F. SCOTT FITZGERALD• Fitzgerald grew up in the 20’s

• Joined the Army

• Zelda

• The Great Gatsby 1924

• The importance of wealth

• Zelda, Scottie and Paris

• Everyone must have a downfall

"That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton.... However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works." —F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman...I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

WAR CHANGES MEN

• "I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

WEALTH• A booming stock market

• Young, educated Americans with money to spend

• Extravagance

"Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.“

"One thing's sure and nothing's surer/ The rich get richer and the poor get - children./ In the meantime,/ In between time--"

WITH WEALTH COMES…..EXTRAVAGANCE

"It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARN6agiW7o

PROHIBITION"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

THE JAZZ ERA

THE AUTOMOBILE• Everyone MUST have an

automobile!

• “In the ditch beside the road, right side up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe’ which had left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before.”

WOMEN HAVE A VOICE

A BIT ABOUT THE STORY• Nick Caraway is the narrator (watch for a bit ‘o Gatsby in Nick)

• Story takes place in Manhattan (wealth) and West and East Egg

• Between the city and the country lies the Valley of Ashes- an industrial wasteland

A BIT MORE• Nick moves to New York to become a bonds man.

• Lives next door to Gatsby

• Nick is cousins with Daisy

• Nick is friends with Tom, Daisy’s wife

AND NOW THE PLOT GETS ALL SOAP OPERA ON US

• Gatsby loves Daisy

• Tom loves Myrtle

• Nick doesn’t know what he wants

ISN’T THIS THE AMERICAN DREAM?

• What constitutes a dream?

• Has the concept of the American Dream changed much from the Roaring 20’s?

• Can dreams be sold?

• Is the American Dream linked to celebrity?

• How much materialism exists behind the American Dream?

• Do we define ourselves by what we own?

• What values does American society hold?