context

• when was it published?

  1925
• what did Michael Borne call Fitzgerald?

  ‘Compulsively autobiographical author: he wrote his flaws into his work.’
• when was it set?

  1922
• when did Pilgrims look for providential meanings and hidden revelations?

  as the pilgrims entered into new space and history as the chosen people in the promised land, they looked for providential meanings as they strove to continually look of the purpose and nature of the new world (like Nick)
• when was the Lousiana purchase?

  1803
• what was the Frontier Thesis?

  He suggested that the Frontier had been responsible for producing a distinctive American spirit, relatively free from European influence and trained in the practical realities of democratic social organisation. The West, he argued, held the promise of freedom for all.
• why is the Frontier Thesis significant for Nick?

  Nick moves from West to East coast unravelling ideas of democracy, liberty and frontier thesis
• why is it significant that Gatsby lives in West Egg in the context of the Frontier Thesis?

  Gatsby's enormous capacity for hope places him ultimately in the idealistic tradition of the American Dream, and we are invited to believe that Nick belongs with him, in the West.
• when and who wrote the Frontier Thesis?

  Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893
• when was prohibition enacted and when did it last until?

  1919 and repealed in 1933
• what was the prohibition act?


  amendment that made it illegal for anyone to manufacture, sell or transport liquor
• why did millions of Americans support prohibition?

  moral advance to curb America's growing penchant for immorality and vices that in their eyes came with drunkenness
• what happened to liquor businesses during prohibition?

  became lucrative and organised crime stepped in to meet demand and helped make fortunes of nouveux riche
• what were symbolic symbols of emancipation for women?

  bobbed hair, gave up wearing corsets to reinvent themselves according to own rules, smoked and drank openly, relaxed previously rigid attitudes to sex
• how was professional golf for women made possible?

  social and economic progress of the 1920s
• when did immigration return to pre-war levels?

  June 1921 when between June 1920 and June 1921 800,000 people immigrated
• why did organised labour lobby against immigration?

  believed they were taking jobs away from American citizens
• why did business leaders and various special interest groups lobby against immigration?

  anti-american political fanaticism was cited as a likely problem
• what restriction bills and laws did Congress pass between 1924-27 on immigration?

  quota limiting number of immigrants allowed in:

  164000 in 1924-5

  150000 after July 1 1927
• who were congress immigration quotas particularly discriminatory towards?


  people from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia
• between 1922 and 1929 how much did dividends from stock rise?

  108%
• between 1922 and 1929 how much did corporate profits increase by?

  76%
• between 1922 and 1929 how much did personal wages increase by?

  33%
• Why did Nick Carraway come to the East?

  make his fortune in the bond business
• why did productivity increase and overall production costs decrease?

  due to improvements in technology
• When was the stock market crash?

  October 29, 1929
• what did commercial growth of the 1920s result in?

  rampant materialism
• what did people spend increased wealth on?

  consumer goods at a rate never seen before and recreation and leisure.
• names for 1920s in America?

  Roaring 20s, the Jazz age
• who came up with the development of mass production techniques in factories?

  Henry Ford in 1913 with the assembly line to produce the Model T automobile
• what was TGG written against the background of?

  explosive growth in commodities and change in advertising to create desire for commodities, packaging and salesmen were important
• what world does Gatsby belong to?

  American advertising, act of self-creation can be seen as packaging, shift from Gatz to Gatsby as a change of brand name, mansion and parties as marketing strategies BUT he rises above the market place to create a unique product not intended for mass production
• what does the ending show about indulgence and materialism?

  forms of excess that were never far away from destruction
• who coined the term lost generation?

  Gertrude Stein
• what was the Lost Generation?

  people who felt disconnected after WW1 and struggled to find purpose for life as roles were displaced due to deaths and returning of men to roles women has taken on during the war
• what does Fitz try to show through social occasions?

  artifice and shallowness that encompassed society of the 1920s which lay below a cover of decadence
• what does the telephone symbolise?

  fast-encroaching modernity
• who were the ennui?

  world-weary view of life, Tom and Daisy
• what is the Valley of Ashes the environment of?

  The Proletariat (Marx)
• dress style of flappers in the 1920s?

  loose and unrestrictive