The roaring twenties was the time of the Charleston, the flapper, and parties that never killed nobody. The decade before the greatest and longest recession in American history, money became a major aspect in everyone’s lives and it was believed not much could go wrong. In F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby, pieces from poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and sources recounting the times of the 1920s, though, the hardships of the time were exposed. Although many critics argue that the 1920s was a time of prosperity, it was actually a time of hardship because of the dissatisfaction of the people, the obsession with illusions, and the failed American Dream. Even though no marriage is perfect in any era, the discontentment among the people
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As the party at Gatsby’s died down, Nick watches as, “Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands” (Fitzgerald 51). While at the party, everyone lives in a high where there are no problems and everything is ideal. As the party ends and the high dies down, the illusion that they were living shatters and every problem they had going into the party resurfaces. The parties gave the guests a false sense of reality as everyone in attendance was living in a fantasy world. While Nick and Daisy talk about her daughter, she says, “...that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy lives in the lie that she is naive and unaware as a way to protect herself from the truth. This gives her a false sense of reality as she makes herself believe that everything is perfect. In Zora Neale Hurston’s work, she says, “...white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there” (Hurston). Due to the fact that she was young, Zora was sheltered and lived in the illusion that there was no hostility between her race and her white counterparts. This gave her a false sense of reality as once she left her small town, she believed that she would be treated equal, but instead she learned about how poorly her race was treated. The lies that people lived through played a role in the hardship of this decade as it allowed them to believe in an alternate reality that differed majorly from real
As the party at Gatsby’s died down, Nick watches as, “Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands” (Fitzgerald 51). While at the party, everyone lives in a high where there are no problems and everything is ideal. As the party ends and the high dies down, the illusion that they were living shatters and every problem they had going into the party resurfaces. The parties gave the guests a false sense of reality as everyone in attendance was living in a fantasy world. While Nick and Daisy talk about her daughter, she says, “...that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy lives in the lie that she is naive and unaware as a way to protect herself from the truth. This gives her a false sense of reality as she makes herself believe that everything is perfect. In Zora Neale Hurston’s work, she says, “...white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there” (Hurston). Due to the fact that she was young, Zora was sheltered and lived in the illusion that there was no hostility between her race and her white counterparts. This gave her a false sense of reality as once she left her small town, she believed that she would be treated equal, but instead she learned about how poorly her race was treated. The lies that people lived through played a role in the hardship of this decade as it allowed them to believe in an alternate reality that differed majorly from real