Abstract
Fitzgerald is considered by many to be the spokesperson of the 1920’s post-World War I, offering his readers a distinctive look into the Golden Age of the U.S.A.. This article focuses on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The great Gatsby (2001) and its representation and criticism of the historical context in which author and novel are inserted: the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties of the United States of America. For this purpose, our critical framework is based on Bloom’s (2006) and Heise’s (2001) studies on the subject, targeting a pertinent dialogue with Fitzgerald’ s work. As a result of our articulation between the critical framework and the corpus, we were able to recognize how the American author managed to express in his work a keen perception of the social conventions and the morals of the Jazz Age, of both the overt (the parties and the ostentation) and the covert aspects (the emptiness of that society and the unspoken post-war dread) of his time.
Highlights
The present article aims to analyze how Fitzgerald’s historical background and life experiences influenced substantially the writing of The great Gatsby, his magnum opus, and how the novel can enlighten the reader as to what was like to live in the author’s time, such a chaotic moment in American history.During the 1920’s, the United States of America underwent a significant shift on its financial and civil settings after succumbing to near bankruptcy due to the effects of World War I
Scott Fitzgerald was pointed to be the spokesperson of the Roaring Twenties – or as he would like to call, The Jazz Age, for he was an active member of the society from which he came, regarding its cultural dimension; the author was keen to register this distinct period in his writings, which are underlined with a poignant critique of the vicissitudes of the time
What better literary piece to exemplify Fitzgerald’s vision of the particular time than his masterpiece, The great Gatsby (2001)? In his novel, the American author denounces the lavishly extravagant way of life of the U.S citizens during the Jazz Age – an age in which people would purposelessly consume, solely to be blindsided by the Great Depression that hit the country by the end of the decade
Summary
The present article aims to analyze how Fitzgerald’s historical background and life experiences influenced substantially the writing of The great Gatsby, his magnum opus, and how the novel can enlighten the reader as to what was like to live in the author’s time, such a chaotic moment in American history. During the 1920’s, the United States of America underwent a significant shift on its financial and civil settings after succumbing to near bankruptcy due to the effects of World War I. The American citizens went through a period of unconstrained consumerism, which led to the subversion of the conventions and sense of morality of the society as a whole. Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel, The great Gatsby (2001), originally published in 1925, may be considered a singular characterization of the Roaring Twenties, for the American author, by witnessing the rise and fall of this period directly, is able to illustrate the dissonance amidst customary and tarnished sense of morality by highlighting the characters and their characterizations – dreams, strong desires for success and commodity, disenchantments –, to demonstrate that the American Dream was a generalized illusion unrestricted to societal groups and individuals
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