The Great Gatsby Notes-IOC Prep

The Great Gatsby notes-study in preparation for the IOC Context: The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925, six years after WWI ended in 1919 and 4 years before the stock market crash in 1929. Although Fitzgerald could not have predicted the Wall Street Crash, there are clear indications in the novel that he saw the rampant excesses of the jazz age as excessive and destructive. (Meyer Wolfsheim, The Valley of Ashes etc.) This post-war society was named “The jazz age” and it was a time of political corruption, the prohibition of alcohol, organized crime, gambling, illegal speakeasies or bars, and the cultivation of an American Dream which was increasingly focused on gaining wealth by whatever means necessary. Gatsby´s decadent parties reflect the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure that was popular in the Eastern United states at that time. The old- fashioned American values were being replaced by the pursuit of success and money. The Post modernist style: The Great Gatsby is a postmodern novel . Essentially, this means that: There is a blend of fiction and non-fiction. The characters are fictitious but are very much grounded in the reality of the time. There may be references to real events. A fragmented view of society is presented. The narrator is not omniscient and his view of the events is subjective. The narration may be unreliable or patchy. Time-shifting. The novel is written in a non-linear way. There are flashbacks and there is foreshadowing. The past and present mingle. This is also true of The Handmaid´s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A rejection or challenging of traditional values or assumptions. The author will aim to challenge the status quo and this will provoke public opinion and will prompt readers to think about the world. Many novels like this were written between WWI and after WWII also as people were questioning what it meant to be human. Biographical influences-The voice of the author: Examining an author´s life can assist the reader in identifying the author´s voice and opinions as expressed through the text. Here are some relevant details: Fitzgerald was raised in Minnesota (Mid-Western U.S) in an Irish Catholic family. Minnesota would be considered to be a conservative state based on family values and reliant mostly on agriculture. As a child, Fitzgerald liked to imagine he was from British royalty and had been abandoned on his parent´s doorstep. Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917. In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, and the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. Zelda did not consent to marry him until he could prove that he was a worthy prospect. The

The Great Gatsby Notes-IOC Prep

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