American Lit Context

What is the significance of the title of TGG?

• “the great” - reference to theatre, circus- sets up idea of performance

• “the great” - reference to powerful figures

• raises the question at the end of the novel as to whether Gatsby really was ‘great’ - success story or a warning?

Who is Thomas Park D’Invilliers?

• a pen name of F. Scott Fitzgerald and a character in his quasi autobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise

• Adds to the idea of performance - we are about to enter a world in which nothing anyone says can be trusted

What was the connection between The Jazz Age and TGG?

• The term was popularised due to F.Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 novel “tales of the jazz age”

• Fitzgerald uses the hyperbolic depiction of the jazz age to highlight the contrast of the lives of the upper and lower classes

What was the New Woman?

• By 1929 more than 1/4 of all women were employed

How does Prohibition relate to the Great Gatsby?

• Bootleggers mingled with the upper echelons of society - similarly Gatsby also attempted to mingle with upper classes through his parties.

• Gatsby’s parties act as a sort of speakeasy?

• Al Capone, like Gatsby rose from humble beginnings to amass great wealth.

What was consumerism like in the 1920s?

Credit became common - people spending money they didn’t have on things they couldn’t afford

What was the social landscape in Roaring 20s?

• those in the top 5% earned 1/3 of all income

• 60% under poverty line

• Rich encouraged everyone to buy bonds and invest in stock market - seen as ‘get rich quick scheme’ - great depression and wall street crash were the eventual consequences

What were the issues of agricultural surplus in the 1920s?

• Prohibition led to 90% fall in barley production

• farmers couldn’t sell overseas due to high tariffs and taxes

• Lack of regulation for banks

• Selling farms - bought by conglomerates

What was immigration policy in the 1920s?

• Lots of anti-immigration propaganda - some groups of immigrants labelled as ‘undesirable’

• 1921: Emergency Quota Act

• 1924: National Origins Act

Links between immigration and TGG?

• Tom is white supremacist

• nick also reflects racial prejuidces - calling african americans racial slurs

• Wolfsheim described by jewish sterotypes based on arnold rothstein. cited as example of fitzgerlad’s anti-semtiism - is it a reflection of fitzgerald’s views or is he criticising the hypocrisy and racist attidues of the time?

What is Manifest Destiny?

• belief that american settlers were destined to colonise the whole country

• hinged on religion, others motivated economically - land for the taking, californian gold rush in 1848

• by 1890, bureau of the census announced that there was no longer any such thing as a frontier - due in part to the railway

Links between Manifest Destiny and TGG?

• irony - all 5 of min characters are westernes who have moved to east for new life

• midwest and west presented as much more traditional in values, contrasted with the hedonism and luxury of east and new york

What is the link between WW1 and TGG?

• Gatsby takes part in the Muese-Argonne offensive

• when gatsby talks abt himself, we hardly ever hear abt his award for valor during meuse-argonne - always abt his parents being rich - society only cares abt status/ family and material wealth

What was the Lost Generation?

• men came back from war, came back to an america that didnt care abt their efforts and the enormity of what they had just done

• sense of identity caught up in war but not supported or valued by soceity that only supported materialism

Link between Fitzgerald and the Lost Generation?

• fitzgerlad also served in army and came back to world where values instilled in the army weren’t valued

• Gatsby also fixates on the past in the same way - him and daisy never really existed - idealised past that can’t be returned to

Connections between Gangsters and TGG?

• Wolfsheim’s molar teeth cufflinks show the gruesome nature of amassing his wealth

• fitzgerald depicts Gatsby as more sanitised - similar to media perception to al capone

• could be argued that this preying on vulnerable ppl like himself in the past showed gatsby’s own moral ambiguity and wilful detatchment

• gatsby can’t even escape this world- onmious phonecalls he rushes to answer

Who was Horatio Algar?

The ‘Alger hero’: The Alger hero is usually a young boy who ascends from impoverished circumstances to become respectable and successful through hard work and honesty

Links between Horatio Algar and TGG?

• alger’s heroes constantly find happiness through materialistic success, fitzgeralds characters often experience disillusionment

• gatsby does try the honest rags-to-riches route (dan cody, yet a woman took his inheritance from him). Therefore when talking abt him as misguided criminal, we could use this alger route to show that he did try the honest route - society dictates that only measure of success is money

What was the significance of the Model T Ford?

• known for being first mass-produced car - rendered afforable, espcially for the middle class

• 1/2 of all cars in america in 1918 were model t fords

Link between automobiles and TGG?

• automobile associated with death and destruction - paralells to the fear surrounding capitalism- symbolic of capitalim and consumerism destroying beauty of natural world

Link between TGG and The Femme Fatale?

• Myrtle tries to be the femme fatale - dressed as it

• Daisy more overtly the femme fatale - voice, she knowingly enchantsand entraps gatsby

Links between wealth and TGG?

• daisy and tom old money - priviledged but don’t flaunt their weealth with loud extravagant parties - quiet wealth

• gatsby new money - throws opulent parties - noueavu riche - gaudy and tacky

What was the Gilded Age?

• America became more prosperous and saw unprecendted growth in industry and technology.

• Also a period where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class.

What caused the Dust Bowl?

• After Civil War, due to sig advances in farming tech, farmers began to cultivate the land

• Used practices which depirved soil of its nutrients increasing possibility of erosion

What was the impact of the Dust Bowl?

• 35 mill acres of fertile land were destroyed

• more than 500,000 americans left homeless

What was the impact of mechanisation on agriculture?

• John Deere’s steel plows

• By the 1940s farmers made up 18% of labour force

Who was Ed Ricketts?

• marine biologist, philosopher, ecologist and friend to John Steinbeck

• Ricketts inspiration for Jim Casey

• Was a key support in Steinbeck’s writing - he would help unpick issues with his novels

What was the state of socialism in the 1920s and 1930s?

• Communist party saw even larger rise during great depression

What was the impact of the New Deal?

• 1935 national labor relations act

• Resulted in huge growth of membership in labor unions, especially in the mass production sector

• 1934 Jones-Costigan act introduced the prohibition of child labor under the age of 14

What were some notable strikes in the 1930s?

• Salinas lettuce strike (1936)

• (FVWU) demanded preferential hiring after the employer blacklisted union workers following the Imperial Valley Lettuce strike (1935)

• Use of gas bombs

What was the overall reception to GOW at the time?

• Published in April 1939: it sold 430,000 copies that year and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award

• The film was nominated for several Oscars, and won two

What was Steinbeck’s response to criticism of the novel?

With this novel, ‘I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves...Throughout I’ve tried to make the reader participate in the actuality, what he takes from it will be scaled entirely on his own depth or hollowness.’

What were some notable occasions of GOW being banned?

• The East St Louis Public Library's board voted to burn its three copies in 1939 'on grounds of obscenity' and 'objectionable language'

• This event actually made it more popular, and the same library had to buy seven more copies to meet demand

What were links between McCarthyism and backlash against GOW?

• a rife division in class is prevalent or even exacerbated by messaging that is meant to unite- foreshadows the complete lack of solidarity that emerged with McCarthyism

• Steinbeck's direct critique of capitalism (the film was showcased in Soviet theatres for a few weeks, and George Orwell claimed he had Soviet affiliations to the UK government) created a climate of political tension and fear that only grows with the rise of McCarthy

Significance of the GOW’s film?

• a good microcosm for wider attitudes towards the novel at the time: whilst it was hailed for its literary merit, it required political cleansing to be more palatable

• The opening scroll has the disclaimer that 'no one was to blame' for the events it depicts

What was the depiction of the Joads in the GOW’s film?

• The journey is shuffled around to have an overall more positive and optimistic depiction for the Joads: it ends with the Government Camp, and the camp director is played by an actor who resembled Roosevelt and heavily imitated his mannerisms – very deliberate allusion to the New Deal and political messaging at the time of a 'better capitalism' that would solve the solutions following The Great Depression → good to compare with Gatsby

What was the Transcendentalism movement?

• 1830s

• It emphasised intuition and personal knowledge and resists conformity to social norms.

• Transcendentalist writers and thinks believe individuals are inherently good.

• Everyone has the power to ‘transcend’ the chaos of society and use their own intellect for finding a sense of meaning and greater purpose

What was the American Romanticism movement?

• 1830-1865

• American Romanticism celebrated individualism, the exploration of emotions, and finding truth and nature as a spiritual connecton.

• Consisted of writers who yearned to define a uniquely American national identity seperate from Europe.

• Much of American Romantic literature focused on the social outsider as a protagonist who lived by their own rules on the outskirts of society.

What was the Naturalism movement?

• 1865-1914

• Naturalism observed how environmental, social and hereditary factors impacted human nature. Naturalism rejected movements, such as Romanticism, which embraced subjectivity

What was the Modernism and Experimentation movement?

• 1914-1940

• a movement that emerged in the late 19th and ealry 20th centuries, largely in response to the rapid sociateal changed brought abt by industrialiszation and urbanisation.

• Characterized by a break with traditional forms of writing, literary modernism sought to reflect the percieved fragmentation of society, and the disillusionment felt by many.

How did Americans reconcile with their Britishness after American Independence?

America found it difficult to let go of their British cultural heritage. Up until the 19th century, American writers would repeatedly call for a distinctively ‘American’ literature to parallel their political independence.

When was the Monroe Doctrine created?

1823

What was the state of the Reconstruction of the South?

• Because of Lincoln’s assassination, the process of Reconstruction was badly botched.

• Radical reconstruction was imposed on the South and southern opposition went underground - first emergence of KKK.

• Many Northerners used reconstruction as opportunity to fill their pockets, cementing southerners’ sense of oppression

How did the Jim Crow laws develop?

• By 1879, republicans were in danger of losing grip on national politics - withdrew federal backing for reconstruction - individual states free to implement own laws

• Jim Crow laws reintroduced segregation and black people became second-class citizens, their lack of education and illiteracy exploited so mercilessly that many found themselves little better off than they were before emancipation

What was the Progressive Era?

• 1890s-1920s

• aimed to redress the inequalities of the Gilded Age, applying the latest in scientific  and philosophical thought to a series of reforms.

• inequalities continued to grow, not least within the African-American ghettos that began to appear in the Northern cities as black Southerners moved to escape the bigotry and poor prospects

What was the effect of the Depression on American politics?

The Depression that followed the Crash caused a turn to the Left in mainstream American politics.

What was the Panic of 1883?

• During 1880s railroad bubble - overbuilt

• Philadelphia and Reading Railroad overextended itself

• Concern rose, ppl rushed to withdraw money from banks - bank runs - credit crunch + financial panic in London

• Depression 1893 one of the worst in US history - unemployment rate over 10% for 5 yrs

What was the Pullman Strike?

• in spring 1894, amid general economic downturn and decline in prices nationally, pullman cut workers’ wages without proportionally reducing rents on company-owned houses

• Spread from may to june to become nationawide railroad strike as american railway union called out workers across country in sympathy with pullman workers

• Federal government - sided with employees in labour-management dispute

Stats for population in New York?

• the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880

• By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing.

What was the Tenement House Law?

• effectively outlawed the construction of new tenements on 25-foot lots and mandated improved sanitary conditions, fire escapes and access to light.

• By the late 1920s, many tenements in Chicago had been demolished and replaced with large, privately subsidized apartment projects.

What was the impact of the New Deal on housing?

• transformed low-income housing in many American cities through programs including slum clearing and the building of public housing.

• The first fully government-built public housing project opened in New York City in 1936.

What was the significance of Wharton’s divorce on AOI?

• By the point Wharton was writing the Age of Innocence, she had been divorced for 6 years from her husband Teddy, who she had married at the behest of her family

• Wharton therefore recognised how this society encouraged loveless marriages through her own and how divorce was such as taboo subject

What was the significance of Wharton’s personal life on AOI?

• Several of the characters are recognizably members of Wharton’s own family.

• Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence in 1920, her first novel after WW1. The Paris she had loved, that had served her as a refuge from the materialism of her own country

What was the significance of Larsen’s childhood on Passing?

• Her mother was a white immigrant from Denmark, while her father was a mixed-race Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies, making Larsen a mixed-race child.

• Larsen attended schools with mainly white classmates from Scandinavian backgrounds like her own, but it wasn’t until she moved to New York City as an adult that she was able to connect with the other side of her racial identity.

• Larsen didn’t quite fit in New York Black society, many of whom had strong Black heritage and were proudly descended from freed slaves.

What was the significance of Larsen’s marriage on Passing?

• While Larsen and Imes would not divorce until years after the publication of Passing, parts of the novel’s depiction of the breakdown of Irene and Brian’s relationship uncannily resembles that of Larsen and Imes’s relationship.

• While living in Nashville for a teaching position, Imes was involved in an ongoing affair with a white colleague.

What was the significance of the Harlem Renaissance on Passing?

In Passing, as in other novels of the Harlem School, the city— particularly Harlem—functions as a kind of topos that becomes a site of transformation and, potentially, liberation in that decade of black cultural and social awakening.

What was the significance of Dreiser’s background on Sister Carrie?

• Lived in poverty, unhappy childhood

• in 1892 started as journalist at the Chicago Globe- allowed him a glimpse into social issues

• Politically he was involved with the progressive movement and his writings often focused on social justice and materialism

• Observed the activities of both the rich and the poor and so had an understanding of how both sides lived

What was the significance of Cather’s childhood to My Ántonia?

Like the narrator of My Ántonia, Cather was displaced from her original Virginia home as a young child and taken to a recently settled region of Nebraska. After about a year, the Cathers moved to nearby Red Cloud, which is the prototype for all the small towns in Cather’s prairie novels

Who was Ántonia based on?

• As a young woman she met Annie Sadilek Pavelka, a schoolmate who would later become the main character in her acclaimed novel My Ántonia

• Like the forlorn Mr. Shimerda, Frank Sadilek was a violinist who committed suicide during a brutal winter, and his daughter Annie, the source for Antonia, gave birth to a daughter after being abandoned by a manipulative railroad man who had promised to marry her

What was the impact of Cather’s sexuality on My Ántonia?

• Cather’s lesbianism was an open secret

• Between 1899 and 1916 Cather’s most intimate companion was Isabelle McClung. However, in 1916 Cather was shocked and betrayed when McClung decided to marry the violinist Jan Hambourg.

• It is tempting to read the powerful sense of loss that informs Jim Burden’s recollections as a reflection of Cather’s depressed mood in the wake of Isabelle McClung’s marriage.

What is the significance of prairie literature to My Ántonia?

• In the early 1910s, young criticis were clamoring for American writers to liberate themselves from a “genteel tradition” of high culture ruled by European canons of taste and subject matter.

• Cather reproduces the national mythology of the frontier while simultaneously revising it by placing indomitable women at the center of the cultural script

What is the significance of attitudes to immigration in My Ántonia?

• racist ideologues as Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who in 1920 claimed that immigrants would “in time drive us out of our own land by mere force of breeding”

• Antonia’s unassimilated household- Cather suggests these kinds of families will generate an American identity still in the process of being born.

• Antonia as the progenitor of an inchoate American culture.

What is the significance of Faulkner’s upbringing on TSATF?

• Faulkner came from a rather distinguished Mississippi family.

What is the significance of the Reconstruction Era on TSATF

• Families like the Compsons lost their wealth and status while still clinging to their old, aristocratic traditions and values, even in the face of the changing modern world.

• At the same time black families like the Gibsons were still second-class citizens, hardly better off than they were as slaves, and subject to Jim Crow laws, indentured servitude, and the danger of being lynched by the Klu Klux Klan.

What was the significance of Wright’s political background in Native Son?

• In 1934, Wright became a member of the Communist Party and began publishing articles and poetry in numerous left-wing publications

What was the significance of Wright’s other books in Native Son?

• he wrote and published Uncle Tom’s Children, a collection of short stories that addresses the social realities faced by Black American men

• he still felt he had written a novel “which even bankers’ daughters could read and feel good about.

• With his next work, Native Son, he was determined to make his readers feel the reality of race relations by writing something “so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.”

What was the significance of Wright’s childhood on Native Son?

• Bigger is a fusion of men he had himself known while growing up in the South. Confronted by racism and oppression and left with very few options in their lives, these men displayed increasingly antisocial and violent behavior, and were, in effect, disasters waiting to happen.

• Wright saw, just as Bigger does in Native Son that millions of whites suffered as well, and he believed that the direct cause of this suffering was the structure of American society itself. 

What is the role of Chicago’s South Side in Native Son?

• Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s was a place of poverty, segregation, and violence. African Americans were confined to a small area of the city, where they faced discrimination in housing, employment, and education.

• The failure of an anti-lynching bill in Congress during this time highlighted the deep-rooted racism that permeated society, further intensifying the urgency for racial equality.

What was the significance of Twain’s childhood on Huck Finn?

When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a theme in these writings.