The Great Gatsby CONTEXT

Question 1

What were Fitzgerald’s views on drinking and partying?

Answer 1

Fitzgerald’s own addiction to alcohol contributed to his premature death and dangers are reflected in his novel. Arguably alcoholism and the excess lavish lifestyle also led to Zelda’s nervous breakdown.

Question 2

How can Gatsby’s past be linked to Europe?

Answer 2

James Gatz breaks away from his past and becomes Jay Gatsby, similarly to the way American colonies broke away from the British Empire

Question 3

When was the novel published?

Answer 3

1925

Question 4

What group did Fitzgerald belong to?

Answer 4

A rich group of American writers who were disillusioned with their wealth and immigrated to Europe. They believed society was lacking in idealism and vision, they felt a sense of personal alienation and believed Americans were obsessed with materialism and outmoded moral values. Stein coined them and other middle-upper-class Americas the Lost Generation.

Question 5

What did the 1920s economic boom result in?

Answer 5

Manufacturing rose by 60%, gross national goods rose 5% a year, caused by the destruction of European economies during World War I leaving the US as the only major industrial nation and advances in technology

Question 6

What amendment gave women the right to vote?

Answer 6

The 19th amendment

Question 7

Why was the 1920s called the Roaring Twenties?

Answer 7

Due to the rowdy Jazz Age parties and get-rich-quick financial schemes

Question 8

What amendment started the Prohibition?

Answer 8

The 18th amendment

Question 9

What is a speakeasy?

Answer 9

secret bars where illegal alcohol was sold to those in the know mainly rich white people

Question 10

Who is Wolfshiem based on?

Answer 10

Arnold Rothstein
Professional gambler charged with fixing the 1919 world series, but never convicted. Later became involved in bootlegging. Never charged with a crime in his lifetime

Question 11

What was the idea of the New Woman/ Flapper?

Answer 11

wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz and flaunted their disdain for “acceptable behaviour”. Party girls of the 1920s.

Question 12

What is the Puritan Work Ethic?

Answer 12

The idea that through hard work Protestants would be rewarded by God in heaven.

Question 13

When did the pilgrims first travel to America?

Answer 13

The Mayflower was an English ship that transported the first English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth, England, to the New World in 1620 where they sought religious freedom in the Eden like America.

Question 14

Who criticised the materialistic ways of the nouveau riche in the Gospel of Wealth?

Answer 14

Andrew Carneige in his essay the “Gospel of Wealth’ 1889 stated that the wealthy have a responsibility to use their wealth for the public good by utilizing their surplus means in a responsible way to help the poor. He was particularly talking about the nouveau riche as their new wealth caused a major class divide not helped by their materialistic ways. He said “I should consider it a disgrace to die a rich man”. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and was one of the richest people in history. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and during the last 18 years of his life, he gave away about $350 million to charities, foundations, and universities – almost 90 percent of his fortune.

Question 15

What is another name for the newly rich?

Answer 15

Nouveau riche

Question 16

Who were the robber barons?

Answer 16

Robber baron” is a derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally applied to certain late 19th-century American businessmen who were accused of using unscrupulous methods to get rich, or expand their wealth.

Question 17

What genre is the novel?

Answer 17

It can be considered both modernist and realist

Question 18

What is realism?

Answer 18

1855-1900

CONTENT
Includes Social Realism/ Regional Realism
Common characters not idealised (immigrants, labourers), class systems, society corrupted by materialism, moralism through observation

STYLE
objective narrator, the dialogue has many voices

EFFECT
social realism aims to change social problems, Civil war demands truer literature

Question 19

What is modernism?

Answer 19

1900-1946

CONTENT
alienation and disconnection, people unable to communicate effectively, grief over the loss of the past

STYLE
experimental, allusions to classics, fragmented, juxtaposition, stream of consciousness, writers seek unique style

EFFECT
alienation

Question 20

What did Fitzgerald call the 1920s?

Answer 20

The Jazz Age

Question 21

Where did Fitzgerald go to college?

Answer 21

Despite being a mediocre student at boarding school, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

Question 22

Who was Fitzgerald’s wife?

Answer 22

Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed in Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.

Question 23

How is Fitzgerald similar to Nick and Gatsby?

Answer 23

Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.

Question 24

What are bootleggers?

Answer 24

Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers who illegally trafficked alcohol, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up.

Question 25

How did World War I affect society?

Answer 25

The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate.

Question 26

What is significant about Gatsby’s car killing Myrtle?

Answer 26

The sudden skyrocketing prevalence of cars on the road in the 1920s, connecting them to increased danger, status symbol consumerism, and modern life so Fitzgerald is criticising excess wealth even in Myrtle’s death.

Question 27

Where did Fitzgerald write The Great Gatsby?

Answer 27

Fitzgerald himself was part of a circle of modernists who regularly met in Paris (others included Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis, and the painters Picasso and Matisse). Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby while in Paris, surrounded by this group.

Question 28

Why was alcohol outlawed by the 18th amendment?

Answer 28

Socially progressive activists in both the Democratic and Republican parties united to pressure the government to ban alcohol, which was blamed for all kinds of other social ills like gambling, drug abuse, domestic violence etc.

Question 29

Why did the prohibition fail?

Answer 29

• There was a lack of public support. Many people were “wets” and it was impossible to persuade drinkers to change the habit of a lifetime.
• Alcohol was readily available. It was supplied by bootleggers.
• Enforcement of Prohibition by government officials was very ineffective. Patrolling the thousands of miles of the USA’s borders with Canada and Mexico, both major routes for smuggling liquor, was impossible.
• Prohibition led to the growth of organised crime gangs, like the Mafia, and gangsters, such as Al Capone.

Question 30

When was the Prohibition repealed?

Answer 30

5th December 1933 by the 21st amendment

Question 31

How were Jewish minorities treated in the 1920s?

Answer 31

One of the effects of the war was that Jewish Americans were at the forefront of promoting such issues as workers rights, civil rights, woman’s rights, and other progressive causes. Jews also served in the American military during World War I in very high numbers. At the same time, their prominence gave rise to an anti-Semitic backlash, and the revival of the KKK began with the lynching of a Jewish man in 1915.

Question 32

What was the Harlem Renaissance?

Answer 32

Another post-WWI development was the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural, social, and artistic flowering among African Americans that took place in Harlem, NY, during the 1920s. Artists from that time include W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday.

Question 33

How is white supremacy seen in the novel?

Answer 33

The second Klan was active from 1915-1944 and influenced upper-class America’s views of African Americans and Jews which can be seen in Nick’s description of Wolfshiem and Tom’s racist rants.

Question 34

What is an example of the KKK activity in New York?

Answer 34

On Memorial Day in 1927, the Ku Klux Klan marched in Queens to protest Protestant American citizens being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” Fred Trump and six other men were arrested “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so.”

Question 35

When was the declaration of independence made?

Answer 35

4th July 1776

Question 36

What parts of Zelda’s life influenced the novel?

Answer 36

• Scott and Zelda’s first encounter was at a country club dance in Montgomery, which Scott fictionalised in his novel, The Great Gatsby, when he describes Jay Gatsby’s first encounter with Daisy Buchanan, although he transposed the location in the novel to a train station.
• In 1921, she gave birth to Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald. As she emerged from the anaesthesia, Scott recorded Zelda saying, “I hope it’s beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool.” Many of her words found their way into The Great Gatsby, the character Daisy Buchanan expresses a similar hope for her daughter.
• He writes of lost illusions in The Great Gatsby as his lost certainty in Zelda’s fidelity. While Scott was absorbed writing The Great Gatsby, Zelda became infatuated with a dashing young French pilot, Edouard S. Jozan.