The Roaring Twenties was an era of great political and social change. The Modernist style of writing was a breakthrough during this time. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Modernist writer during the 1920’s. Throughout his life, he composed many Modernist works, his most famous The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s novel tells the truth behind the corrupt upper class through the narration of Nick Carraway. Fitzgerald incorporated his own life experiences into the characters of the novel to display the immorality of the higher class. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby shows the skewed morality of the upper class during the 1920’s.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24th, 1896. Mary McQuillan, his mother, came from an Irish-Catholic …show more content…
Americans shifted from farmers to city-dwellers, and the total nation’s wealth more than doubled. A sense of liberation rooted from the rise of consumer culture, mass entertainment, and “revolution in morals and manners.” Gender roles, hair styles, and dress profoundly changed. The 1920’s was a decade of “prosperity and dissipation, and of jazz bands, bootleggers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers.” The younger generation rebelled against the traditional standards, while their elders sat back in speculation (Digital History, …show more content…
Fitzgerald earned only two thousand dollars from the novel; the same amount he received from one of his short stories published in the newspaper. The New York Evening World described the book as “a valiant effort to be ironical,” and “a dud.” By the time he died in 1940, Fitzgerald only earned thirteen dollars from The Great Gatsby. However, following Fitzgerald’s death and the fade of the Jazz Age, readers “were willing to revisit the novel and consider its literary merit anew.” Between 1941 and 1949, The Great Gatsby was published in seventeen editions. By 1960, the novel was considered “a classic of twentieth-century American fiction.” Now, since 1925, more than twenty five million copies of the novel have been sold across the world (Reach, Kirsten). Fitzgerald was a modernist writer who still has an impact on readers today. His most popular novel, The Great Gatsby, is considered one of the greatest Modernist novels after nearly ninety years. Through the story, Fitzgerald revealed his own life experiences and the true corruption of the upper class. The story of the puzzling millionaire, Jay Gatsby, still holds a strong position in the Modernists works that are still read
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24th, 1896. Mary McQuillan, his mother, came from an Irish-Catholic …show more content…
Americans shifted from farmers to city-dwellers, and the total nation’s wealth more than doubled. A sense of liberation rooted from the rise of consumer culture, mass entertainment, and “revolution in morals and manners.” Gender roles, hair styles, and dress profoundly changed. The 1920’s was a decade of “prosperity and dissipation, and of jazz bands, bootleggers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers.” The younger generation rebelled against the traditional standards, while their elders sat back in speculation (Digital History, …show more content…
Fitzgerald earned only two thousand dollars from the novel; the same amount he received from one of his short stories published in the newspaper. The New York Evening World described the book as “a valiant effort to be ironical,” and “a dud.” By the time he died in 1940, Fitzgerald only earned thirteen dollars from The Great Gatsby. However, following Fitzgerald’s death and the fade of the Jazz Age, readers “were willing to revisit the novel and consider its literary merit anew.” Between 1941 and 1949, The Great Gatsby was published in seventeen editions. By 1960, the novel was considered “a classic of twentieth-century American fiction.” Now, since 1925, more than twenty five million copies of the novel have been sold across the world (Reach, Kirsten). Fitzgerald was a modernist writer who still has an impact on readers today. His most popular novel, The Great Gatsby, is considered one of the greatest Modernist novels after nearly ninety years. Through the story, Fitzgerald revealed his own life experiences and the true corruption of the upper class. The story of the puzzling millionaire, Jay Gatsby, still holds a strong position in the Modernists works that are still read