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

The Great Gatsby and the Destruction of a Generation The beauty and splendor of Gatsbys parties 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 morally bankrupt, and thus continually plagued by a crisis of sheath. 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 custom-made shirts his lawn teems with the pay people, all engaged in the serious work of absolute triviality his mannerisms (his false British accent, his old-boy friendliness) are laughably affected. Despite all this, he evoke 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 most 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 mid-twenties. 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 Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald heralds the ruin of his own generation. Since America has always held its entrepreneurs in the highest regard, one might 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 water-washed to dreamers in fact, it was these men who led the most unfortunate lives of all... ...ible Honesty Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. bare-assed 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 Classic, 1986. Hobsba wm, 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. Boston Hall, 1984. 201-13. Raleigh, John Henry. F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. Mizener 99-103. Spindler, Michael. American writings 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.