Background for Great Gatsby and the 1920’s

Dr. Gingrich AP English Language and Composition

Interpreting the Great Gatbsy involves understanding what occurred during the time period as historical background, much like understanding Huck Finn required understanding the pre-Civil War south and The Crucible required understanding Puritan society.  In this activity I want you to think about how Jay, Daisy, Tom and Nick were products of their time period and reflected values of that age. Also as we are investigating these primary documents think about how you could be using primary documents and sources for your decades project.

1. Select a topic and find two different artifacts on the period 1900-1930
2. You may use the following web pages or you may use  google.  Find two primary sources-newspaper articles, magazine, pamphlets, etc or photographs visual images—and write responses to the following questions.  You may also do a Salem search (but you are looking for primary sources photographs, news articles, journal/diary entries, political documents, speeches, etc).
3. Save as word file or power point and email this assignment to me with your artifacts at gingrich@fultonschools.org).

The following guide will help you consider the issues of the time period.

Adapted from Material Culture Analysis Guide – created by Gretchen Soren

Observation: What do you see in the object? Describe everything you can about it - content, imagery, text, style, craftsmanship.  What tone does this create?

Analysis

Creator

Who created the object? What can you infer from the object about the purpose for which it was created?

Audience

Who was the object for? What can you infer from the object about its intended use?  How do you think the audience of the time would have responded to the object?  Would our response today be different?

America in the 1920s

What specific information about life in America during the 1920s does the object

convey?  What attitudes does this object connect to?

Questions

What questions do you have? What other kinds of information would you like to see in order to understand the context more thoroughly? Whose voices would you like to hear?

Great Gatsby: What does this tell us about the time period—how does this connect to the novel either an event, image, or tone of the novel?

You can do any topic from the 1920s you want but here are some guides.

General Topics and primary documents http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/resource_guides/content_sources.cfm?tpc=23   http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/index.html#1920   http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/20frm.htm   Chicago Daily News Artifacts   http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html	=	Jazz Music   http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/subtitles.cfm?titleID=67   http://www.pbs.org/jazz/       Al Capone http://www.chicagohs.org/history/capone/cpn1.html   Prohibition http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/   http://prohibition.osu.edu/
Baseball Cards http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bbhtml/bbhome.html Baseball and Jackie Robinson http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/robinson/jrgmabout.html   Black Sox Scandal         http://www.chicagohs.org/history/blacksox.html   http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/blacksox/blacksox.html		Coolidge Era http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html   Edison and Sound Recordings http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html   Buildings and Architecture http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/landscape/   New York City Turn of the Century http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html   Turn of the Century Photographs http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/touring/
Advertising http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/advertising/		Women’s Suffrage http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html     Charles Lindbergh http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/lindbergh.htm