Explain the Great Gatsby and the Jazz Age

The Great Gatsby, more than any other novel, embodies the 1920's, a period of tremendous economic, cultural, and social change in America. Published in 1925, it chronicles life in the Jazz Age (a term Fitzgerald coined) for a group of beautiful and wealthy young people living near New York City. Many of the stereotypical elements that we associate with the Roaring Twenties are mentioned in The Great Gatsby: newly rich millionaires, Wall Street tycoons, gangsters, bootleggers, speakeasies, flashy automobiles, jazz, wild parties, and flappers.  Fitzgerald summed up this glitzy and glamorous decade with the following statement:  It was the age of miracles, it was the age of art, it was an age of excess, it was age of satire.  The Great Gatsby is considered a classic for its brilliant depiction of Jazz Age America.

The Great Gatsby and the American Dream

The Great Gatsby is one of the definitive novels about the American Dream, and the character of Jay Gatsby embodies many positive and negative aspects of this dream. Gatsby is born in humble circumstances, works hard, acquires great wealth, and wins the girl he loves. Gatsby's life is the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches story that is part of the American mythology. However, his character also represents the negative aspects of the American dream: the materialism, the isolation, and the constant yearning for something better. Even at the end of the novel, Gatsby never realizes that his dream is ultimately unattainable:  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night (Ch. 9). In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald powerfully shows the emptiness of American materialism, and the impossibility of achieving the American Dream.

Literary Qualities of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a beautifully written book. On a technical level, the plotting, characterizations, settings, and symbolism are excellent. Critics have also remarked on Fitzgerald's masterful use of Nick as a narrator. However, it is Fitzgerald s beautiful style, and the richness of his language, that has perhaps never been equaled in American literature. This beautiful and distinctive style comes out in Fitzgerald s descriptions of characters and settings. For example, read Fitzgerald s description of the hulking Tom Buchanan:  Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body- he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top laces, and you could see a great pack of muscles shifting when his shoulder moved under his coat. Or this description of Gatsby s gardens:  In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the champagne of the stars. Some of the most beautiful and lyrical language in the book describe Gatsby s party , Daisy s voice  and Daisy and Gatsby s meeting in the rain. My personal favorite is the scene in which Gatsby remembers first kissing Daisy:  Then he kissed her. At his lips touch, she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.  The richness of this imagery, and the beauty of Fitzgerald s style, turn these passages into poetry. As the writer John O Hara said in a letter to John Steinbeck,  Fitzgerald was a just plain better writer than all of us put together. Just words writing.  The book jacket to the Charles Scribners Sons first edition gets it right: The Great Gatsby is  a magical, living book, blended of irony, romance, and mysticism.