“the Jazz Age�? and F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay Example
“The Jazz Age” and F. Scott Fitzgerald "It was an age of miracles. It was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.” (“Fitzgerald: The Jazz Age” p. 3). As the 1920s began, the old, conservative ways of life began to disintegrate. A new era was just beginning. This era is called “The Jazz Age.” The Great Gatsby, a literary masterpiece written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the social historian of the 1920s, directly reflects the virtues, materialism, and revolutionary nature of this new “Jazz Age.” F. Scott Fitzgerald is known as the social historian of the time he himself nicknamed “The Jazz Age.” All of his novels take place in locations where Fitzgerald once lived. Fitzgerald lived and even married his wife Zelda in New York, which happens to be the setting of The Great Gatsby. Not only did his novels reflect the time, but his life reflected it as well. Newly established prohibition laws did not allow the buying or selling of alcohol in the United States. However, even with these laws, alcohol consumption was a growing trend among Americans in the 1920s. Fitzgerald immortalized the time in his literary works as well as in his own life. He can sincerely be considered the social historian of the 1920s, a time marked by an overwhelming revolutionary nature among the youth of the period. “The Jazz Age” sparked a clash between new ideas and old ideas. As the youth of the 1920s became more rebellious and began to act the way they wanted to and not the way they were told, the older ways became more outdated. New minds began to spread ideas among the youth of the time, and before long, a revolution of sorts had begun. Older, more conservative Americans tried to hold on to their traditional ways of living and keep their children from joining the youthful rebels that were acting out against them. These rebels tried to cut ties with the former ways of life and begin their own way to live. This new view on life was the stamp of the