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¶ … American Life in the Great Gatsby and the Harlem Renaissance
The Great Gatsby and the Harlem Renaissance (the world of Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy and the other inhabitants of Long Island, New York are the other side of the coin compared to the residents of Harlem, New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby was written as not only a tribute to the Roaring Twenties, but also as a scorn for the giddiness and gaudiness of the era. The circle of people in Jay Gatsby's world were educated, socially connected, and wealthy. They were what is referred to as old money, meaning the present generations had never wanted for anything nor could their parents ever...
Their lives were filled with parties and social events Fitzgerald 1995). Fitzgerald painted the life of the rich and empty. Although, never wanting, they were nothing without their wealth. Few had talent and even fewer had morals and scruples. Gatsby parties were legendary among the elite of West Egg (Fitzgerald 1995). These parties were catered and entertained by the people on the other side of the coin. (the subjects in Voices From the Harlem Renaissance by Nathan Irvin Huggins are a world apart from Fitzgerald's characters. Higgins examines the world of the 1920's Harlem artists, musicians, and dancers. The Blues, Ragtime, and its offshoot Jazz,…
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Simon & Schuster
Trade. May 1995.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Voices From the Harlem Renaissance.
Oxford University Press. August 1994.
Gatsby and Six Passing for white -- Both a white and a black man can 'pass' The Great Gatsby, only six degrees and six decades separate from Will Smith's Paul Perhaps, if F. Scott Fitzgerald were to write his famous The Great Gatsby today, Gatsby would be a Black man. Gatsby, much like the protagonist of the film "Six Degrees of Separation," the cinematic version of John Guare's play of the same name,
My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest."(Johnson, 139) Nevertheless, this only increases his feeling that he does not belong to his own race, and his sense that everything is a bitter irony. As the hero passes as a white man, he is forced many times to listen
" Prohibition, the Red Scare, and the Klan were responses to the flapper, reflecting anxieties about newly pluralistic demographics in the form of Mexican and Japanese immigrants as well as Africa-Americans and religious minorities such as Jewish people and Catholics. Many Americans saw modernity, as they conceptualized it, as a curse, not a blessing. The causes of the "Modern Temper were thus a culture clash of old and new, of
political and social climate of the U.S. during the 1920s and what brought about the 'roaring '20s." The apocalyptic environment of World War I with its finale brought about a relief throughout Western Europe and the U.S.A. And the feeling that the world was about to start anew. This led to excesses of spending, behavior, hedonistic indulgences, and revolutions in sexual conduct, morals, and cultural trends such as music. The
Gender as Prison At first reading, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale seem to have little to do with each other except for the very general fact that both novels have elements of social and political commentary in them. But, while the world's portrayed in these books are fundamentally different from each other, a closer reading suggests important intersections and congruences in the novels around the subject