“Make it NEW!”Ezra Pound

Intro to The Great Gatsby

A Novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The 20s: An Age of Transition

Before World War I"The world must be made

safe for democracy" Woodrow Wilson the President had declared, "Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty." --- a spirit of idealism Americans entered the war with in 1917.

After World War Ia general disillusionment

among the people which caused nervousness: racism, intolerance, violence, Ku Klux Klan, immigrants, political intolerance "ghost of bolshevism" behind every form of social protest/ strikes.

Modernism: The Movement

Modernism grew out of the disillusionment that many writers, artists, and thinkers felt after World War I.THE AGE OF HEROES IS OVER. “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.” - Ernest Hemingway

Louis Hines Photographs

View of Man It is a constant struggle to remain an

individual in a complex world.

“Without help, some men are doomed to unfathomable pain and suffering.”

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” -e.e. cummings

View of Nature➢ The world is objective (reality); it is

our interpretation of it that is subjective (perception).➢Perception vs. Reality = TENSIONS!

➢ Nature can be warped into a war machine for man’s use.

Guide to Truth

Universal truths are difficult to know.➢Communicate your self and the world around you honestly.

“Modernism may be seen as an attempt to reconstruct the world in the absence of God.” – Bryan Appleyard

“Traditional beliefs and values have led man astray.” – Gerturde Stein

Roaring Twenties

Economy booming/industrial growth

America partied like it was the 1920’s!

Organized crime; bootlegging

Prohibition Act

Decline of moral standards

“The Jazz Age” -- Coined by Fitzgerald

The Jazz Age took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties

Originated with African American music in New Orleans

➢Meshed with white, middle-class ideals of the time; old money continued to support classical music

This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression

It has lived on in American pop culture for decades.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott FitzgeraldDropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to fight in WWI, but the war ended before he shipped out.

This Side of Paradise was a huge success, defining the modern, young American adolescent.

The Great Gatsby was not successful until Fitzgerald’s death.

Was one of the most influential and accomplished writers of the movement (part of the “Lost Generation”).

Zelda Fitzgerald -- “The Golden Girl”

The Decline of the American Dream:

Truth about the 1920s The disintegration of the

American Dream in an era of prosperity and material excess.

Unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals

Americans, who fought in the War, disillusioned

New Wealth scorned by old wealth (“robber Barons”)

Rich industrialists, speculators and bootleggers vs. old wealth

Decline of the American Dream

American Dream -- individualism, hope, pursuit of happiness

1920s, as portrayed in The Great Gatsby -- WHAT has corrupted this dream??MATERIALISTIC??

Gatsby’s “dream” of loving Daisy is ruined by social class/status; his own blindness (?)

He needs to resort to crime to impress her (bootlegging)

She needs rampant materialism to support her lifestyle (What is Daisy’s “dream?”)

The Meaning of the Past

The Past holds something that both Gatsby and Nick long for:➢ A simpler, better, nobler

time that no longer exists.

Are Tom and Daisy creatures of the present??➢ so attractive, but so

rootless and spiritually empty

➢ BUT they so backward, so tied to the past, in other ways -- racism, old money

The Hollowness of the Upper Class

East Egg—old aristocracy

West Egg—newly rich, vulgar, ostentatious and lacking social graces and taste

Gatsby—ornate mansion, pink suit, Rolls-Royce, but is not accepted by old money.

Old aristocracy—grace, taste, elegance epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful and classic home, flowing white dresses

The Hollowness of the Upper Class

Old aristocracy—lack heart—careless, inconsiderate bullies; don’t worry about hurting others

The Buchanans purchase a new house at the end; fickle and uncaring

West Eggers—Gatsby, sincere and loyal heart

The Education of a Young Man The Great Gatsby, a

story of Nick’s initiation into life

He hits 30, he realizes his youth is over, and he needs to reevaluate his choices

Nick, writes The Great Gatsby to show us what he learned

The Great Gatsby: Point of View

The “I” of the novel becomes ourselves, and we, like Nick, wonder who Gatsby is

By writing from limited first person point of view, gives it an air of realism

We find out more about Gatsby because Nick does

We care about Gatsby because Nick does

Motifs in The Great Gatsby

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes

Geography—places and settings epitomize aspects of the 1920s American society; characterization

Weather—the weather in the novel matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story➢Rain (melancholy), sun

(love reawakens), hottest day (confrontation)

Symbols

The Green Light

The Valley of Ashes

The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg

1.An inscription, as on a statue or building.

2.A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme.

ep•i•graph (n.)

The Great Gatsbyby

F. Scott FitzgeraldThen wear the gold hat, if that will move her;If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,

I must have you!”— Thomas Parke D’Invilliers.

F. Scott FitzgeraldDropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to fight in WWI, but the war ended before he shipped out.

This Side of Paradise was a huge success, defining the “Flapper Generation.”

Also wrote The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby.

Was one of the most popular and accomplished writers of the movement.Ch. 1

Two people for whom a

second cousin relationship

is one generation removed.

The child of one's second

cousin; also the second

cousin of one's parent.

Ch. 1 -- How are Daisy and Nick related?

"Bonds" are financial instruments issued by governments and corporations --

but mainly by governments -- as a way of raising money. In effect, they are

loans taken out by the issuing government or institution with the promise of

repaying the loan with interest.

The “bond business” simply refers to divisions of financial services

corporations that are established to buy and sell -- or trade -- in bonds on a

major scale.

http://www.bondsquawk.com/bond-school/bond-trading-101/

https://www.tradeking.com/education/bonds/bond-trading-introduction

Ch. 1 -- The Bond Business

“I had a dog -- at least until he ran away -- and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman...” (pg. 4)

Ch. 1 -- Georgian Colonial Mansion

Essential Questions forThe Great Gatsby

Why We Are Reading This.-OR-

Why Are We Reading This?

How does the past we

experience affect our future

actions/ perspectives?

EQ #1:

How does being a caring and

empathetic person make you

vulnerable to being taken advantage of?

EQ #2:

How can the American Dream

be simultaneously inspiring and demoralizing?

EQ #3:

How can we, today, avoid Jay Gatsby’s fate?

EQ #4: