The Great Gatsby Research Paper

American Literature has been around since the 17th century, beginning with the Indigenous people, it has forever changed America and the way of life. From one era to the next different beliefs, values, and literary characteristics have formed. With many different literary eras starting with the Indigenous People the list continued to grow and change throughout the years with; Early Explorers, Colonial Era, Rational Era, Romantic Era, The Transcendentalist Era, Realism Era, Modernism Era, Harlem Renaissance, and the Beat Generation. All of these eras brought us to the Postmodern Era. All being very different in their own way there have been similarities as well as difference which shaped around authors thoughts and feeling of events going

Modernism was during World War 1 and the Great Depression. These two extreme happenings really shaped this era. It led the literary characteristics, belief, and values to what they have become. Some literary characteristics at the time were self consciousness, heroic individualism, which is similar to Romanticism, nonlinear time, and distortions of time. These all formed because of what was going on around the people who were writing during that time. One writer during this time was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote The Great Gatsby. In his book he writes, " ‘Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he's a gambler.’ Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: ‘He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919.’ ‘Fixed the World's Series?’ I repeated. […]‘Why isn't he in jail?’ ‘They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man.’ " (Fitzgerald 112-118). This shows many things on American visions such like through The Great Gatsby there are corrupt people such as Meyer Wolfsheim instead of pure hearted people like Gatsby. This shows certain points of the literary characteristics from Modernism such as; narration through fragmented or multiple perspectives/viewpoints, heroic individualism because everyone has their own opinions and they individually want to have their own characteristics, and the movement involved is a reflection of American life in the Roaring 20's. Some values and beliefs were; independence, associated with city life where people must, in a sense fend for themselves, generally associated with the desire to become rich and famous, valued the present and was always looking to the future and referred the fast paced lifestyles as opposed to the slower-paced anti- modernist lifestyles of becoming wealthy. These all are shown throughout the writings of the Modernism era and distinctly shown in the Great