Essay Database

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The American Dream Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, the spokesman for the Jazz Age, ruled America’s decade of prosperity and excess, which began soon after World War 1 and ended around the time of the stock market crash of 1929. The novels and stories for which he is best known examine an entire generation’s search for the elusive American Dream of wealth and happiness. Many of his works are derived from his own …

…East. Even so, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath--much like Nick--and part of him longed for the moral center absent in his era (Brooks 35). In many ways, The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's attempt to confront his conflicting feelings for the Jazz Age, spurred on, like Gatsby, by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, and who led him toward everything he despised.