THE GREAT GATSBY: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

It is esential that you study an understand the historical context that surrounds Fitzgerald's novel as assessment objective four - AO4, demands that students can discuss context when constructing a critical argument. Below are several links to resources that will help develop an understanding of America in the 1920s. The decade is a complex one. At the beginning of the decade with many returning veterans of the First World War, there was a period of economic hardship, in 1925, when the novel was published, rich urban Americans were experiencing an economic boom, and then in 1929 the Wall Street Crash occurred.

'The Roaring Twenties' is a YouTube documentary in three parts that, if you can cope with the excruciating narrator/voiceover, will give you an insight in to the issues and themes which form the backgruonmd to the novel: the jazz age, prohibition, the position of women, advertising, the haves and the have nots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOflzLGKCc&feature=relmfu 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MExfjbSmR0k&feature=relmfu 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZckXwIa5E&feature=relmfu


A further documentary, again in 3 parts, The Century, America's Time: Boom To Bust which contains interviews with people who lived through that period of time, is also required viewing:

One:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foooDFF9Dgs
Two:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJuEi-U6pmo
Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJuEi-U6pmo