The Great Gatsby and Jazz

The Jazz Age and Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the great novel of the Lawless Decade—the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, as it was otherwise known. It was a time of easy credit and flowing cash. It was a time of Prohibition, when alcohol had been outlawed and people looking for a good time had to go underground to the speakeasies, where they drank their liquor in hiding.

To be human meant to be a criminal, and thus everyone who wanted to have a drink became a scofflaw. The 1920s was the decade of the scofflaw, the decade of excess and the decade of the nouveau riche—the ones who, like Jay Gatsby, made their millions from bootlegging or from the stock market or from both.

Nothing captured the essence of the post-war 1920s like jazz, which was a new kind of music in America—a music that was fast and loose and flowing: it had no care or concern for the old world culture and was primarily its own thing—good for dancing (ragtime) and good for drinking (anytime).

This paper will describe the significance of the jazz age in The Great Gatsby and show how the excess and superficiality that characterized Gatsby’s world was best represented by the superficiality of the swinging Jazz Age. Some of the most predominant characteristics of the Jazz Age were the flappers, the nouveau riche, and the festivities—all of which are present in The Great Gatsby.

On the surface, everyone is having a great time, but underneath it all, as Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel notes, something dark and strange is happening: there is no moral order beneath any of it. There is only impulse, desire, and senseless action.

This is why Nick at the outset frames his story in these terms: “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” (Fitzgerald 2). He states this because he has just spent some time on the East Coast, hobnobbing among the wealthy class, with his cousin Daisy, who is married to Tom. Tom represents old money.

Jay Gatsby represents new money. Jay is in love with Daisy from days gone by and does not care that she is now married. Though Jay is now rich and throws elaborate parties, the only reason he does so is because he hopes she will take notice, come to his mansion and be his once more. It is a dream, but one he pursues—and ultimately it ends tragically. Throughout it all, Nick observes and notes how callously everyone behaves.

Tom is no saint, for he is cheating on Daisy. Daisy ultimately ends up cheating on Tom and then goes on to leave Jay once Tom comes back into the picture to demand what is his. There is no foundation of honesty or commitment for any of the characters. Everything is superficial in the novel, right down to Daisy, the strange object of Gatsby’s affection. Even Gatsby’s love for Daisy is strange and unrealistic. Everything is passing as though in hyper-reality.

The novel is set as though on the brink of the post-modern, and jazz is there to fuel the action. Indeed, Gatsby finally makes his long-awaited appearance in the novel while the band plays The Jazz History of the World—a fictitious musical set created by Fitzgerald to play up the effect of everything in the 1920s being a crazy fad.

One couldn’t just have the history of the world serve as a work of art—at a party like the one Gatsby would throw night after night, the history of the world had to be told from the perspective of jazz so that the flappers could flap and the men could play the part of the buffoon. In a way, it is all perfectly understandable. The First World War had just ended and America had helped to end it.

Americans felt victorious and for the first time they felt like leaders throughout the free world. They were celebrating riotously at home and the music was reflecting this changing culture. The old world values were no longer in vogue. America was feeling boisterous and rambunctious. There was a hint of social revolution in the air as women’s suffrage was achieved in 1920 and a new spirit of equality and freedom was all about. Jazz emphasized this spirit.

It had grown out of New Orleans and spread all over the country. It was “street music”—music that the African American population had originated—and therefore it was music that was from the other side of the tracks, a side of life not seen by the upper class. Yet the upper class and particularly the nouveau riche were ready to try new things, to cut loose, to have a good time, and to let the party go on.

It was the 1920s and at the height of Prohibition, everyone was disrespecting the law. Nick is both attracted by this immoral crowd, this immoral upper class set, and he is also repulsed by them. He is a simple man from the Midwest and does not know what to make of all these people who seem to have no passing human interests in anything other than partying the night away.

He says of his own first night at Gatsby’s: “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there” (Fitzgerald 41). In other words, they are not there because they care for Gatsby or because he personally knows them.

They are there because a party is going on; jazz music is being played, and it being the jazz age, the most important thing to do is to dance, have fun, drink and engage in riotous living. The fact that Gatsby uses this kind of bait to lure Daisy out into the open tells the reader something about Gatsby’s own character. He thinks the woman he loves cares about flashing parties, music, spirits and opulence. He thinks his wealth is what matters most to people.

He does not realize that life is not worth living because one has money or one has the jazz. And because he does not realize this, he is unprepared for his later affair with Daisy to come to a screeching halt when Tom comes calling to get his wife back. Jay Gatsby is living a fantasy—which is all the Jazz Age was. For in 1929, the Jazz Age would come.