The Great Gatsby
In the book, The Great Gatsby, Prohibition played a major role in shaping the plot and characters. After Tom and Gatsby clash in the hotel room, a drunken Daisy drives home and kills Myrtle. Similarly, at Gatsby’s parties he has an exorbitant amount of alcohol. Nick remarks, “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” (Fitzgerald 44). Fitzgerald portrays alcohol as a corrupting force and a cause of many social problems.
Prohibition was an important part of culture in the 1920s. In the song, “John Barleycorn”, barley, a cereal used in alcohol, is personified as John Barleycorn. This tombstone of John Barleycorn, which says he died the day the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, illustrates the “end” of the alcohol industry.
Prohibition was an important part of culture in the 1920s. In the song, “John Barleycorn”, barley, a cereal used in alcohol, is personified as John Barleycorn. This tombstone of John Barleycorn, which says he died the day the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, illustrates the “end” of the alcohol industry.
This tombstone of John Barleycorn represents the "death" of alcohol in the day the 18th Amendment was signed.
(http://theendofprohibition.weebly.com/the-death-of-john-barleycorn.html)
(http://theendofprohibition.weebly.com/the-death-of-john-barleycorn.html)
Unfortunately, Prohibition increased the crime dramatically during the 1920s. According to American Historama, New York had over 100,000 speakeasies.
In, the Great Gatsby, Gatsby comes from a dirt-poor family and works hard to accumulate money and win back Daisy. However, he is scorned by Tom, who comes from an old money family. In the end, Tom leads a vengeful Mr. Wilson to Gatsby, effectively making Tom responsible for Gatsby’s death. This series of events is similar to the decline of the American Dream in the 1920s. According to Emma Lapsansky-Werner, a notable professor of history at Haverford College, farmers suffered from rising debt and falling crop prices. This relates to the The Great Gatsby because no matter how hard Gatsby worked he could never join the upper class. Farmers in the 1920s lived in poverty and although they worked hard to improve their economic situation, low crop prices and expensive farm equipment kept many farmers in poverty.
In The Great Gatsby, automobiles represented a person’s social status. Gatsby’s car signified his newfound wealth with the car’s vibrant and flashy colors. Tom’s car represented the structure of the East Egg and the exclusion of West Eggers from East Egg. In the 1920s, cars were a sign of wealth and success. F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes Jordan and Daisy’s bad driving to represent the wealthy’s careless lifestyle. Fitzgerald showed that although the automobile became more affordable in the 1920s, it was still a vehicle of destruction for the wealthy. Although many Americans fell on hard times during the 1920s, more people were able to experience the American Dream. Inexpensive automobiles like the Model T allowed more people to travel, which increased their freedom.
This yellow 1929 Duesenberg is a collectors piece similar to the yellow car featured in The Great Gatsby.
(http://www.myimgsave.com/duesenberg-1929-yellow.html)
(http://www.myimgsave.com/duesenberg-1929-yellow.html)
"On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future
that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Fitzgerald 192-193).
that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Fitzgerald 192-193).