowed him
to be generous, because everyone expected it of him after
attending or hearing about one of his lavish parties. Nick
was below the high social standings of Tom, Daisy, and Jordan,
and also below the lower social standing of Gatsby, but
members of both classes liked and trusted him. As Nick said
in chapter one of The Great Gatsby, Tom wanted Nick to like
him as well. Somehow, Nick could transcend the barriers of
certain classes, which made it easy for anyone to trust him,
whether it be Tom with talking about his mistress, or Gatsby
revealing his true identity. Wealth played a major part in
The Great Gatsby. Tom felt that Daisy was worth a $350,000
pearl necklace, while Myrtle Wilson was worth only a dog leash.
Tom also teased George Wilson about selling him a car as a
game and a way to get close to Myrtle. Wealthy people in
the 1920s generally tended to look down on the poorer people.
In The Great Gatsby, New York's poor lived in the Valley of
Ashes, a barren, desolate landscape, while the wealthy
(whether they were newly rich or old money) lived in
luxurious houses, palaces almost, living a glamorous and
decadent lifestyle. The rich lived by retreating into their
money when something unexpected happened, something bad that
should not have happened to someone with status, while the
poor had to suffer the consequences. This is the type of
life and the kind of people that Fitzgerald and other writers
of the Roaring Twenties often criticized. Fitzgerald himself
had humble beginnings, so it is possible he sympathized with
the poor of the nation's cities, which could give him good
reason to have criticized the crude and immoral behaviors of
the rich people of the Jazz Age. He was not alone in his
crusade to show the scandalous behaviors of the Roaring
Twenties. Many of America's gifted writers were alienated by
the values and lifestyles of the 1920s. Fitzgerald especially
revealed the negative side of 1920s gaiety and freedom. In not
only The Great Gatsby, but also in This Side of Paradise, he
portrayed wealthy people leading hopelessly empy lives in gilded
surroundings . However, it seems almost hypocritical of
Fitzgerald to criticize the decadent lifestyle of the Jazz
Age, because he also lived it. After This Side of Paradise
was published, he and his wife Zelda fell into a reckless,
irresponsible lifestyle that was scorned by many of his friends.
They often had large parties with lots of alcohol, similar to
Gatsby's giant parties. They lived in large, opulent houses
similar to the ones Fitzgerald describes in his novels. They
lived from one paycheck to the next, with Fitzgerald often
having to publish several short stories a month for magazines
in order to continue their wild ways of living. They were
laughed at, arrested, and almost killed a few times by their
recklessness, but they still lived it. But living that lifestyle
did not stop Fitzgerald from reproving it, which makes The
Great Gatsby a bit hypocritical. However, it also gives the
readers of The Great Gatsby a surprisingly historically accurate picture
of how life was lived back in the 1920s. Without Fitzgerald's
vivid descriptions, not only would the characters and the
settings be hard to imagine, but the history of this period
may never have been discovered by many people who had no way
of learning except by books.
Many critics say that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's
masterpiece. It took him several years to write and gave him
many problems while writing it. He had to battle marital problems
and alcoholism while writing this novel, and often was
forced to write short stories for magazines to pay for all
his expenses, but he perservered and wrote one of the greatest
works of fiction America and the world has seen. It took him
many years, but F. Scott Fitzgerald finally became the great
author he dreamed of becoming.