Excess In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is set during the middle of the Jazz Age. This is a time of great excess and wild energy often thrown about in displays of drunken ecstasy. Even though the original Jazz Age occurred in the 1920s, there is now a resurgence of the same energy and excess. Thus we are now living in a new Jazz Age and all that comes with it: unneeded extravagance, remorseless drunkenness, and the need to display an elaborate facade to achieve a feeling happiness. Just as Fitzgerald’s Gatsby holds extraordinarily large parties, a staple of the Jazz Age, we now hold parties just as large and excessive. Gatsby’s party is one with no expense spared. It contains a full “orchestra,” multiple suppers, a library that was “transported complete from some ruin overseas,” and many other lavish components. In a similar way, we now hold parties that are also needlessly extravagant. Amanda, a college junior at IU, often frequents these parties where she is met by an extravagant amount

Fitzgerald presents us with multiple cases of remorseless drunkenness as a component of the Jazz Age. He shows us a man who has been “‘drunk for about a week.’” Shortly thereafter he presents to us a man who is so drunk that he does not even realize he crashed his car. This remorseless drunkenness is also found in our time in Amanda’s story. After she had already consumed a large amount of alcohol, Amanda continues to drink saying “‘“not enough alcohol”’” (Brown). The next day, she has no memory of drinking the extra alcohol. She later devours cherries she thinks are “‘disgusting’” only in order to get drunk.She ends up getting so drunk that the simple act of unlocking her phone is “too taxing.” In all of this, Amanda exhibits the same remorseless drunkenness that helped to define the Jazz Age, which in turn, helps to solidify the fact that we are now in a new Jazz