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The Golden Twenties
Boom & Crash
A new era
"Normalcy, prosperity, stability"
New forms of technology, communication and entertainment
Jazz Music & lifestyle
Votes for women
The flapper culture
Francis Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Author, Story and Interpretation
Extremism & intolerance
Prohibition
Organized criminality
On April 6th in 1917, the United States of America entered World War I.
Close to two million Americans crossed the Atlantic ocean to fight. Their mission was glorified by propaganda machines which appealed to national pride, honour and glory. But once in combat, the reality of modern, machine-age warfare became apparent. There was not much honour or glory in the veritable butchery - it was a slaughter of human life.
The Armistice finally came on November 11th in 1918, signed by president Woodrow Wilson. Post Armistice America wanted a return to normalcy, they wanted a time to heal and forget.
The time for a revolution had come - the time for the "golden age" had come.
With 1921, post - war business activity reached an all-time high and relatively few people were unemployed. The US enjoyed a boom after World War I, where wages were high and production increased. Here and there warning voices called attention to the difficulties faced by large numbers of farmers and to other weaknesses of the economic system, but the biggest part of Americans, however, wanted to believe that prosperity had come to stay forever.
American society of the 1920s was unusually responsive to new fads and fashions and dramatic public events. This period is called the "Jazz age", for the rhythmical music of jazz was perhaps the most popular one of the new fashions. Other fads shifted rapidly from year to year: from crossword puzzles to dances like the Charleston or eccentric activities like flagpole sitting.
Drastic changes in women's lives took place in the 1920s as well: a constitutional amendment was ratified which gave the women the right to vote: the women's party was organized. Even a special term - flappers - appeared for women who advocated very progressive feminist ideas and followed a certain fashion.
In the 1920s, there was a movement of writers and intellectuals who questioned what had become of their time's America - they were called the "lost generation". This small but influential group had members such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, S. Anderson etc.
At the same time, an Afro - American literary and artistic movement, termed the "Harlem Renaissance" emerged. Like the "lost generation", these writers rejected middle - class values and conventional literary forms.
It can't be true! That was the initial reaction of Americans everywhere to the collapse of the nation's economy in 1929. In a few short months during the winter of 1929 - 1930, the prosperity and promise of the "Golden Twenties" had been replaced by the unemployment, poverty and despair of the period of the Great Depression, a completely new period in American life.
The presidency of Warren G. Harding was led by the motto of "normalcy, prosperity, stability" - this corresponded to the Americans' traditional dislike of governmental regimentation and bureaucracy.
Symbols of the economical boom were:
The new forms of technology in the 1920s were a certain liberator for many Americans. Electrical appliances, such as the iron, the washing - machine and the vacuum eased the home maintenance workload. Telephones, along with the already well established telegraph system allowed quicker, easier communications. The new reliable and portable typewriters increased productivity. Automobiles, arguably the most important catalyst for social change in the 1920s gave Americans a new freedom to leave the home, neighbourhood, town or state whenever they wanted to.
Especially the automobile industry was one of the mainstays of the post - war boom, between 1920 and 1930, the number of those who owed an automobile increased from "only" 8 million up to more than 20 million people.
This great success for the automobile industry based on assembly - line production and piecework. Publicity also stylised the "auto" as a cult object, a must - have, a status symbol.
Inside the entertainment world, technology provided irresistible distractions. The first radio station started its program in 1920 in Philadelphia, and in 1926, NBC had established a nationwide radio program.
The radio began to broadcast news reports, sports scores and music. Improvements in sound recording methods and the phonograph made listening to records more enjoyable.
Movies, at first blurry and grainy, cleared - and by the end of the decade included synchronized soundtracks. In 1927, Warner Brothers Pictures published the first full-length sound film. The entertainment industry of Hollywood, California was booming, its movies, called "Hollywood-movies" were regarded as an authentic expression of the light joy of life of a "young" society.
In 1930, about 100 millions out of a total population of 120 million people went to the movies once a week, whereas only 60 million people went to the holy mass.
Hollywood was creating new trends in fashion and lifestyle and also starts changing peoples' ideas of their beauty idols.
The airplane and the machine gun were further revolutionary technical inventions.
Jazz music
The origins of Jazz go back to the discovery of America in 1492. To build up a new existence, the white settlers began with the cruel enslavement of Africans. When black people were taken to the New World they took their traditions and also their music with them, which was very rhythmical and sounded different from the music Europeans and Americans were used to listening to, especially because of its complex harmonic pattern.
Black people sang their songs in groups, when working in the fields or going to church. As they learnt to play musical instruments, their songs were transformed into music.
Jazz songs reveal inner thoughts, expose hidden fears, lay all the emotions bare. They do talk about all aspects of life. It is a musical form of anger at discrimination and hardship. Out of black poverty and humiliation came a music of incredible richness, a cause for unlimited pride. Jazz was an expression of black desire for both freedom and satisfying personal relationships.
The term "Jazz" is said to have been created in 1914 in Chicago, where a certain band from New Orleans played in a bar - the unaccustomed sound was described as "peppy" and named "jass" by some musicians. By the 1920s, "jass" was softened to "jazz", and the name stuck.
The Jazz Age, which started in May 1918, brought about one of the most rapid and pervasive changes in manners and morals the world has ever seen, changes that we are still wrestling with today. It was a period when the younger generation - men and women alike - was rebelling against the values and customs of their parents and grandparents. After all, the older generation had led thousands of young men into the
most brutal and senseless war in human history, and when they came back, they were determined to have a good time.
Often regarded as scandalous by the rural, conservative America, jazz bands provided the soundtrack for the cultural revolution using for the first time an new and in a way critically regarded instrument - the saxophone.
This instrument has been called the zeitgeist of the post - war age, and it has also been known to provoke close intimate dancing. Then the shocking sound of the "sax" (coincidentally close in pronunciation to "sex") made it a focus for the growing body of puritanical moralists, blaming its sound for the increasingly rebellious younger generation.
With recording improvements and the help of national radio, the relatively new jazz sound quickly spread and it influenced America, realizing special prominence in the urban centres. Many of the most sophisticated clubs featured famous Jazz Bands. Jazz soon became synonymous with hooch, intimate dancing and other socially questionable activities.
Lifestyle
The "Roaring Twenties" - a time where the saxophone replaced the violin, a time where skirt hemlines went up and corsets came off. Women started smoking, and prohibition, which was supposed to stop drinking, only reshaped it into secret fun. The public saloon, now illegal, was replaced by the private cocktail party, and men and women began drinking together. Hoodlums became millionaires in a few months by controlling the bootleg liquor business, and glamorous parties were given everywhere.
Many wealthy Americans lived this period of Jazz and Fun as such. They rode down Fifth Avenue on the tops of taxis, they drank too much and passed out in corners, they drove recklessly and gave weekend parties, which were visited by parvenus as well as by descendants of rich families and lasted until the hours of Monday morning.
Votes for women
Votes for women were first seriously proposed in the United States in July, 1848, at the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention. One woman who attended that convention was Charlotte Woodward. She was nineteen at the time. In 1920, when women finally won the vote throughout the nation, Charlotte Woodward was the only participant in the 1848 Convention who was still alive to cast her vote. Eighty-one years old, she cast her vote proudly.
Some battles for woman suffrage were won state-by-state by the early 20th century. Alice Paul and the National Women's Party began using more radical tactics to work for a federal suffrage amendment to the Constitution: picketing the White House, staging large suffrage marches and demonstrations, going to jail. Thousands of ordinary women took part in these activities.
In 1913, Paul led a march of eight thousand participants on President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration day. (Half a million spectators watched; two hundred were injured in the violence that broke out.) During Wilson's second inaugural in 1917, Paul led a march around the White House. Opposed by a well-organized and well-funded anti-suffrage movement which argued that most women really didn't want the vote, and they were probably not qualified to exercise it anyway, women also used humour as a tactic. In 1915, writer Alice D. Miller wrote:
Why We Don't Want Men to vote
Because man's place is in the army.
Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.
Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.
During World War I women took up jobs in factories to support the war, as well as taking more active roles in the war than in previous wars. After the war, even the more restrained National American Woman Suffrage Association took many opportunities to remind the President, and the Congress, that women's war work should be rewarded with recognition of their political equality. Wilson responded by beginning to support woman suffrage. In a speech on September 18th, 1918, he said
"We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of right?"
Less than a year later, the House of Representatives passed, in a 304 to 90 vote, a proposed Amendment to the Constitution:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any States on
Account of sex.
The Congress shall have the power by appropriate legislation to enforce the
provisions of this article.
On June 4, 1919, the United States Senate also endorsed the Amendment, voting 56 to 25, and sent the amendment to the states.
Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan were the first states to pass the law; Georgia and Alabama rushed to pass rejections. The anti-suffrage forces, which included both
men and women, were well-organized, and passage of the amendment was not easy.
When thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six states had ratified the amendment, the battle came to Nashville, Tennessee. Anti-suffrage and pro-suffrage forces from around the nation descended on the town. And on August 18, 1920, the final vote was scheduled.
One young legislator, 24 year old Harry Burn, had voted with the anti-suffrage forces to that time. But his mother had urged that he vote for the amendment and for suffrage. When he saw that the vote was very close, and with his anti-suffrage vote would be tied 48 to 48, he decided to vote as his mother had urged him: for the right of women to vote. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify.
Except that the anti-suffrage forces used parliamentary maneuvres to delay, trying to convert some of the pro-suffrage votes to their side. But eventually their tactics failed, and the governor sent the required notification of the ratification to Washington, D.C.
And so on August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law, and women could vote in the fall elections, including in the Presidential election.
The flapper culture
The flapper was the heroine of the Jazz Age. With short hair and a short skirt, with turned-down hose and powdered knees - the flapper must have seemed to her mother (the gentle Gibson girl of an earlier generation) like a rebel.
No longer confined to home and tradition, the typical flapper was a young women who was often thought of as a little fast and maybe even a little brazen. Mostly, the flapper offended the older generation because she defied conventions of acceptable feminine behaviour. The flapper was 'modern.' Traditionally, women's hair had always been worn long. The flapper wore it short, or bobbed. She used make-up (which she might well apply in public). And the flapper wore baggy dresses which often exposed her arms as well as her legs from the knees down. However, flappers did more than symbolize a revolution in fashion and mores - they embodied the modern spirit of the Jazz Age.
American Literature went through a profound change in the post WWI era. Up until this point, American writers were still expected to use the rigid Victorian styles of the 19th Century. The lost generation writers were above, or apart from, American society, not only in geographic terms, but also in their style of writing and subjects they chose to write about.
Although they were unhappy with American culture, the writers were instrumental in changing their country's style of writing, from Victorian to modern. Very often they called this period the "period of frustration". Writers, such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, S. Anderson, etc. belonged to this small but influential movement, they were dissatisfied with what they perceived to be the materialism and spiritual emptiness of life in the United States.
American poet Gertrude Stein actually coined the expression 'lost generation.' Speaking to Ernest Hemingway, she said, 'you are all a lost generation.' The term stuck and the mystique surrounding these individuals continues to fascinate us. Full of youthful idealism, these intellectuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
This famous author was born on September 24th, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended, but never graduated from Princeton University. In 1917, he left university for joining the army, and three years after, he got married to the beautiful Zelda Sayre. Their private life in America and France became almost as famous as his novels, together they enjoyed a rich life of endless parties. Within two years they had become the most notorious young couple in the 1920's America, symbolizing what was called the "Jazz Age".
His heavy drinking was the result of the worsening relationship with Zelda, and although he kept on writing, the circumstances and health conditions of both got worse and worse. The exciting life demanded its tribute - Zelda became mentally ill and depressive, and in 1930, she finally had a complete break - down and was to be hospitalised. From this moment on, Fitzgerald's life, that had been chaotic before anyways, became more and more unhappy and on December 21st , 1940, he died of a heart attack in Hollywood.
To maintain their expensive lifestyle, Fitzgerald wrote more books which continued the great success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, he also worked on stories for popular magazines at that time. His next novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, a mood piece chronicling the anxieties and dissipations of a rich couple, was published in 1922. Later, in only five months, he completed The Great Gatsby (1925) which is generally regarded as his masterpiece, and it was not until 1934 that his fourth novel appeared, Tender is the Night, which is almost a confessional story of his life with Zelda. The experience of being a screenwriter was the inspiration for Fitzgerald to write his final and most mature novel, The last Tycoon, which unfortunately remained unfinished.
The Great Gatsby
The story
Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a young Midwesterner who, having graduated from Yale in 1915 and fought in World War I, has returned home to begin a career. Like others in his generation, he is restless and has decided to move East to New York and learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house. Next to his place is a huge mansion complete with Gothic tower an marble swimming pool, which belongs to a Mr. Gatsby, whom Nick has not met yet. Directly across the bay from West Egg is the more fashionable community of East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. Daisy is
Nick´ s cousin, and Tom had been in the same senior society as Nick in New Haven. Like Nick they are Midwesterners who have come East to be a part of the glamour and mystery of the New York City area. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion, and here he meets a young woman named Jordan Baker. During dinner, a Mrs. Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan's mistress rings. She lives in a strange place between West Egg and New York City that F. calls the "valley of ashes."
One day Tom takes Nick to meet the Wilsons at a party, but the party breaks up as Tom breaks Myrtle Wilson's nose with a blow of his open hand.
Some weeks later Nick finally gets the opportunity to meet his mysterious neighbour Mr. Gatsby. Gatsby gives huge parties and people from everywhere attend these parties, but no one seems to know much about the host. Nick is fascinated by Gatsby, he begins watching him and notices that he does not drink or join in his own parties. One day Nick and Gatsby drive to New York together. Gatsby tells Nick that he´ s from a wealthy family in the Midwest, that he was educated at Oxford, and that he won war medals from many European countries. Nick is not sure what to believe. At tea that afternoon Nick finds out from Jordan Baker why Gatsby has taken such an interest in him: Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan and wants Nick to arrange a meeting between them. It seems that Gatsby, as a young officer in 1917, had fallen in love with Daisy. He had been sent overseas, and she had eventually given him up and married Tom. So Gatsby decided to win Daisy back. His first step was to buy a house in West Egg. From here he could look across the bay to the green light at the end of Daisy' s dock.
A few days later, in the rain, Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years. Gatsby is at first terrified, then very excited. He takes Daisy and Nick on a tour of his house and grounds and shows them all his possessions, even his shirts.
Then Nick gets to know some information about who Gatsby really is. Originally he was named James Gatz, he is the son of a farmer from North Dakota. After dropping out of his college, Gatsby ended up on the south shore of Lake Superior earning money by digging clams and fishing for salmon. One day he saw the beautiful yacht of the millionaire Dan Cody and borrowed a rowboat to warn Cody of an impending storm. Cody took the seventeen year old boy on as steward, mate, and secretary.
When Cody died, he left the boy, now Jay Gatsby, a legacy of $25000, which the boy never got because of the jealousy of Cody´ s mistress.
Then Nick goes on to tell us more about the happenings in the summer of 1922. Daisy and Tom come to one of Gatsby´ s parties but both don´ t have a good time. Although Gatsby has been seeing Daisy, he´ s increasingly frustrated by his inability to recreate the magic of their time together in Louisville five years before. The affair between Daisy and Gatsby now comes out into the open. Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan all meet for lunch at the Buchanans and then decide to drive to New York. Tom, Nick and Jordan drive in Gatsby´ s yellow Rolls Royce. The five arrive in the city where they rent a suite at the Placa Hotel. Tom, drunk by now, starts attacking Gatsby about his past and for his habit calling people "old sport". Gatsby reacts by telling Tom that Daisy is going to leave him. They fight with words until Tom wins, because Daisy won't leave Tom for Gatsby. Tom sends Daisy and Gatsby home together in the Rolls Royce, thinking that he has nothing more to fear. A couple of hours later Tom follows with Nick and Jordan. When they reach the valley of ashes, they see crowds of people and police cars. Myrtle Wilson was struck by a car coming from NY and the car had to be Gatsby´ s yellow Rolls Royce. When Nick gets back to East Egg, he finds Gatsby
hiding outside the Buchanans garden because he is afraid that Tom could hurt Daisy. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that - of course - he would take the blame. Nick goes to work the next morning, but is too worried about Gatsby to stay in NY. But when he arrives at Gatsby´ s house he sees the body of his friend lying in the swimming pool and George Wilson´ s body, revolver in hand, lies nearby on the grass. The crazed husband of Myrtle Wilson, Tom's affair, did spent the entire morning finding out who the driver of the yellow car was. He found out before Nick. Nick now tries to phone Daisy and Tom, but is told that they have left without leaving any address.
Nick, it seems, is Gatsby´ s only friend now. The news of Gatsby´ s murder are printed in all newspapers all over America and so Gatsby's father, Mr. Gatz, arrives for the funeral, which is only attended by Nick and three other persons. Mr. Gatz, who loves his son very much shows Nick a book which Jimmy owned as a boy. In this Gatsby has written a schedule for self improvement: exercise, study, sport and work.
Disgusted and disillusioned by what he has experienced, Nick decides to leave NY and return to the Midwest. He ends his relationship with Jordan Baker and Tom Buchanan tells him, that it was he, Tom, who told Wilson where Gatsby lived. Before Nick leaves the East, he stands one more time on the beach near Gatsby´ s house looking out at the green light that his friend had worshipped. Here he pays his final tribute to Gatsby and to the dream which he lived - and died - for: the love of a woman he couldn't get twice.
Short interpretation
In this novel, two social classes are portrayed. The rich people are represented by Jay Gatsby and Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The human relationships in this society are superficial, they do not feel much - even anything - for each other. They feel superior to the working-class, men feel superior to women. Real friendships are very rare. Nick and Gatsby are the exception of the rule. But Jay Gatsby is an impostor, because of his criminal past he becomes guilty. His parties have only one reason, to arrange a meeting with Daisy. His dream is a life with Daisy and his love for her. On the one hand Gatsby is heroic, but on the other he is trivial and common.
The example for superficiality in The Great Gatsby is Tom. Daisy's husband represents the brutality and moral carelessness of the established rich. He has no scruples. The life of the working-class is shown by the Wilsons, Myrtle and George. In the novel the two classes get in contact because of the relationship between Myrtle and Tom. They are speaking a different kind of English. Their brutality is physical (George kills Gatsby), while the upper class uses psychological brutality (Tom hates Gatsby too, but he "uses" George to kill him).
Extremism & Intolerance, Prohibition and organized criminality
A well known example for spreading extremism at that time is the Ku - Klux - Klan. This terrorist organization, which in 1924/25 reached the climax of its negative impact with about 4 - 5 millions of members, now persecuted not only ethic, religious and
marginal groups, even intellectuals, people opposing prohibition and members of several workers' associations were marked men.
Race relations were severely strained in many parts of the country, leading to race - riots. Chicago erupted in what was called a "civil war" between blacks and whites in 1920, anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant attitudes were widespread. Labour disputes became increasingly violent, as many feared the Communism that had overtaken Russia would spread to America. And as a final blow, the 18th amendment was ratified by the necessary 36 states on January 16th, 1918.
This amendment introduced the Prohibition, where all transport, selling and producing alcohol was declared illegal. Prohibitionists had a clear expectation that the prohibition would reduce crime, poverty, death rates, improve the economy and solve social problems. However, in many cases the total opposite happened - the "bootlegging business" and organized criminality were booming.
Most economists of the 1920s believed that the stock market was the chief indicator of the physical health of the US. In September 1929, stock prices began to fluctuate, but market analysts dismissed this as temporary. They did not realize that stock prices were totally out of proportion to actual profits. Sales of goods and the construction of factories were falling rapidly while stock values continued to climb. Still, very few were worried; they still accepted Adam Smith's "self - adjusting economy" as a dogma and believed the problems would correct themselves.
The "black Tuesday", October 29th, 1929, was the beginning of the Great Crash. Within the first few hours of the day, the stock market was open, prices collapsed and wiped out all the financial gains of the previous year. Since most Americans viewed the stock market as the most important indicator of the economy's health, the great crash shattered public confidence.
Between October 29 and November 13, the day when stock prices hit their lowest point, over $ 30 billion disappeared from the American economy. This amount was comparable to the total amount of money that the federal government had spent to fight the First World War.
So as not to alarm the public, president Hoover chose his words carefully when he discussed the state of the economy in 1929. American economists and politicians had referred to previous economic downturns as "panics", such as the "panic of 1873" and the "panic of 1893". Hoover, however, called this latest downturn a "depression" rather than a "panic", and the name stuck.
Of course, America was not alone in the Great Depression; it struck all the industrialized nations of the world, including Germany, Britain and France. Moreover,
Germany still had huge reparation payments to make to the allies in the aftermath of WWI. These reparation payments fuelled spiralling inflation in Germany and crippled that nation's economy. The Allies themselves had borrowed money from the United States for the war, were unable to pay it all back during the 1920s and were now, in the great depression, not only broken, but in dept.
There are many stereotypical images of the depression, images enforced by the mass media, which include bread lines, hoboes hopping freight trains, skyrocketing rates of suicide and mental illness, former businessmen selling pencils or apples on street corners, Oklahoma farmers escaping the dust bowl for migrant farm work in California, most vividly portrayed in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
These stereotypes only depict the experience of a small number of the American people. The reality of long - term unemployment, the day - to - day despair, was much less dramatic, and thus more dismal. But though, two basic economic facts soured the lives of average Americans: Unemployment and the inability to sell goods and services.
The great depression hit farmers especially hard. Many had gone into debt to buy machinery and land, and now could not make their payments. Low crop prices wiped out potential profits. In addition to the usual challenges of agriculture, a great drought took place in 1931 and 1932 in the Midwest and the South and turned much of the trans - Mississippi West into a dust bowl. Nevertheless, if farmers couldn't make a profit selling their products, at least they could still eat, so most stayed put. In contrast to popular images of farmers leaving the land, the 1930s actually had the lowest rate of migration from farms to cities.
However, the crash was not the immediate cause of the Depression. It alone was not responsible for a decade of worldwide economic catastrophe. The Depression itself was responsible for a dramatic transformation in the structure of American politics, for a change in Americans' expectations about government, and for a shift in United states foreign policy during the 1930s.
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