Unlike Jordan, Mytle possesses little material items. In the novel you can see what happened to it during the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald, though he didn't actually see any fighting during his time in the army, was a member of this generation. However, drawing from her work, these prohibitions seemed to have little implications (Zeitz 23). Check out our articles onGatsbys title, its opening pages and epigraph, and itsfirst chapter. That was it. To get a really good sense of why characters in the novel do what they do, it's useful to know the specific historical circumstances they are dealing with. This began during WWI as more women began to work to make up for the men fighting abroad, and as more professions opened up to them in the men's absence. The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s. This revelation marks a society that embraces and protects a culture of impunity that is driven by both greed and erosion of social morals in the 1920 American society. Myrtle is obsessed with shows of wealth, from her outfits, to insisting on a specific cab, to her apartment's decoration, complete with scenes of Versailles on the overly-large furniture: "The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles" (2.51). It would help your argument to talk about the sudden skyrocketing prevalence of cars on the road in the 1920s, connecting them to increased danger, status symbol consumerism, and modern life. From new money to consumer culture to lavish parties, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel depicted the heyday of the 1920sand foreshadowed the doom that would follow. First of all, he makes it clear that he has "an unaffected scorn" for the ultra-rich, and eyes both new money and old money critically. After all, if even wealth on the scale of Gatsby's can't buy you entry into America's highest social class, what can? While Gatsby, Myrtle, and George all end up dead, Tom and Daisy get to skip town and avoid any consequences, despite their direct involvement. 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. We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. The novel includes Nick's anti-Semitic description of a Jewish character - Meyer Wolfshiem. 3: Growth of Empires to the Great Depression (1890-1930s). If you are the copyright owner of this paper and no longer wish to have your work published on IvyPanda. She indeed admires East Eggs people with mega envy together with intense animosity. The culture of the wealthy Americans represented in the novel was defined mainly by consumerism and excessive But since Daisy is flighty and inconsistent, Gatsby's comment also suggests that wealth is similarly unstable. | A Comprehensive Guide. Everyone is there for the spectacle alone. (See our brief biography of Fitzgerald to learn more.). The average student has to read dozens of books per year. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. However, the quest for contentment changed with time to become the search for wealth through excessive insatiability. For some time now I have been thinking about the validity or vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as "knowledge." This knowledge holds that traditional, canonical American literature is free of, Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes invitation to lunch. Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan! Myrtleboth working class and a womanis thus trapped between a rock (her gender) and a hard place (her lack of money), and perhaps for this reason receives the cruelest treatment of all. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Almost 1 in 4 people now had a car! Imagine spending weeks in this hole in the ground. Fitzgeralds illustration of the American Dream within his characters directly echoed the societys high-esteemed qualities of success and delight. ' The Great Gatsby' follows Nick Carraway, who meets the mysterious multimillionaire Jay Gatsby after moving to New York. In this novel, actual mountain climbing is safer than social climbing. Flappers emerged in 1920s. In Nicks mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values. In other words, Gatsby loves Daisy's "value" as an in-demand product. Related to money and class, the fact that both Gatsby and the Wilsons strive to improve their positions in American society, only to end up dead, also suggests that the American Dream -- and specifically its hollowness -- is a key theme in the book as well. Jay Gatsby is one of the main characters In The Great Gatsby. George Wilson, in contrast, is constrained by his lack of wealth. He is guided by a culture of gathering more wealth for individualistic gains than he already has (Zeitz 13). Scott Fitzgerald mentions in her novel an incident of prohibition of sale and the production of liquor to tame youths who had become overindulged in alcoholism. The son of deprived farmers, Gatsby had built himself up from practically nothing, and he sprang from his Platonic conception of himself into a man who truly represented the American Dream (Fitzgerald 98). When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. West Egg residents or new money (Fitzgerald and Bruccoli 54) are perceived by East Egg counterparts as upstart outsiders. Why does Myrtle run out in front of Gatsbys car? Cancel culture Truth about the censorship of Roald Dahl The assumption that there is an urgent debate here, is politically useful to both sides. "American Culture in the Novel "The Great Gatsby"." Learn more about how The Great Gatsby was received when it first came out, and also read about the life ofits author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. . Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in 1925, the setting of The Great Gatsby is an island, which is dominated by prosperous, wealthy, and poor communities of East Egg and West Egg. Although she is a famous player of golf, she can do anything on the loose to have her right always. You can thus compare three very different women's experiences to explore how moneyor a lack thereofseems to change the possibilities in a woman's life in early 1920s America. Print. (3.1-3.6). SAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination BoardTM. By continuing well assume you Furthermore, by the end of the novel she claims to be engaged, meaning that like Daisy, she's ultimately chosen to live within the lines society has given her. The sheer number of the party participants implies that the 1920s American culture was characterized by indiscriminate spending in an increasing number of products that were availed for sale by the rising manufacturing capacity of the nation. Detroit: Gale, 2007. So the American Dream, which in the first half of the book seems attainable based on Gatsby's wealth and success, reveals itself to be a hollow goal. Nick and Gatsby are continually troubled by timethe past haunts Gatsby and the future weighs down on Nick. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: PrepScholar 2013-2018. Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more! . In short, money both drives the plot and explains many of the characters' motivations and limitations. Get the latest articles and test prep tips! Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! I wasnt actually in love, Nick recalls, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. Such tender curiosity may be the closest thing to love in the entire novel. (2022, August 12). Gatsbys parties have a speakeasy feel in that people from different backgrounds and genders freely mix and mingle. Samkanashvili reckons that Scott Fitzgeralds novel has the lesson of the need to subscribe to a firm belief that people must work hard to achieve their goals of becoming rich and prosperous, rather than following short-cut routes that often prompt corruption to take place (73). Myrtle feels trapped in her marriage, which pushes her into her affair with Tom Buchanan, an affair which grants her access to a worldNew York City, wealth, partiesshe might not otherwise have access to. Some of the rumors swirling around Gatsby point to how fresh the war was in everyone's mind (that he was a German spy during the war, or that he is related to Kaiser Wilhelm, who ruled Germany during the war). This situation is well supported by the fact that after the party and with additional of extra workers, Gatsbys gardeners toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before (Fitzgerald and Bruccoli 121). Nick's comments about money, especially in the first chapter, are mostly critical and cynical. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he displays the corrupt moral values of the society and culture, also their assumptions, Jay Gatz is alienated because of his class he is killed as a result of alienation. He gets wrapped up in Gatsby's dreams and his cousin's difficult marriage, all while learning about the pitfalls of wealth and the truth of the American dream. They were careless people, Tom and Daisythey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. $18.74/subscription + tax, Save 25% Economically, there was an increase in working women. The smaller European powers were forced into the war as well, based on whatever alliances they had made in the past. Most suppliers of alcohol during Prohibition were highly esteemed since one who could live on the edge and without restraint was admired (The Great Gatsby Literature 151). In the novel, he later relocates to New York where he gets involved in bond business. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker. You can also compare Tom and Daisy's actions and outcomes to other characters to help make your pointMyrtle and Gatsby both contribute to the conflict by participating in affairs with Tom and Daisy, but obviously, Myrtle and Gatsby don't get to "retreat into their money," they both end up dead. The book is narrated by Nick Carraway, who recounts the events of the summer of . Scherer and Ross remark that Americans purchased durable goods in the 1920s, thus increasing their spending on clothes and various mass-produced items (105). It's not enough to "bounce high" for someone, to win them over with your charm. All rights reserved. Historical Context Essay: The Great Gatsby and the Jazz Age, Literary Context Essay: Modernism & Realism in The Great Gatsby. Retrieved from https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-culture-in-the-novel-the-great-gatsby/. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now: hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(360031, 'f20994d3-fd87-4c1e-988d-22ad8d920c1a', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); This is an interesting prompt, since you have to comb through passages of Nick's narration to find his comments about money, and then consider what they could mean, given that he comes from money himself. His assumption of Gatsby's illegal activities notwithstanding, Nick has the same expectations of integrity from Gatsby and from other men as he does from himself. Nevertheless, it was still very much frowned on, and being a housewife and having fewer rights than man was still the norm in the 1920s. Scott Fitzgerald has created a social satire of America in the 1920's in which he exposes the American Dream as being inherently flawed and merely an illusion produced by idealism.This American Dream has been traditionally associated with the pursuit of freedom and equality. This paper discusses these aspects as essential constituents of 1920s American culture as revealed in The Great Gatsby. This desire of Americans to reach such a high social status and level of attainment was no better displayed through the ability that Gatsby possessed as he faithfully stuck to the conception of himself he desired to be and eventually obtained it.