Gatsby Jazz Age Disillusionment in the Great

Gatsby

Jazz Age Disillusionment in the Great Gatsby

The 1920s saw the United States undergo one of its most dramatic periods of cultural and social evolution in its young history to that point. With the end of hostilities in World War I and the focus on its own internal growth now taking center stage, the emergence of a distinctly American kind of wealth began to achieve prominence. Even as this measure of wealth would become yet more prominent in America, the disillusionment thereby associated would also become ever greater a presence. So is this well-demonstrated in the primary characters populated F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 Jazz Age masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Using the occasionally objective Nick as a lens, Fitzgerald views the characters of Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself with an unflinching criticism that seems to scold America for its burgeoning materialism.

Among them, Tom is perhaps the most unflinchingly archetypal character in the story, representing the standards and pretensions of 'old money,' not just through his wealth but through the casualness of his ostentation. As Nick reports upon our first meeting Tom, "his family were enormously wealthy -- even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach -- but now he'd left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance, he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that." (p. 6) As Nick compares this type of behavior to his own slightly more modest (though still comparatively comfortable) means, Tom is shown as a shallow figure highly reflective of the increasing cultural emphasis on the demonstration of one's affluence.

As for Daisy, her demonstration of affluence is almost more unconscious. In Nick's descriptions of her, Daisy is imbued almost witlessly with the qualities of one who never had to work to earn that which she'd so easily won. This is perhaps best captured in an exchange between Nick and Gatsby that simultaneously tells us a great deal about both Daisy and the text's title character. Indeed, at one juncture, Gatsby tells his friend that Daisy's voice is 'full of money.' Nick reflects that "I'd never understood before. It was full of money -- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals song of it" (Fitzgerald, 120)

Indeed, while we as the reader are inclined to judge Daisy for her inherent shallowness, we find that this is a quality that Gatsby finds irresistible. In Daisy, Gatsby sees an inborn opulence to which he can only aspire. Where Daisy seems to ooze evidence of her wealth, Gatsby wears it uncomfortably like a new pair of poorly fit shoes. As Nick tells of seeing Gatsby beside his automobile, for instance, we are given an image of him "balancing himself on the dash board of his car with that resourcefulness that is so peculiarly American -- that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth, and even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games." (Fitzgerald, 64)