How Did F Scott Fitzgerald Use Prohibition In The Great Gatsby

Isabel Sendra
Mrs. Marullo
English I
17 January 2011
The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the social rejection of the Prohibition in the 1920s. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol, made millionaires out of bootleggers like Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald was driven to write many novels because of his love for Zelda. Great Gatsby, a novel written by Fitzgerald, portrayed the lavish lifestyle of the rich in the 1920s and their ignorance toward Prohibition. Congress proposed Prohibition during World War I as the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In January 1919, the amendment became part of the Constitution (Yancey). It prohibited the manufacture,
sale, or transportation of alcohol in the United States. It also forbade the import and export of alcohol as well. The amendment was supposed to be an answer to social instability and moral decline at the beginning of the twentieth century. Instead it stands as a lesson to the fact that complex problems, such as immorality, demand complex solutions, and that Americans balk whenever somebody tries to control their morality and personal habits. The Eighteenth Amendment became a law when Congress passed the Volstead Act to enforce it (Davis). Prohibition agents were also hired to enforce Prohibition. The Volstead Act encountered resistance when scofflaws began to violate Prohibition by making, selling, and transporting illegal alcohol (Baker).

Scofflaws were anyone who violated the rules of Prohibition, such as bootleggers.
Bootleggers were people who illegally manufactured, sold, or smuggled alcohol. In the period of Prohibition, bootlegging increased greatly. The earliest bootleggers smuggled foreign-made alcohol into the United States from bordering nations. Bootlegging is also a type of organized crime. Liquor was no longer legally available; so the public turned to criminal groups who managed the bootlegging industry and supplied them with alcohol (Hillstrom). Criminal groups also provided alcohol at speakeasies. Speakeasies were illegal drinking spots that sprang up in astonishing numbers after the government closed down bars and saloons in 1920. In order to get inside, a person had to whisper a code word to the doorman. They were usually set up in secret places such as basements, attics, warehouses, and apartment houses. A type of speakeasy that was usually hidden behind a legitimate business was a blind pig. Blind pigs were often small, dinghy, and crowded. Nightclubs, another type of speakeasy, were usually roomier and offered food, music, and dancing. F. Scott Fitzgerald’ fascination with the anti-Prohibition movement played a major part in his book, The Great Gatsby
(Baughman). F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After performing poorly in school, he was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. He enrolled at Princeton in 1913 but never graduated. Near the end of World War I, in 1917, he enlisted in the army. He was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama as a second lieutenant. There, he met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre. Zelda agreed to marry him but delayed their wedding until he proved a success. In order to marry Zelda, Fitzgerald wrote his first book (Hermsen). Fitzgerald wrote his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to impress Zelda. The next novel that Fitzgerald wrote was The Great Gatsby in 1925. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values. Fitzgerald soon fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties due to all of the money he earned writing. During the Great Depression, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism. Fitzgerald then published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. He left for Hollywood in 1937 to write screenplays and in 1940 he died while working on his last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald was one of the most famous authors of 1920s America because of his novel, The Great Gatsby. Many of Fitzgerald’s characters in his novels represented him in some way, most notably Jay Gatsby (Hermsen). Jay Gatsby is the most important and evolved out of the three major characters. Gatsby, then known as James Gatz, spent his childhood in rural North Dakota. After growing up poor, Gatsby longed for wealth and sophistication. He dropped out of Olaf’s College after only two weeks and enlisted in the army. He met Daisy Buchanan as a young military officer in Louisville. Gatsby fell in love with Daisy and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Daisy promised to wait for him before he left for the war. After the war, while Fitzgerald was studying at Oxford, Daisy married Tom because of his social status and wealth. Gatsby tried to win Daisy back by acquiring millions of dollars, purchasing an enormous mansion on West Egg, and having crazy parties every week. As the novel progresses, Gatsby is revealed as a foolish young man who stakes everything on his dreams. Fitzgerald uses this sudden revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s personality and to show how Gatsby has literally created his own character. His dream of Daisy falls apart, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, similar to the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream falling apart in the 1920s. Gatsby is similar to Nick because they represent the two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality (Benson). Nick was raised in Minnesota and travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. There, he moves into the house next door to Gatsby in West Egg. Gatsby and Nick become good friends, and Nick starts to like the carefree living of the East Coast. Life on the East Coast also causes Nick to have mixed feelings. On one hand, Nick likes the racy, carefree lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle amoral and damaging. Jordan Baker and Nick’s relationship symbolizes this internal conflict with life on the East Coast. Nick realizes that life on the East Coast is a cover for the moral decay that the valley of ashes represents after seeing Gatsby’s dreams fail and witnessing Gatsby’s funeral. To escape from the immorality and people similar to Daisy, Nick returns to the Midwest (Fitzgerald). Daisy is similar to Fitzgerald’s own wife, Zelda and represents the amoral values of the East Eggers. She grew up in Louisville Kentucky and fell in love with Jay Gatsby while he was stationed there as an officer. Before Gatsby left for the war, Daisy promised to wait for him but she married Tom instead because of his social status and wealth. After finding out, Gatsby made it his main goal in life to win her back. Daisy represented the wealth and sophistication that Gatsby wanted as a child. In reality, however, Daisy falls short of Gatsby’s dreams. She is beautiful, but also shallow, and she chooses Tom over Gatsby when she realizes that Gatsby’s money is fake. In addition, Daisy lets Gatsby take the blame for killing Myrtle. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away. Like Zelda, Daisy is in love with material things, a recurring theme in her life (Fitzgerald). There are many different themes in The Great Gatsby. One of them is the decline of the American dream in the 1920s. The American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. The dream was ruined when money and immoral social values replaced its original values. This happened because the new generations desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. The quests that attend Gatsby’s parties symbolize this decay and Gatsby’s fortune symbolizes the rise of organized crime. The American dream is also similar to Gatsby’s dream in that they both are ruined by the unworthiness of its subject. There are many different themes beside the decline of the American dream; an example of one of them is the emptiness of the upper class (Fitzgerald). Another theme of The Great Gatsby is the hollowness of the upper class. In the novel West Egg represents the newly rich while East Egg represents the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as lacking in manners and taste while the old aristocracy possesses taste and elegance. Despite their manners, the East Eggers are also careless, inconsiderate bullies who hurt people then retreat behind their money. Gatsby, on the other hand, has a sincere heart. Unfortunately, his good qualities ultimately lead to his death while, ironically, the Buchanan’s bad qualities save them. The hollowness of the upper class is similar to a motif because it reoccurs throughout history (Fitzgerald). One motif that reoccurs throughout The Great Gatsby is geography. Throughout the novel, places and settings represent American society in the 1920s. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay, and New York City the amoral quest for money and pleasure. The moral decay of New York represents the East, while the West represents traditional social values. The weather in The Great Gatsby is also a motif. The weather always matches the emotions of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid pouring rain, which shows how melancholy it was. Gatsby’s confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer and Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn. The weather in The Great Gatsby symbolizes many different things, like emotions (Fitzgerald). The green light is an important symbol in The Great Gatsby. It is located at the end of Daisy’s dock and represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy and reaches toward it to guide him to his goal. The green light also symbolizes the American dream. Nick associates the green light with the promise of a new beginning that the settlers must have had when they first saw America. The Valley of Ashes, located between West Egg and New York City, is another critical symbol. It is the land created by industrial waste. The Valley of Ashes represents the moral and social decay hidden by the beautiful facades of the Eggs. It also symbolizes the plight of the poor who live among the ashes. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg also play an important part in the story. His faded and spectacled eyes are painted on an old advertising billboard over the Valley of Ashes. His eyes represent God staring down upon American society and judging it as a moral wasteland. There are many symbols in Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald). The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald must not have supported Prohibition because he struggled with alcoholism throughout his life. Prohibition was supposed to solve the problem of immorality but only made the problem worse. The inadequacies of Prohibition and the pretentious lifestyle of the wealthy are described by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby.

Works Cited
Baker, Lawrence W. “Eighteenth Amendment.” Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History 54.4 (1999): 201.
Baughman, Judith. “Prohibition” American Decades 2 (2001): 1910-1919.
Benson, Sonia. “The Great Gatsby.” UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History. 10 Apr. 2002. Gale U.S. History In Context. 9 Dec. 2010.
Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t Know Much About History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.
Hermsen, Sarah. “Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.” Dictionary of American Biography. 1 Dec. 1999. Gale U.S. History In Context. 10 Dec. 2010.
Hillstrom, Kevin. The Progressive Era. Farmington Hills: Lucent Books, 2009.
Yancey, Diane. Life During the Roaring Twenties. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2002.