The Great Gatsby and destruction of a generationThe beauty and splendor of Gatsby's parties mask the decadence and corruption that were at the heart of the Roaring Twenties. Jazz Age society, as Fitzgerald observes, is morally bankrupt and therefore continually in the throes of a crisis of character. Jay Gatsby, even though he struggles to be part of this world, remains inalterably an outsider. Her life is one of great irony, to the extent that it is a caricature of the ostentation of the twenties: her closet is full of tailored shirts; its lawn is full of “good people”, all engaged in serious work of absolute triviality; his manners (his fake British accent, his old-boy kindness) are ridiculously affected. Despite all this, he can never truly be part of the corruption that surrounds him: he remains intrinsically “big”. Nick Carrway believes that Gatsby's determination, ambitious goals and, above all, the grandiose nature of his dreams set him above his vulgar contemporaries. F. Scott Fitzgerald constructs Gatsby as a true American dreamer, facing the decline of American society in the 1920s. By praising the tragic fate of dreamers, Fitzgerald thus denounces America in the 1920s as an era of blindness and greed, a time hostile to the work of dreaming. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald announces the ruin of his own generation. Since America has always held its entrepreneurs in high esteem, one might expect Fitzgerald to glorify this heroic version of the American Dreamer in the pages of his novel. Instead, Fitzgerald suggests that the societal corruption prevalent in the 1920s was particularly inhospitable to dreamers; in fact, these are the men who led the most unhappy lives of all...... middle of paper ......ible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 1995. Fielder, Leslie. “Some Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Mizener 70-76.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner Classic, 1986. Hobsbawm, Eric. The era of extremes. New York: Pantheon, 1994. Posnock, Ross. "'A new world, material without being real': Fitzgerald's critique of capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on “Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzgerald. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 201-13.Raleigh, John Henry. “The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Mizener 99-103. Spindler, Michael. American literature and social change. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on “Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.