Destruction and Failure of a Generation in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsb

The not bad(p) Gatsby and the Destruction of a Generation The beauty and splendor of Gatsbys eccentricies masks the decay and corruption that lay at the heart of the Roaring Twenties. The society of the Jazz Age, as observed by Fitzgerald, is mor eithery bankrupt, and thus continually plagued by a crisis of character. Jay Gatsby, though he struggles to be a part of this world, remains unalterably an outsider. His life is a grand irony, in that it is a caricature of Twenties-style ostentation his closet overflows with customise shirts his lawn teems with the right people, all eng long timed in the serious work of haughty triviality his mannerisms (his false British accent, his old-boy friendliness) are laughably affected. Despite all this, he can never be truly a part of the corruption that surrounds him he remains intrinsically great. Nick Carrway reflects that Gatsbys determination, his lofty goals, and close to importantly the grand character of his dreams sets him above his vulgar contemporaries. F. Scott Fitzgerald constructs Gatsby as a true American dreamer, set against the decay of American society during the 1920s. By eulogizing the tragic fate of dreamers, Fitzgerald thereby denounces 1920s America as an age of blindness and greed an age hostile to the work of dreaming. In The big Gatsby, Fitzgerald heralds the ruin of his own generation. Since America has always held its entrepreneurs in the highest regard, one exponent expect Fitzgerald to glorify this heroic version of the American Dreamer in the pages of his novel. Instead, Fitzgerald suggests that the societal corruption which prevailed in the 1920s was uniquely inhospitable to dreamers in fact, it was these men who led the most unfortunate lives of all... ...ible Honesty Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. peeled York Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995. Fielder, Leslie. Some Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mizener 70-76. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York Scribner Class ic, 1986. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes. New York Pantheon, 1994. Posnock, Ross. A New World, Material Without Being Real Fitzgeralds Critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby. Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. capital of Massachusetts Hall, 1984. 201-13. Raleigh, John Henry. F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. Mizener 99-103. Spindler, Michael. American Literature and Social Change. Bloomington Indiana UP, 1983. Trilling, Lionel. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston Hall, 1984. 13-20.