The Decade of the 1920s

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at F. Scott Fitzgerald's character, Jay Gatsby from "The Great Gatsby", as a role model for American romanticism in the 1920s and an example of capitalists strove to earn money and a superior status in society. The paper discusses the growth of the automobile business in this decade, the amalgamation of small consumer-oriented stores into large "chains", the new grocery Piggly-Wiggly stores, the growth of the advertising industry and the development of the radio. The paper then deals with the political advances of the 1920s, the expansion of the entertainment sector and the state of religion in the country at the time. The paper concludes that this was a decade of excess for some, and frustration and despair for others.

Outline:
Status
Business
Politics
Entertainment
Literature
Religion
Some Conclusions

From the Paper:

"One can easily see that the ten years that began with the advent of so much financial promise and good times, and ended up as the beginning of what is called America's "Great Depression" can easily use Jay Gatsby as its poster boy. Gatsby, in essence, is a romanticized hero in some ways, who turned into the sort of "striver" that those born into wealth abhorred. The decade of the Twenties was about getting rich, getting "wasted", getting entertained, and, at the end, getting some hope that the despair that was now creating anxiety and depression from coast to coast might somehow pass you by. Where the idea of moneymaking it, making more of it, spending more of it, was the keystone of the first years of this "Jazz Age" in America, somehow finding money to barely exist on, real money not stocks, bonds or paper promises- was the key to survival as the decade ended."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Griffith, Richard and Mayer, Arthur: The Movies New York: Bonanza Books, 1957
• Lerner, Max: America As a Civilization New York: Simon & Schuster (1957)
• Library of Congress: "Vaudeville" (July,2005) www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/bh-over.html -
• Morison, Samuel Eliot: The Oxford History of the American People New York: Oxford University Press 1965
• Patterson, Arthur Paul. "Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Visionary Life." http://www.watershedonline.ca/literature/Emerson/Emersonchronology.html. 1996.

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