The Roaring Twenties and The Great GatsbyPart 1- The Background: Read the following passage that previews the setting of the 1920s and The Great Gatsby.

Long Island and New York City in the Early 1920s

Great Gatsby is set in New York City and on Long Island, in two areas known as "West Egg" and "East Egg"—in real life, Great Neck and Port Washington peninsulas on Long Island. Long Island's beach communities really were (and still are) home to the rich and fabulous of the New York City area, and Fitzgerald actually lived in a small house in West Egg. Apparently, he listened to his teachers and wrote what he knew, because Nick describes his own house as "an eyesore" that's "squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season" (1.14).These people are rich, and they have a lot of leisure time to spend worrying about how they're perceived socially. Nobody seems particularly interested in politics, or religion, or even education (you need the degree, but you don't need to have learned anything): instead, they spend their time conforming to certain standards, like not wearing pink suits (7.132). This setting matters, because it means that a lot takes place through innuendo and suggestion. There's very little violence or even outright arguing—people snap at each other and make snide comments, but these aren't the type of people to settle things with violence, at least not with each other. That's why the violent acts take place between classes. It's not rich people beating up other rich people; it's violent conflict between the rich and the poor.

East Side/ West SideRich people do like to spend their time drawing subtle distinctions between types of wealth. Nick tells us right away that East Egg is the wealthier, more elite of the two Eggs. Despite all his money, Gatsby lives in West Egg, suggesting that he has not been able to complete his transformation into a member of the social elite. The distance that separates him from Daisy isn't just the water of the bay; it's also class.The second contrast is between the city scenes and the suburban ones. Like Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby commute into the city for their respective lines of work, while the women are left behind. This geographical divide ends up being a gender distinction, too. But the city is important in other ways, too; Tom only interacts with his mistress in the city, and Gatsby only sees Meyer Wolfsheim there. They both use the city to hide their goings-on from the people they value on Long Island.Roaring TwentiesWe open in the early 1920s: just after World War I, and right in the middle of Prohibition, when alcohol was effectively illegal. We say "effectively," because plenty of people manufactured, sold, and drank alcohol anyway—like all the characters in the book, who seem to be constantly drunk, and Gatsby, who made his money bootlegging: selling illegal alcohol.But it's not all champagne and yellow Rolls-Royces. Myrtle and George Wilson inhabit a totally different setting: the grey valley of ashes that joins the fabulous worlds of the Eggs and Manhattan. Fitzgerald didn't know yet, but we do, that the excesses of the 1920s collapsed with the stock market in 1929--leading to a much grayer, grimmer life all over the country. Did Fitzgerald suspect that the fabulous lifestyles of Tom and Daisy's crowd were doomed from the start?

Part 2- The Novel: Now, read through the following excerpt from The Great Gatsby.

Chapter 3 excerpt from The Great Gatsby

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach, while his two moto-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, roiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York- every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. 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. By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color the constantly changing light. I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who has actually been invited. People were not invited- they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were introduced to somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they associated with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission. I had actually been invited. A chauffeur in uniform of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer: the honor would be entirely Gatsby’s it said, if I would attend his “little party”that night. He had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it- signed J. Gatsby, in a majestic hand. Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wander around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know- though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something; bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key. As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of who I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table- the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone. (p. 39-42)

I’m Gatsby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQi59p-2npA

Young and Beautifulhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH9UCvlo5VE

Gatsby Interview w/ Casthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L98y3LJhndE

Part 3- The Clips- View the following clips- two scenes from the movie itself and one containing an interview with cast members about filming the movie.

Use your talker to find 3 words that describe this video clip.

Use your talker to find 3 words that describe this video clip.

Use your talker to find 3 words that describe this video clip.

party rich Music

lnvitation

happy

beutiful

dance food

parties

Roaring 20's - 1920

The car became more important in the 1920's. The steel, rubber, and gas

industries grew in the 1920's because more people were buying cars.

Women were allowed to vote in 1920.

The motion picture industry grew in the 1920's. People began going to see movies because it

offered entertainment and escape.

Common dress in the 1920's

Jazz music became popular in the 1920's.

Drinking alcohol became illegal in the 1920's. This was called prohibition.

People were not allowed to make, sell, or drink alcohol in the United States.

Prohibition caused a lot of violent crime. People were making alcohol

illegally.

After reading the passages, watching the video clips, and looking at the pictures and captions, use your talker to answer the questions below about the Roaring 20's.

1.) What was illegal during the 1920's?

2.) What type of music became popular in the 1920's

3.) Why did steel industry grow in the 1920's?

4.) People wanted an escape and entertainment in the 1920's. What did they go do to get an escape and entertainment?

People went to Watch movies

alcohol

jazz

People buying cars