The Great Gatsby Thesis

The 1920’s was filled with new ideas and concepts, much of which was disenchanted. Wealth and prosperity were two words that came to mind when one thought of the 1920’s. Anyone would love to have wealth and prosperity because it would provide them with better lives and would complete their American Dream. This era has many names such as, the Roaring Twenties, the Golden Twenties, the Jazz Age, and the Lost Generation. The Jazz Age, another name for the 1920’s, was the age when music became more popular through African American singers and instrument players. The Lost Generation was actually a group of writers who wrote about the disillusionment of the 1920’s these writers were the start of the new era. They wrote about the American Dream, but
Scott Fitzgerald involved Jazz music in his novel The Great Gatsby. “Jazz carried with it a constant message of change, excitement, violent escape, and an undertone of sadness, but with a promise of enjoyment somewhere around the corner of next week, perhaps at midnight in a distant country.” (Cowley 56). Jazz music was used in writing to give it a sense of setting and feeling. The concept of adding scenes in a novel with music gave the writing more poetry. Writing that flows together and sounds poetic is more likely to be appreciated by readers. In The Great Gatsby the use of music, said by Bewley, “...Provide the ironic musical prothalamion for Gatsby’s romance, and as Gatsby listens to them an imitation of the practical truth presses in on him” (Bewley 44). Fitzgerald's use of music in The Great Gatsby provided a setting and theme for the novel and the music itself gave away dialogue instead of the characters speaking themselves. The sense of practical truth pressing on Gatsby is caused by the music he is listening to with this music he slowly figures things out and unravels
Fitzgerald's writing was a type of art and he himself was attracted to the Jazz Age and based most of his writing at that time to connect with the Jazz Age which was a new fascination to him. Cowley says, “...The 1920’s were not so much a drinking as a dancing age-the Jazz Age, in phrase that Fitzgerald made his own” (Cowley 56). It is believed that the term Jazz Age was named by Fitzgerald. He had come up with the name and had contributed to the striving of the age. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald added many scenes of dance and music throughout his novel, as a message and constant show of how the use of Jazz music changes the theme and setting of the novel. On the other hand, the use of music can also be literal, not necessarily having a deeper meaning, but instead being used as music that is there, but not