The Great Gatsby, The 1920s, and a Drifting Era

The Great Gatsby, The 1920s, and a Drifting Era

The decade of the 1920s was a transitional, restless era. Moral values were

changed dramatically after the first World War, creating a time in which people were

adrift, wandering through life, and wondering what was in their future. This restlessness

and drifting feeling that many people experienced throughout the 1920s is skillfully

captured by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1920s novel, The Great Gatsby. Through his

description of landscapes in this novel, Fitzgerald incorporates a floating, unsettled tone,

which was the tone of the 1920s. In order to add emphasis to the theme of drifting,

Fitzgerald tells his story through the narrative of an unstable drifter, Nick Carraway. The

descriptions of these landscapes are seen through the eyes and voice of someone who has

never been able to settle down himself. In The Great Gatsby, descriptions of specific

landscapes, such as Daisy and Tom’s house, the train station, and Gatsby’s party create a

very significant theme: the 1920s and the people living in that era were adrift, roaming

aimlessly through life.

The first scene in which the floating theme is encountered is the description of

Tom and Daisy’s house when Nick first comes to visit. Through Nick’s eyes as he first

glances around the parlor, Fitzgerald creates images of flowing curtains, and metaphors

comparing the carpet to an open sea. “A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in

at one end and out on the other like pale flags...and then rippled over the wine-colored

rug, making a shadow on it as the wind does the sea” (12). He describes the large sofa as

the “only stationary object in the room” (12). The portrayal of the two women, Daisy

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way people conducted themselves in the 1920s: adrift, and going with whatever others

did, doing whatever makes them happy at the moment.

The parallels between the characters of The Great Gatsby and the real people of

the 1920s are skillfully created by Fitzgerald in the novel. By choosing the most unsettled

character in the book for the narrator, the floating theme is developed even more

effectively. Because the story is told through Nick Carraway’s eyes and voice, the theme

becomes more prevalent than if it had been told by any other character. Through Nick’s

experiences and descriptions of Daisy and Tom’s house, the train station, and Gatsby’s

party, it is shown that the characters in The Great Gatsby, like most people in the 1920s,

were adrift, floating through the motions of life with neither concrete goals nor desire for

stability.