The reflection of the era of "roaring twenties" in the F.S. Fitzgerald’s novel "The great Gatsby"

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The reflection of the era of "roaring twenties" in the F.S. Fitzgerald's novel "The great Gatsby"

Diadechko A. Phd in Philology, Associated Professor

While Europe plunged into decline after World War I, the USA entered an era of its rise. The crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression were still ahead and did not seem to follow the economic boom of the 1920s. The decade went through exploration and learning, turned into an era of growth and changes. Veterans of the World War I returned to their working places and in this way welcomed an explosion of the USA industrial growth. American economy was largely consumer-oriented and entertainment became as massive as it had never been before. Profound social changes did not wait to follow. A new cultural revolution inevitably brought about new morals and manners. This period of joy and prosperity, spending money, and fun gave the name to the 1920s which would be remembered as the “Roaring Twenties” (27; 28). Those wild and shocking years are synonymously called the “Jazz Age”. The term is typically used to feature academic and pop culture when jazz style in music and dance became popular nationwide.

American short-story writer and novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald is believed to coin the term “Jazz Age” by publishing his short story collection titled as “Tales of the Jazz Age” in 1922. Actually, the term predated Fitzgerald's book but its popularity was evidently boosted due to it. Later his best known novel “The Great Gatsby” in which jazz is immensely presented, tightly linked the author's name with the term. In his literary pieces F.S. Fitzgerald made an elaborate portrait of this era. He is even believed by many to be its chronicler. Fitzgerald became a living symbol of the “Jazz Age” being deeply involved in its turmoil. His private life in the USA and France was publicly followed and celebrated as his books. But it should be admitted that to conceive and to grasp Fitzgerald's texts and the senses which he had generated, one should have a careful view on the American 1920s which stay about one hundred years from today but vividly shape their historical, social, and cultural environment. And conversely, being acknowledged of this very specific period in the American history, one may feel more concerned when coming across Fitzgerald's novel.

Thus the goal of the article is to study how Fitzgerald's personal story, his literary career, the knowledge of his political, social and cultural environment, generally defined as background knowledge, can contribute to complete comprehension of the “Roaring 1920s”, this specific time period in the USA history. The text of his novel “The Great Gatsby”, which was written in 1925 to embody the “Roaring Twenties”, makes the object of the study. The subject of the study is to consider the information, knowledge, and facts related to the era of “Roaring Twenties” which though not being directly focused in the Fitzgerald's novel, made their background, and which were once expected to be easily guessed and understood by contemporary readers but might cause a problem for today's readers, non-native readers in particular. As for methods applied in the study, they integrate discourse analysis, context analysis, interpretation, and reference, based on guide books data.

The article has been written with gratitude to such American authors as H. Bloom, S. Buchanan, S.Churchwell, and others whose works touch different cultural and literary aspects of “The Great Gatsby” (Bloom; Buchanan; Churchwell). Other supplementary resources and guides have been also referred to. But all the supporting information has been systemized and arranged due to the author's personal views and preferences.

In the 1920s, America partied and celebrated the promise of the American Dream. The American Dream conveyed social ideals that stressed egalitarianism (the doctrine of equal rights, benefits, and opportunities for all citizens) and especially material prosperity (Random...Dictionary:43). People believed that with enough hard work and determination they could achieve wealth. Primarily, they expected to have a chance at financial success regardless of individual differences (24). Geographically, the American dream was associated with the most developed and flourishing eastern part of the country and, particularly, with its heart, New York City (16). New York embodied American “East” which was synonymous to success and which thousands of people were striving to reach. In the 1920s, New York transformed into a city of impressive architecture (20). It became a booming center in which commerce, culture, jazz as well as illegal booze flourished. Its residents, migrants and immigrants, turned the life in the city into a decade-long party. Glamour and glitz colored New York. In 1919, Fitzgerald, whose engagement with Zelda Sayre had been broken because he had no permanent job, also headed to New York guided by American dream and determined to achieve immediate literary success. But all he could achieve was an advertising job for 90 dollars a month. All literary pieces he wrote in parallel were not financially successful. But already in 1920, after his first novel “This side of paradise” was published and brought him real success, Fitzgerald married Zelda and in 1922 the couple purchased a mansion in New York (9; 11).

Fitzgerald's most successful novel “The Great Gatsby” is populated by the characters who are living their high life in New York of 1922. With their mansions on Long Island, which was a home for America's wealthiest men and women, foreign diplomats, Hollywood royalty and socialites, they drive their car or travel by commuting trains to the city. The novel depicts streets, places, attractions, and the air of New York. “We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon...” (Fitzgerald, 1973: 31) “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world” (Fitzgerald, 1973: 71). Fitzgerald visualizes New York when mentioning the places his characters pass when driving or going by taxi. “We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped.” (Fitzgerald, 1973:31) “We passed...the façade of Fifty- ninth Street.” (Fitzgerald, 1973:82) The readers see New York with Nick Carraway's eyes, whom Fitzgerald made the narrator of the story. Nick came to New York from quieter Middle West. Captured by its dynamics and hilarious atmosphere, he admits:” I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye” (Fitzgerald, 1973:60). “Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theatre district, I left a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well” (Fitzgerald, 1973:61). Jordan Baker is also expressive in her own adorable attitude to the city: “I love New York on summer afternoons when every one's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands” (Fitzgerald, 1973:125). During the 1920s poverty was deliberately avoided as it is ignored in the novel by Long Island inhabitants when they pass the Valley of Ashes in their forays into New York City. This is the place where the city dump is located. It is also a striking symbol of time. But its view is behind the glamourous surface of the city. “.and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight” ( Fitzgerald, 1973:26).

The privileged lifestyle of characters staying on Long Island is an excellent display of the new economic wealth of the 1920s (Random.Dictionary: 775). This part of New York deserves special mentioning. Long Island features some of the wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods in the western hemisphere near the shorelines. Until the 1883 completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, the only means of travel between Long Island and the rest of the United States was boat or ship. As other bridges and tunnels were constructed, areas of island began to be developed as residential suburbs, first around the railroads that offered commuting into the city. At the close of the 19th century, wealthy industrialists who made vast fortunes during the Gilded Age began to construct large “baronial” country estates along the North shore of Long Island, favoring the many properties with water views. In a forty year period that spanned from the 1890s through the 1930s, more than 1,200 mansions were built on the Long Island's North Shore, the Gold Coast, by some of America's wealthiest men and women. Proximity to Manhattan attracted people whose estates led to this area being nicknamed “the Gold Coast”. Of the more than 1,000 grand estates that once existed, today less than a third remain and some of these beautiful estates on the North Shore are open to the public today. As a tourist guide states, these homes have stood the test of time, with many transforming into museums, venues and historical memorials of years past. Nowadays, the stunning great estates of the Gold Coast known for their sophistication and opulence highlight the 1920s Gatsby-era immortalized in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel (Abdolhamidi; Leidl; Thomson).

Brought into the 1920s, Fitzgerald's characters live at two imaginary residential parts of Long Island named West Egg and East Egg. Their real location is quite recognizable with a look at today's map of Long Island. West Egg was really the Kings Point end of the Great Neck peninsula. East Egg was the Sands Point end of the Port Washington peninsula. Today both peninsulas are home to the wealthy as they used to be in the 1920s (31). But in the novel these places are symbols of social contrast. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who live in more fashionable East Egg, present the super-rich heirs of old families. They were born into the lap of luxury, and their greatest purpose in life is to remain there, no matter the cost to others. They exemplify the American elite. When talking to Nick, Tom explains ”Oh, I'll stay in the

East, don't you worry. I'd be a God damned fool to live anywhere else” (Fitzgerald, 1973:14).

Gatsby's mansion is across the bay. Jay Gatsby's life provides an extreme example of American Dream. His parties attract the wealthy and those who still hope to become wealthy.” By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath...” (Fitzgerald, 1973:43). The sheer extravagance of Gatsby's parties, his mansion, his numerous possession display the new economic wealth of the era. Gatsby's parties are legendary for their opulence. He is indeed wealthy but he has to work for his money. He never earns respect like those who were wealthy from birth. A privileged lifestyle associated with “old money” does not easily accept the” nouveau riche”, with those who made their “new money” (21). Tom scorns at Gatsby: ”I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends - in the modern world”( Fitzgerald, 1973:131).

Concerned readers can easily draw a parallel between Jay Gatsby and the author of the novel. Fitzgerald was not born wealthy. He was lucky to get money from his distant relative who payed for his education (first at St. Paul school and later at Princeton University) among the wealthy. Even staying among the wealthy, he was an outsider determined to find social acceptance through the only gift that he was blessed to have - his writing. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald often felt he was an outsider even after he had got wealth.

The 1920s was also the era of Prohibition. The 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution banned the sale, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol. But the law said nothing about the consumption of alcohol, and people found many ways, both legal and illegal, to obtain it (18; Random.Dictionary: 1041). Those who provided, distributed, or sold alcohol illegally were known as bootleggers (Random...Dictionary:152). The bootleggers, or rum-runners, would smuggle liquor from overseas and bring them to the secret speakeasies (Random...Dictionary:1239). Bootlegger business turned into a sophisticated type of organized crime. Money laundering and the bribing of police and other public officials in New York in the 1920s became very common. Unsurprisingly, New York City became the world capital of crime in which the Mafia flourished. Crime bosses like Salvatore Maranzano and Lucky Luciano became well known names in New York in the 1920s.