Francis Scott Fitzgerald

adaptation by Cristina Gioli
 A great classic of American literature. Through the rise and fall of a fascinating young man, the novel shows the decadence of the “Jazz Age” America of the 1920s.
 Both tragic, romantic hero and criminal, Gatsby believes that money is the key to reach success and happiness, but above all to make his impossible dream of love come true. Despite his faults, he is passionate and sincere, while the other characters move through life superficially, irresponsibly and seem incapable of real feelings.
 In this story, Fitzgerald presents us with all the contradictions of the period: the thoughtless way of living of the prosperous classes in the 1920s, the poverty of the lower classes and the illusory quality of the “American Dream”.
 
 Teacher's Resources available online: Answer Key - Audioscripts - Key to Summing-up Activities.
 
 Attraverso l’ascesa e la caduta di un affascinante giovane, il romanzo tratta la decadenza dell’Età del Jazz nell’America degli Anni ’20.
 Allo stesso tempo eroe tragico/romantico e criminale, Gatsby crede che il denaro sia la chiave per il successo e la felicità, ma soprattutto per rendere reale il suo impossibile sogno d’amore.
 Con questa storia, Fitzgerald ci mostra tutte le contraddizioni del periodo: l’avventatezza delle classi più agiate, la povertà delle classi più basse e la qualità illusoria del cosiddetto sogno americano.

Chapter 1 – First Impressions

Extension: The Jazz Age

Chapter 2 – Parties, Meetings and Revelations

Extension: The American Dream

Chapter 3 – A Reunion

Extension: American literature in the 1920s

Chapter 4 – Death of a Dream

Extension: Modernism

Chapter 5 – The Tragedy

Extension: The Themes of The Great Gatsby

Summing-up activities

Glossary

E X T E N S I O N AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE 1920s Ernest Hemingway Gertrude Stein The 1920s were a very important period in American Literature, a period in which many writers dealt with new themes and innovative narrative techniques to express their outlook on society and on life. The young writers who had taken part in the First World War, or had believed in it, had thought that it would eventually produce a world of peace and prosperity, but the aftermath1 of the war showed that it was not so. They no longer believed in the traditional values with which they had been brought up   those of patriotism, bourgeois respectability, work ethic, Victorian moralism   and refused what, in their eyes, was American provincialism and materialism. Being in Europe for the war had enabled them to get in touch with a series of new movements, in art and literature, which are commonly referred to as Modernism. And Paris was the most important centre of it all. Fascinated by its stimulating atmosphere, a group of American writers settled there for a while. While in Paris, these  expatriates  had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas in the house of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), an American novelist and poet who had long since settled there. She offered support and encouragement to the most important modernist artists and writers of the time, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and Henry Matisse, to mention only some. 1. aftermath: the consequences of an important unpleasant event, such as a war. 58 

Gertrude Stein coined the term Lost Generation for the young post war expatriate writers, those who were disgusted by the war but  lost  in peacetime, since they were still looking for new codes of behaviour and ways of living which would replace the traditional ones. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) described the life of these expatriates in the novel The Sun Also Rises (1925). He showed them as people who had been deeply affected by the war and who seemed to drift2 here and there without purpose. In his second novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), he described the absurdity and horror of the war, basing the story on his personal experience as an ambulance driver on the Italian front. Hemingway s very personal and much imitated style derived from his experience as a journalist and was one of the reasons for his great success. He used, in fact, basic American language, very simple syntax and no introspection, but with those ingredients he was able to obtain great emotional intensity. Also John Dos Passos (1896-1970) had served in the war as an ambulance driver and had settled in Paris afterwards. In 1921 he published Three Soldiers, which, with its crude realism, contributed to show the public how brutal and dehumanizing war can be. Ezra Pound did not take part in the war, but his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1921) was inspired by the events of the war and expressed his disgust for the values of Western Civilization. Pound was one of the founders of Imagism, a poetic movement according to which a poem should communicate a sensation or an emotion through images only. His poetry is very complex Ezra Pound and obscure. The war was certainly a major source of inspiration for the American writers in that period, but it was not the only one. If Fitzgerald described The Jazz Age in New York, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), in his novels Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922), satirized the boring, provincial life of the American Midwest, characterized by conformism, ignorance and uncritical adherence to capitalism. William Faulkner (1897-1962), instead, described the moral decay of the states of the South in The Sound and The Fury (1929), in which he experimented with different narrative techniques, from the interior monologue to multiple narrators. The authors mentioned   which are by no means the only significant ones of the period   wrote many other works in the years that followed. Their careers, however, began in the 1920s, the period in which American literature ceased to be interesting only to Americans and acquired international importance. 2. to drift: to move slowly, without a fixed direction. 59 

Narrativa inglese, livello B2 intermedio, il romanzo di Francis Scott Fitzgerald narra la decadenza dell’Età del Jazz nell’America degli Anni ’20.

The Great Gatsby - Collana RAINBOWS

Level B2 • Intermediate - Collana RAINBOWS

The Great Gatsby

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