Great Gatsby entire book

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Roaring twenties

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The Roaring Twenties / The Jazz Agee

- Fashion

- Music

- Dancing

- Prosperity

- Loose morals

-  Alcohol

- Flapper girls

- Mafiosi 

The Roaring Twenties

• The American Dream
• Roaring twenties/The Jazz Age
• Prohibition
• Old money vs New money

Context of composition =

Writers are also affected by their environment and personal experiences. Time, race, gender nationality and family history are a few factors. (Look for contextual clues as evidence that show what the writer wants to convey.)

The American Dream = During the 1920s, the perception of the American Dream was that an individual can achieve success in life regardless of family history or social status if they only work hard enough -> New Money

Roaring Twenties = period of rapid industrial and economic growth and social change. The decade has a distinctive cultural edge in various big Western cities, so in Paris the "roaring twenties" was also a thing. Art and culture were at the center of attention, Jazz also peaked during this period. Roaring Twenties is also known as the Jazz age.  

Jazz: (black) culture, dance.

The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of novelty associated with modernity and a break with tradition. (break from the depressive times associated with WWI)

Everything seemed possible through modern technology! (There's a lot of new technology and machinery at play in the novel)

Prohibition = Progressive party became the leading party. The party was backed by the protestant church, believing that prohibition of alcohol and drugs would decrease crime. Its crowning achievement was the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the associated Volstead Act which made illegal the manufacture, import and sale of beer, wine and hard liquor (though drinking was technically not illegal).

Old Money vs Money =

“old money” meaning the generational trend of inheriting money from family opposed to “new money” meaning coming into money independently.

Old money families are proud and value their history and connections. Closed-knit community. Looks down upon New Money because they are lower class people who have climbed up the financial ladder. 

New Money: related to the American dream, to be self-made. Success can be reached when you work hard (new money = labour)

The Roaring Twenties / The Jazz Agee

- Fashion

- Music

- Dancing

- Prosperity

- Loose morals

-  Alcohol

- Flapper girls

- Mafiosi 

Prohibition referred to...

1. the restriction of alcohol only
2. the Jazz Age
3. the restriction of vice activities such as gambling, alcohol, & narcotics
4. all of the above

Which group would you rather have belonged to, back in the Roaring Twenties?

Old money

New money

Characters

Tom Buchanan - Daisy Buchanan - Jay Gatsby - Jordan Baker - Nick Carraway

How are the characters related to each other? (question to check whether studentss have read chapter 1 and 2)

Other characters mentioned (C 2): 

George and Myrtle Wilson

Mr and Mrs McKee

Doctor T.J. Eckleburg (trick question)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• 1896 - 1940
• American short-story writer and novelist
• Famous for depicting the Jazz Age / Roaring Twenties
• Aristocratic blood
• The "fast life"
• The 1930s: disorderly and unhappy life

Context of composition =

Writers are also affected by their environment and personal experiences. Time, race, gender nationality and family history are a few factors. 

People, authors, are products of their time (when writing contemporary stories, so not in the case of historic novels)

Aristocratic blood: Fitzgerald was the only son of an unsuccessful, aristocratic father and an energetic, provincial mother. Half the time he thought of himself as the heir of his father’s tradition. As a result, he had typically ambivalent American feelings about American life, which seemed to him at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising.

Heightened sensitivity: He also had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called “a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he charged into experience determined to realize those promises.

Zelda Fitzgerald:

known for their extraordinary love and their way of life.

Fast life: literary and economic success made it possible for Fitzgerald and Zelda to live a life they dreamed about, he wrote about. They were beautifully equipped for it as it was in their blood (aristocrats). However, living the fast life, the couple realized it could end them (losing touch with reality, not ever being satisfied or content). They moved to France. Nonetheless, they found themselves again in a world of glamour. Unsure how he felt about it all, he depicted the divided nature in his finest work The Great Gatsby. His other works represented the Jazz Age, but not with the same level of nuance and gravity as in Gatsby. 

1930s: Fitzgerald becomes an alcoholic, Zelda mentally unstable. Eventually goes to a sanitarium. With its failure and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald was close to becoming an incurable alcoholic. By 1937, however, he had come back far enough to become a scriptwriter in Hollywood, and there he met and fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a famous Hollywood gossip columnist. He started writing a novel again, a novel about Hollywood, it was his final attempt to create his dream of the promises of American life and of the kind of man who could realize them. Ironically, he died from a heart attack halfway through writing. Why is this ironic? (= he could not make his dream true. He was not the type of man who could realize the American dream lif.

Tom Buchanan

• "Two shining arrogant eyes" 
• "the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward"
• "a cruel body"
• "a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a --"

Daisy Buchanan

• "she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too"
• "low, thrilling voice... the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again"
• "her voice compelled me forward breathlessly"
• "her voice glowing and singing"

Body VS Voice

Negative tone VS positive tone

Criticizing VS praising

"That was a way she had" = "(I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)" 

Daisy

the author builds her character with associations of light, purity, and innocences, when all is said and done, she is the opposite of what she presents herself t obe

Summarize chapter 1 in one sentence.

Summarize chapter 2 in one sentence.

Summarize chapter 3 in one sentence

Summarize chapter 4 in one sentence.

Summarize chapter 5 in one sentence.

Summarize chapter 6 in one sentence.

What is the reason Tom and Jay switch cars?

1. There is no reason .
2. Tom wants to show off his new car.
3. Jay wants to show off his new car.

Which wrong assumption does Myrtle make?

What does Gatsby tell Tom?

1. That he has feelings for Daisy.
2. That Daisy and Gatsby were running away together
3. That Daisy never loved him

What is Gatsby doing at the very end of the chapter?

1. Developing a plan to run away to escape the consequences of the car crash
2. Crying on his dock because he realizes that he last lost Daisy forever
3. Standing outside the Buchanan household to make sure Daisy is okay
4. Talking to Wolfsheim in the hopes he can arrange a hit man to murder Tom

Who was driving the car that killed Myrtle?

1. Daisy
2. Nick
3. Tom
4. Jay

What are Daisy and Tom doing at the end of the chapter?

1. They are arguing after the events of the Plaza Hotel showdown.
2. They attend an East Egg party and act as if nothing happened
3. They flee town after the car accident.
4. They are talking at the dinner table, as if they are conspiring.

Do you agree? What do you think of Daisy's decision to choose Tom over Jay? Explain!

Why does Tom let Gatsby and Daisy drive home together?

1. He realizes he can't stand in the way of their love.
2. He has decided that they are not actually having an affair.
3. He has cut the brakes in their car.
4. He realizes that Daisy is not going to leave him for Gatsby.

Any questions about the end of the book?