Innovations & Consumer Goods
This new industry helped sell products like cars, cosmetics, and appliances by persuading people to buy them.
Answer: What is advertising?
Families gathered around this invention for news, sports, and entertainment.
What is the radio?
This household appliance cleaned carpets more easily, giving women more free time.
What is the vacuum cleaner?
This mode of transportation boomed in the 1920s, leading to highways, motels, and diners.
What are automobiles (cars)?
This character’s lavish parties symbolize the wealth and excess of the 1920s.
Who is Jay Gatsby?
This consumer product became widely available thanks to electricity in homes, keeping food fresh longer.
What is the refrigerator?
This 1927 film, The Jazz Singer, was the first feature-length movie with sound, also called this.
What is a “talkie”?
These appliances, like washing machines and refrigerators, symbolized how electricity changed homes.
What are labor-saving devices (or household appliances)?
This aviator became a national hero after his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic.
Who is Charles Lindbergh?
Gatsby’s car is described as this colorful type of vehicle, symbolizing both wealth and excess.
What is a “circus wagon” car?
Mass production of this product by Henry Ford made it affordable for many Americans.
What is the automobile (Model T)?
Or what is the car?
Gossip, rumors, and appearances dominate The Great Gatsby, just as this innovation spread information widely in real life.
What is mass media?
This architectural style, visible in skyscrapers and Gatsby’s mansion, symbolized wealth and progress.
What is Art Deco?
The automobile was a symbol of freedom, but in The Great Gatsby, it also symbolized this.
What is recklessness (or danger)?
This female character is reconnected with Gatsby through the telephone and social networks of the 1920s.
Who is Daisy Buchanan?
These eye-catching signs and billboards became common in the 1920s, symbolizing the rise of consumer culture.
What are advertisements (or billboards)?
This device connected households, making it easier to reach friends — just like Gatsby reconnects with Daisy.
What is the telephone?
The 1920s economic boom allowed people to buy more goods, creating this kind of culture.
What is a consumer culture?
This invention, perfected by Henry Ford, allowed goods like cars to be made faster and cheaper.
What is the assembly line (mass production)?
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an age of wealth and change. Name one invention or innovation that reflects this theme.
What is (cars / radios / appliances / advertising / mass production / Art Deco, etc.)?
This metaphor from The Great Gatsby involves a giant billboard that George Wilson mistakes for the eyes of God.
What are the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg?
The growth of radio and movies in the 1920s helped spread this uniquely American musical style.
What is jazz?
This new kitchen device (hint: fruit) was first introduced in the 1920s, and was mentioned in The Great Gatsby.
What is the fruit juicer?
What form of transportation does Nick often use in The Great Gatsby?
What is Train?
Just as America after WWI enjoyed economic growth, this novel shows both the prosperity and the moral emptiness of the era.
What is The Great Gatsby?