Notes of The Great Gatsby Intro 

The Roaring Twenties

• During the 1920s urbanization continued to accelerate
• For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas
• New York City was home to over 5 million people in 1920
• Chicago had nearly 3 million

Urban vs. Rural

• Throughout the 1920s American found themselves caught between urban and rural cultures
• Unban life was considered a world of anonymous crowds strangers, moneymakers, and pleasure seekers
• Rural life was considered to be safe, with close personal ties, hard work and morals

WWI

• World War I ended in 1918
• Disillusioned because of the war, the generation that fought and survived has come to be called “the lost generation”
• While the sense of loss was readily apparent among expatriate American artists who remained in Europe after the war, back home the disillusionment took a less obvious form
• American seemed to throw itself headlong into a decade of madcap behavior and materialism, a decade that has come to be called the Roaring Twenties.

New Roles for Women

• The fast-changing world of the 1920s produced new roles for women
• Many women entered the workplace as nurses, teachers, librarians and secretaries
• However, woman earned less than men and were kept out of many traditional male jobs (management) and faced discrimination
• After the tumult of World War I, Americans were looking for a little fun in the 1920s
• Women were becoming more independent and achieving greater freedoms (right to vote, more employment, freedom of the auto)
• A Flapper was an emancipated young woman who embraced the new fashions and urban attitudes (1920s)
• Women cut hair in the 1920s as a fashionable hair style called “boyish bob”

Prohibition

• Alarmed at the direction the country seemed to be going some thought the answer was the passage of the 18th Amendment
• This Amendment launched the era known as Prohibition
• The new law made it illegal to make, sell or transport liquor
• Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment
• Reformers had long believed alcohol led to crime, child and wife abuse, and accidents
• Supporters were largely from the rural south and west
• The church affiliated Anti-Saloon League and the Temperance Union helped push the 18th Amendment through
• Prohibition contributed to the growth of organized crime in every major city

Speakeasies and Bootleggers

• Many Americans did not believe drinking was a sin
• Most immigrant groups were not willing to give up drinking
• To obtain liquor illegally drinkers went underground to hidden saloons known as speakeasies
• People also bought liquor from bootleggers who smuggled it in from Canada Cuba and the West Indies

Organized Crime

• Chicago became notorious as the home of Al Capone-- a famous bootlegger
• Capone took control of the Chicago liquor business by killing off his competition
• Al Capone was finally convicted on tax evasion charges in 1931
• Another gangland activity was illegal gambling
• Black Sox Scandal of 1919, in which eight member of the Chicago White Sox were indicated for accepting brides to throw baseball’s World Series

Government Fails to Control Liquor

• Eventually Prohibition’s fate was sealed by the government which failed to budget enought money to enforce the law
• The task of enforcing Prohibition fell to 1,500 poorly paid federal agents--- celery an impossible task

Support Fades, Prohibition Repealed

• By the mid-1920s only 19% of American supported Prohibition
• Many felt Prohibition caused more problems than it solved
• The 21st Amendment finally repealed Prohibition in 1933
• Reckless spending and consumption and the most conspicuous status symbol of the time was a flashy new automobile
• Advertising was becoming the major industry that it is today and soon advertisers took advantage of new readways by setting up huge billboards at their sides (played in a role in The Great Gatsby)

American Heroes of the 20s

• In 1929, Americans spent $4.5 billion on entertainment (includes sports)
• People crowed into baseball games to see their heroes
• Babe Ruth was a larger than life American hero who played for Yankees
• He hit 60 homers in 1927

Entertainment and Arts

• Even before sound movies offered a means of escape through romance and comedy
• First sound movies: Jazz Singer (1927)
• First animated with sound: Steamboat Willie (1928)
• By 1930 millions of Americans went to the movies each week

Radio come of Age

• Although print media was popular, radio was the most powerful communications medium to emerge in the 1920s
• New was delivered faster and to a larger audience
• Americans could hear the voice of the president or listen to the World Series live

The Jazz Age

• The era is also known as the Jazz Age the music called jazz, promoted by such recent inventions as the phonograph and the radio, swept up from New Orleans to capture the national imagination
• Improvised and wild, jazz broke the rules of music, just as the Jazz Age thumbed its nose at the rules of the past

Louis Armstrong

• In 1922, a young trumpet player named Louis Armstrong joined the Creole Jazz Band
• Later he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in NYC
• Armstrong is considered the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington

• In the late 1920s, Duke Ellington a jazz pianist and composer, led his ten-piece orchestra at the famous Cotton Club
• Ellington won renown as one of America’s greatest composers

Bessie Smith

• Bessie Smith blues singer, was perhaps the most outstanding vocalist of the decade
• She achieved enormous popularity and by 1927 she became the highest paid black artist in the world

The satirical commentary on the snobbery that existed/exists in the Old Rich (inherited wealth) towards the Ne RIch (self-made)