World War I
O World War I ended in 1918.
O Disillusioned because of the
war, the generation that
fought and survived has
come to be called “The Lost
Generation.”
The Roaring Twenties: A
New Era of Modernism
O While the sense of loss was readily
apparent among expatriate American
artists who remained in Europe after
the war, back home the
disillusionment took a less obvious
form.
O America seemed to throw itself
headlong into a decade of madcap
behavior and materialism, a decade
that has come to be called the Roaring
Twenties.
The Roaring Twenties: A New
Era of Modernism
O In this PowerPoint, you will examine the
1920s from its art, music, poetry and
history.
O Your goal is to look for common patterns and
trends you see
O Look for examples of rule breaking and
invention
Modern Poetry
O e.e. cummings
9.
there are so many tictoc clocks
everywhere telling people what
toctic time it is for tictic instance
five toc minutes toc past six tic
Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do its hands
a little jerking move over numbers
slowly we do not wind it up it has no
weights springs wheels inside of its
slender self no indeed dear nothing
of the kind.
(So,when kiss Spring comes we'll
kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't
make a toctic difference to kisskiss
you and to kiss me)
O William Carlos Williams
This is just to say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
The Jazz Age
O The era is also known as the Jazz Age, when
the music called jazz, promoted by such recent
inventions as the phonograph and the radio,
swept up from New Orleans to capture the
national imagination.
O Improvised and wild, jazz broke the rules of
music, just as the Jazz Age thumbed its nose
at the rules of the past.
O Breaking the rules seemed to flow into nearly
every element of American Culture from
music to art to poetry to even daily behavior
Listen and Decide…What are the elements of 1920s Jazz music?
Dancing: Lessons in the Lindy and the Charleston
What do these paintings by Edward Hopper suggest
about the new woman in the 1920s?
Dorothy Parker
“The Flapper”
The Playful flapper here we see,
The fairest of the fair.
She's not what Grandma used to be, -You might say, au contraire.
Her girlish ways may make a stir,
Her manners cause a scene,
But there is no more harm in her
Than in a submarine.
She nightly knocks for many a goal
The usual dancing men.
Her speed is great, but her control
Is something else again.
All spotlights focus on her pranks.
All tongues her prowess herald.
For which she well may render thanks
To God and Scott Fitzgerald.
Her golden rule is plain enough -Just get them young and treat them rough.
Prohibition
O Another rule often broken was the
Eighteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, or Prohibition, which
banned the public sale of alcoholic
beverages from 1919 until its appeal in
1933.
O Speak-easies, nightclubs, and taverns
that sold liquor were often raided, and
gangsters made illegal fortunes as
bootleggers, smuggling alcohol into
America from abroad.
Prohibition = New illegal
enterprise
O
O
O
O
O
O
O
O
O
O
The following are statistics detailing how much worse crime
got:
Police funding: INCREASED $11.4 Million
Arrests for Prohibition Las Violations: INCREASED 102+%
Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct:
INCREASED 41%
Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81%
Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9%
Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13%
Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561%
Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366%
Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions:
INCREASED 1,000%
The LANGUAGE
BOOTLEGGING - Bootlegging was
the illegal transport and distribution O MOONSHINE - Moonshine is
of liquor usually from Canada or
distilled liquor made in an
other foreign countries. The term
unlicensed still. It gets its name
comes from the practice of
from early smugglers and
concealing flasks of illicit liquor in
Appalachian distillers who
boots under pants legs. Bootlegging
secretly produced and distributed
became a lucrative industry in
homemade whisky by moonlight.
America particularly for organized
Also called hooch, mountain dew
crime syndicates.
or white lightening, moonshine
was big business during
Prohibition.
O RUM RUNNERS - A rum runner was
a bootlegger but the term more
specifically refers to the ship or
O SPEAKEASIES - Speakeasies
person engaged in bringing the
were illegal establishments that
prohibited liquor across the border
served beer, wine and alcohol
or ashore. Rum runners were great
during Prohibition. For a thirsty
sailors and hard to catch. When the
patron to enter one a secret
Coast Guard got too close, rum
password or special handshake
runners would simply find other
or door knock was required.
routes. They often managed to stay
one step ahead of the law.
O
1920s Gangstas: Bootleggers
and Profiteers
Gambling
O Another gangland activity was
illegal gambling.
O Perhaps the worst scandal involving
gambling was the so-called Black
Sox Scandal of 1919, in which eight
members of the Chicago White Sox
were indicted for accepting bribes to
throw baseball’s World Series.
The Automobile
O The Jazz Age was also an era of reckless
spending and consumption, and the most
conspicuous status symbol of the time was
a flashy new automobile.
O Advertising was becoming the major
industry that it is today, and soon
advertisers took advantage of new
roadways by setting up huge billboards at
their sides.
O Both the automobile and a bizarre
billboard play important roles in The
Great Gatsby.
Predictions
Taking your knowledge of This PowerPoint, The
Lost Generation and the works we have read
from Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, what do you
think The Great Gatsby will be about?
The 1920s
O While fellow writers praised
Fitzgerald’s The Great
Gatsby, critics offered less
favorable reviews.
Newspaper Reviews
O The Baltimore Evening Sun called the
plot “no more than a glorified
anecdote” and the characters “mere
marionettes.”
O The New York Times called the book
“neither profound nor durable.”
O The London Times saw it as
“undoubtedly a work of great promise”
but criticized its “unpleasant”
characters.