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Examples Of Modernism In The Great Gatsby

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Two years after world war 2, a new decade came about, full of lavish parties, new traditions and an insurgence of women’s rights and African American cultural. This moment in history captured the post war effects in America and how we dealt with them, not only as a nation, but as individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds. There were those who took their wealth and youth as a way of passage and those who stuck to tradition, never fraying from the ‘right way” of doing things. This seems to be a common theme in the 1920’s, tradition vs. modernism, through the Harlem renaissance, the flappers, red scare, and even the gangsters who controlled the city. Even the Great Gatsby seems to be the poster child for this conflict. After ww1, …show more content…

Young women had helped during the war, taking jobs that the men out fighting left behind. This gave them new freedoms and they didn't want to give those up when the men came back, in a form of rebelling they wore shorter dresses, bobbed hair, and drank and smoked in public. The older generation, defined “Gibson girls” did not take to keen to this and saw them as less than average to say the least. “The embodiment of the 1920’s free spirit was the flapper, who was viewed disdainfully by older generations as wild, boisterous, and disgraceful.”(The History Of the Flapper Part 1: The Call For Freedom) These huge parties were thrown where women could dress and act however so they wished, and these parties would not have been possible without alcohol. Although most of the 20’s was in prohibition, it didn't really keep alcohol away from anyone.The prohibition which was originally intended to help alcoholics and decrease the crime rate, but it actually made way for gangsters to gain control of the city. People wanted their alcohol, one way or another, legally or illegally, gangsters saw this business opportunity and took it. In no time these powerful men could run the cities just from there bootleg

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