Fitzgerald’s Signals: The Great Gatsby

Introduction

After rereading The Sun Also Rises, I wanted to continue exploring the 1920s through a different observer. While Ernest Hemingway examined the psychological consequences of the First World War, F. Scott Fitzgerald turned his attention toward American society itself. If Hemingway asked how people attempted to rebuild their lives after the collapse of old certainties, Fitzgerald asked what kind of society emerged from those traumatized people.

It was a wild, kinetic era, defined by widespread excess and a violent acceleration of technological change. According to Strauss and Howe’s cyclical framework, this period represents an “Unraveling” era. This phase typically begins with surging individualism and a powerful cultural momentum set in motion by a preceding spiritual awakening. Yet, beneath the surface prosperity. The nation grew deeply fractured, marked by heated debates over core social values and a visible weakening of civic habits.¹

The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment perfectly encapsulates this friction. At first glance, the dynamic feels entirely paradoxical. If society was becoming fundamentally more permissive, why did it also become legally less tolerant? Yet, that precise contradiction is exactly what makes the 1920s such a fascinating historical fault line to study.

Fitzgerald brilliantly captured these systemic societal shifts. To decode them, I chose his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Reading the novel through the lens of history reveals a nation overflowing with optimism, wealth, technological innovation, and ambition. Yet beneath that glittering facade lies an underbelly of corruption, inequality, wild speculation, and profound moral uncertainty. Fitzgerald does not simply tell the tragic story of Jay Gatsby. Instead, he captures the central contradictions of the Roaring Twenties at the absolute peak of America’s economic and cultural transformation.