The Great Gatsby Flashcards
AO3: The Great Depression
- Lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world.
- Began after the devastating Wall Street Crash of October 1929.
- Consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and unemployment as failing companies laid off workers.
AO3: The impact of WW1 on America and Europe
- The Austria-Hungary Empire and the Russian Empire had been & demolished during the Great War.
- Due to the growth in the war industry in the USA, the women’s & movement progressed and the government adopted new diplomatic policies.
- During the war there was a massive industry boom to try and support the war.
- New technologies were developed to help deal with the necessity of so much produce.
- As the industry boomed, so did the economy.
- When the war ended, industry production began to slow, women out of jobs because of the return of men.
AO3: The American Dream
Definition: The American Dream is the ideal that the government should protect each person’s opportunity to pursue their own ideas of happiness.
- The Declaration of Independence protects the American Dream.
- In the 1920s, the Dream started morphing from the right to create a better life to the desire to acquire material things. This is described well in The Great Gatsby in the character Daisy. This greed-driven version of the Dream was never truly attainable, it was “an orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us”. This greed led to the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.
AO3: The Roaring Twenties and the Changing Role of Women
People all started to buy the same things and listen to the same music to fit in with the times.
- Most iconic symbol of the roaring twenties: the flapper girl. Bobbed hair, short skirts who drank, smoked and said unladylike things. (The new woman)
- Women could vote at last, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920.
- The increased availability of birth-control devices made it possible for women to have fewer children and new machines such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners made housework more pleasant.
AO3: Prohibition, Bootleggers and Gangsters
- The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution… banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors - ushered in a period in American history known as Prohibition.
- The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”), the proliferation of speakeasies and the accompanying rise in gang violence and other crimes led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of 1920s.
AO3: Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald
- Zelda Fitzgerald was the icon of the roaring twenties and was a muse for much of her husband’s literary work. She died tragically on March 10th 1948 in a fire.
- Their famously turbulent marriage was fraught with alcoholism,) & violence, financial ups and downs, and Zelda’s battle with mental health issues.
- Due to excessive spending, the couple moved to France in 1924 where The Great Gatsby was written.
- Scott Fitzgerald even went so far as to steal verbatim excerpts from Zelda’s personal diary and incorporate them into his novels - a tactic that began a downward spiral in their dysfunctional marriage.
- In 1930, Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent her remaining years in and out of various mental health clinics.
- After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, their over-the-top lifestyle of travel and indulgence collapsed and they were left in financial ruin.
- In the end, Zelda’s marriage to Scott was nothing more than a façade.
- Scott died from a heart attack at the age of 44 on December 21st 1940.
AO5: Dyson
“[Gatsby’s] self-centeredness masquerading as heroic vision”
Gatsby as arrogant and immoral
AO5: Mizener
“the incorruptibility at the heart of Gatsby’s corruption”
Gatsby as untainted and pure
AO5: Mandel
Daisy and Tom are “royalty completely distanced and insulated from ordinary human concerns”
AO5: Maxwell Perkins
American “land of freedom and opportunity”
AO5: Fussell
Daisy’s voice is the “typifying feature of her role as la belle dame sans merci”
AO5: Clark
“A curious book, a mystical, glamorous story of today”
The book in general.
‘today’ = of the time
