The Age of Epic Grandeur: F. Scott Fitzgerald and America’s Cultural Memory of the 1920’s

F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered as one of the most candid and influential writers of his era, the “Roaring Twenties.” From the swinging parties to the increased use of the automobile, Fitzgerald chronicled the dramatic social changes that were occurring during one of the most memorable periods in American history. But how far was his fiction from actual fact? Fitzgerald saw the world of the 1920s through an upper class lens and glamorized the lifestyle of the wealthy youth who partook in the swinging life of the Jazz Age. And because Fitzgerald saw the 1920s through such a narrow lens, his stories only reflect the experience of one class. As such, Fitzgerald has influenced the modern understanding of the 1920s because he focused on one social group, leaving present-day readers to accept his chronicle as the norm for the day. With an analysis of the social history of the 1920’s, we as modern Americans can clearly see how skewed Fitzgerald's interpretation is and how little we really know about the era as a whole.