Why Is Jazz Music Important In The Great Gatsby

The Jazz Age was a pivotal time in the United States. The time frame was also know as the “Roaring 20s” as the United States recover and grow again from the Great Depression. The 1920s was a very important time period as this time period sparked and startled a lot of new invocations. One key invocation was jazz music in the music industry. Other smaller innovations includes fashion, mass culture, prohibitions, automobiles and the lives of women. The Great Gatsby was revolved around the 1920s, similar features and details were shown in the such that can be comparable to the actual features from the 1920s. These features include the driving cars in the city and poor areas still recovering from the Great Depression such as the Valley of Ashes.

The Valley of the Ashes was described as a very gloomy, dark and dead city. The book would often refer to the valley as the “waste land” as low tier workers occupy that area. “This is a valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.”(Fitzgerald 23) These poor and forgotten area, however were present in the 1920s. The roaring 20s was a time period where the United States, especially like big cities such as New York and Chicago where ideas and new innovations started to grow and burst. This time frame was also the growing and transition era from the Great Depression. However, some parts of the United States were still under rebuild due to the damage of the Great Depression. Many rural parts close to big cities such as New York were still very poor and damaged. People lived in horrible conditions and were helpless while big cities grew out of the depression. Its was also shown in the book, citizens who lived in the Valley of Ashes lived in horrible and disgusting conditions with no help or support and had to face difficult daily challenges to