Installment #1 (November 13, revised November 24)
Mirza, Rupali. “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Jazz Age and The Great Gatsby.” Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies 2.5 (2014): 138.
This journal article is similar to my previous one but purposefully only focuses on The Great Gatsby and the Jazz Age, not any of the movies or similar novels. It focuses more on novel settings rather than the era itself, drawing more specific connections in a more concise manner, such as how the attitudes of American women in the 1920s are seen in characters Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. This source can be downloaded as a PDF through Google Scholar. I will use this as a main source and perhaps synthesize it with the Shumway source to drive in points about The Great Gatsby and the Jazz Age.
Reference quote(s): “The atmosphere was corrupted with explicit magazines and movies. There was an increase in the population of bootleggers with the implementation of the Prohibition Act. There was an open culture promoting alcoholism. Men would casually carry gin in their pockets. Serving of alcoholic drinks before dinner became a social obligation. The Jazz Age was driven by the Prohibition Act, automobiles, explicit magazines and movies” (Mirza 137).
“The attainment of wealth and thereby Daisy’s love was the achievement of the American Dream by Gatsby. The stories of rags to riches and the attainment of the American Dream was commonplace with burning examples like Carnegie. Commenting on the influence of the Jazz Age on Gatsby and Myrtle, Fitzgerald has said: It was a compelling mistake on the part of Gatsby and Myrtle when they tried to behave in this way, allured by the popular Jazz Age culture of the day” (Mirza 140).
Newton-Matza, Mitchell, ed. Jazz Age: People and Perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2009.
This eBook is entirely focused on the Jazz Age in America from a social level to a corporate level. It covers major historical events during this time relating to Women’s Rights and African American history. In this era, even natural disasters affected the American spirit, and Newton-Matza discusses how the social and political climate changed and continued from the 19th century to the 20th. This source is accessible through Google Scholar. I will utilize this source mainly to have more details on what the Jazz Age was like, so that I can more accurately compare it to the novel’s setting and dialogue.
Reference quote(s):
(Newton-Matza Introduction xvi).
Shumway, D. R. (2014). Gatsby, The Jazz Age, and Luhrmann Land. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 14(1), 132–137. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537781414000681
This journal article deeply dives into the Jazz Age and the aspects of this era that The Great Gatsby and the 2013 Luhrmann film reflect. Shumway brings up how jazz has developed as a word, and how Fitzgerald uses it to refer to developing African-American music. The socioeconomic qualities of the 1920s are explored and adjacent eras are described for a clear difference in time periods. This source can be viewed using OU’S JSTOR connection. I will utilize this as a main source with plenty of citations as this work is very similar to the topics I want to research.
Reference quote(s): “Fitzgerald named the 1920s ‘the Jazz Age.’ He was, of course, in part referring to the new popularity of the African American music, but ‘jazz’ for him had a wider meaning. His 1931 essay, ‘Echoes of the Jazz Age,’ begins, ‘The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing, then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities behind the lines of a war.'[1] Fitzgerald dates the period from the repression of May Day demonstrations in 1919 to the October 1929 stock market crash, when ‘the most expensive orgy in history’ came to an end. For Fitzgerald, the Jazz Age is characterized by changes in manners and morals, by the emergence of youth as a distinct category, and by excess. Fitzgerald himself was so powerfully identified with each of these and the Jazz Age, in general, that when it ended, critics and readers actively rejected him. He was never a simple cel-ebrant of the period, but rather something like a participant observer who made and spent enormous sums of money and drank himself sick but who was able to write about the era with detachment” (Shumway 132).
Vogel, J. (2015). “Civilization’s Going to Pieces”: The Great Gatsby, Identity, and Race, from the Jazz Age to the Obama Era. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, 13(1), 29–54. https://doi.org/10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.13.1.29
This journal article discusses both the original The Great Gatsby novel and the 2013 Luhrmann film. It analyzes the paralleling, and differing: storylines, music, and cast. It compares the modern reimaginations of the Gatsby story to how the original novel was written. This source can be viewed using OU’s JSTOR connection. I will utilize this source as a cross-reference or perhaps a very minor citation to reference the notes made on the movie soundtrack.
Reference quote(s): “Luhrmann justified the anachronistic use of music by explaining the commonalities between 1920s jazz and 2000s hip-hop: ‘Jazz in 1922 was being referred to as an African-American fad. Why would Fitzgerald put such ephemeral stuff, actual song lyrics, in his book? Because it made it immediate and visceral and exciting for the reader. And when you think of an African-American street music today that is visceral and exciting and is making a big impression on popular culture, that’s hip-hop’ (qtd. in McGrath). Listening to the driving beat of ‘No Church in the Wild,’ featuring Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Frank Ocean, as a newsreel montage presents us with the ecstatic, throbbing, flick-ering nightlife of 1920s New York City demonstrates Luhrmann’s point” (Vogel 30-31).
Installment #2 (November 17, revised November 24)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. eBook #64317. Project Gutenberg, January 17, 2021, online.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64317/64317-h/64317-h.htm
This is the original The Great Gatsby novel adapted into an eBook by Project Gutenberg with no noted editing or altering of the original text as F. Scott Fitzgerald intended. This depicts the story of The Great Gatsby and shows the scenery, plot, and driving forces for characters Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and others in a 1920s dramatic romance novel. This source is accessible through the linked website above. I will use this source as the basis for my entire paper with constant referencing to this original novel in order to analyze Fitzgerald’s intended writing as closely as possible.
Reference quote(s): “In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. 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 last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, and hair bobbed in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. 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; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under the constantly changing light” (Fitzgerald Chapter 3).
“A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry” (Fitzgerald Chapter 4).
Schenck, Joe and Van, Gus. “Ain’t We Got Fun.” Columbia Graphophone Company, 1921. Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKtvCdzBX-s&ab_channel=The78Prof.
This song was featured in The Great Gatsby when character Klipspringer plays the piano. Not only this, but it is sang several times throughout the 1974 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Its repetitive use will be analyzed and the lyrics containing hints of social class and the “fun” times of the 1920s will be elaborated on. I will use this source to analyze the social conditions and American entertainment during the 1920s to compare this to scenes in the original novel.
Reference quote(s):
“Ev’ry morning, ev’ry the evening,
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, Oh but honey,
Ain’t we got fun?” (Van and Shenck).
“Still we have fun there’s nothing’s surer
The rich get richer and the poor get children.
In the meantime, in between time,
Ain’t we got fun?” (Van and Shenck).
The Great Gatsby. Directed by Jack Clayton, The Newdon Company, 1974.
This is the third film adaptation (chronologically) of the novel The Great Gatsby starring several known actors today, such as Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, and more. This is an extremely popular film version of the original novel that allows for scenes that rely heavily on imagery to be depicted in a manner that can actually be viewed. This is not the only movie, nor is it the most “correct” or accurate to the original, but it demonstrates scenery and songs from 1920s America that can be difficult to imagine from text alone. I will use this source as a reference or consultation to keep in mind a visual aspect, even though this is an interpretation, of 1920s American society.
Reference quote(s): n/a, will be using visuals
Installment #3 (November 24)
Bewley, Marius. “Scott Fitzgerald’s Criticism of America.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 62, no. 2, 1954, pp. 223–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27538346. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
This journal article contains an analysis on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s criticism of the American Dream within The Great Gatsby rather than arguing in favor of it. In it, Marius Bewley discusses how Fitzgerald’s characters, settings, tone, and implemented details of the Jazz Age affect how some scenes can be interpreted as irony or satire, a way to jab at the idea of the American Dream, going from superficial descriptions to in-depth analysis. This source is accessible through OU’s JSTOR connection. I will use this source as a secondary counterargument to the other source I have selected as a counterargument in order to broaden my stance and interpret all sides of what The Jazz Age means, especially pertaining to The Great Gatsby.
Reference quote(s): “Critics of Scott Fitzgerald tend to agree that The Great
Gatsby is somehow a commentary on that elusive phrase, the American dream. The assumption seems to be that Fitzgerald approved. On the contrary, it can be shown that The Great Gatsby offers some of the severest and closest criticism of the American dream that our literature affords. Read in this way, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece ceases to be a pastoral documentary of the Jazz Age and takes its distinguished place among those great national novels whose profound corrective insights into the nature of American experience are not separable from the artistic form of the novel itself. That is to say, Fitzgerald– at least in this one book– is in a line with the greatest masters of American prose. The Great Gatsby embodies a criticism of American experience– not of manners, but of a basic historic attitude to life– more radical than anything in James’s own assessment of the deficiencies of his country. The theme of Gatsby
is the withering of the American dream” (Bewley 223).
“Essentially, this phrase represents the romantic enlargement of the possibilities of life on a level at which the material and the spiritual have become inextricably confused. As such, it led inevitably toward the problem that has always confronted American artists dealing with American experience– the problem of determining the hidden boundary in the American vision of life at which the reality ends and the illusion begins” (Bewley 223).
Pearson, Roger L. “Gatsby: False Prophet of the American Dream.” The English Journal, vol. 59, no. 5, 1970, pp. 638–45. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/813939. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
In this journal article, Pearson argues that despite how The Great Gatsby is credited as an “American Dream” novel and that Gatsby is a symbol of the American Spirit, Fitzgerald actually intended Gatsby to be a “False prophet” (Pearson). This source argues against the typical belief of Gatsby being an all-around symbol and instead dives into the complexity of how his character is written symbolically, whether intended or not. This source is accessible through OU’s JSTOR connection. I will use this source as a counterargument to what Fitzgerald meant by coining the term The Jazz Age and how other authors have interpreted it.
Reference quote(s): “I believe that Fitzgerald is much like Hemingway in his symbolic technique in The Great Gatsby, in that he projects a series of variations in his imagery so as to achieve a cumulative effect. To be sure, as will be later pointed out in this paper, Fitzgerald does, at times, become ortho-
dox and even formulistic to a degree in The Great Gatsby. However, he achieves a totality of expression by introducing motifs that give the reader a slightly differing perspective of Gatsby, while always moving in a specific direction. Hence, Gatsby is no shallow stereotype. Instead, he has depth and complexity” (Pearson 639).
The Great Gatsby. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, Warner Bros. et al., 2013.
This movie is the most popular modern film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Containing famous actors Tobey Maguire as character Nick Carraway and Leonardo DiCaprio as character Jay Gatsby, this film has many actors more recognizable to readers of this generation than the 1974 film. Not only this, but Baz Luhrmann, the director, uses jazz versions of several modern songs of all genres in order to illustrate the fame associated with Gatsby’s parties. I will use this scene as a secondary reference along with the 1974 The Great Gatsby film in order to analyze music, setting, and other visual aspects of the production.
Reference quote(s): n/a, will be using visuals