Reading Between the Lines
This term describes the author’s attitude toward their subject, which shifts from wonder to disillusionment.
What is tone?
Ratified in 1920, this amendment gave women the right to vote in all U.S. elections.
What is the Nineteenth Amendment?
Despite being called the definitive novel of this age, Gatsby never references this form of music directly.
What is jazz?
Consumer culture boomed thanks to the tripling of ownership of this invention during the 1920s.
What are automobiles (cars)?
This literary movement rejected tradition and embraced experimentation.
What is modernism?
Nick’s reflections on Gatsby’s smile reveal his perception more than Gatsby’s actual character, making him an example of this narrative feature.
What is an unreliable narrator?
These self-assured young women were typically seen with short hair and daring fashion for the time.
Who were flappers?
This city became the epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance.
What is New York City?
This 1920s Constitutional amendment banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol.
What is the Eighteenth Amendment?
This author coined the 1920s' nickname, the “Jazz Age”
Who is F. Scott Fitzgerald?
The green light is an example of this modernist literary technique, using objects to represent abstract ideas.
What is symbolism?
In a critical reading question, you might call the flapper a symbol of this larger social movement.
What is women’s autonomy or early feminism?
The novel’s white-only main cast contrasts with this real demographic shift happening at the time, a term which describes the mass movement of Black Americans from the South to Northern cities.
What is the Great Migration?
The 1920 census marked the first point in US history at which the majority of Americans lived in this type of area.
What are cities/urban areas?
This psychologist’s theories about desire and the unconscious mind influenced modernist literature.
Who was Sigmund Freud?
A critical reading question might ask about Fitzgerald’s tone toward the wealthy, which becomes this by the novel’s end.
What is disillusioned or cynical?
Writers like Dorothy Parker used irony to critique this traditional institution many women began rejecting.
What is marriage?
Langston Hughes helped define the Harlem Renaissance with jazz-inspired verse. When analyzing tone, you could say he often blended joy with this emotion about racial injustice.
What is sorrow?
This two-word term describes the trend of the time, which included spending money on obvious displays of wealth.
What is conspicuous consumption?
Modernists often rejected neat moral lessons. Fitzgerald shows this by refusing to make Gatsby purely this.
What is a hero (or purely good figure)?
This artist designed the iconic original Great Gatsby book cover.
Who is Francis Cugat?
Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman both fought for this controversial issue related to women’s autonomy.
What is birth control (or reproductive rights)?
This magazine founded by the NAACP published many Harlem Renaissance poets.
What is The Crisis?
These nicknames distinguish “inherited” wealth from “self-made” wealth in Gatsby’s world.
What are “old money” and “new money”?
Modernist authors rejected Victorian moral certainty; this symbol in the novel shows the moral emptiness of the Jazz Age.
What are the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg?