This Side of Paradise: Mirror Image of the 20’s

This Side of Paradise: Mirror Image of the 20’s

“The Roaring Twenties,” as they have been coined, were a time of great change in the United States. The Jazz era was dawning, social classes were beginning to solidify themselves into our society, huge companies were forming and dominating markets, a new movement of females was beginning to fight for women’s suffrage, and a new group of youths known as the lost generation formed. The country saw 4 presidents enter and leave office, each with varying views and policies that they enacted. The presidents during the “Roaring Twenties” were Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Clark Hoover. Prohibition was ratified into the constitution on January 16th, 1920, under the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Despite this, many people still continued to consume alcohol. World War I began in 1914, but the United States did not declare war against the Central powers, composed of Germany Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, until April 6th, 1917. The sinking of the Lusitania prompted the U.S. to enter the world, a British cruise liner with 128 American passengers onboard that perished. People were not fond of the war as it progressed further, seeing as though the death toll was rising rapidly, rising to 117,465 total deaths and 205,690 people wounded (White). With the new technology of tanks and machine guns being used in the war, Soldiers were forced to engage in trench warfare, which would cause a stalemate between the Central powers and the Allied powers. The conditions in the trenches were horrible, and caused the soldier to come back home much worse for the ware. The Lost Generation, also known as the Children of WWI, were nomads who had fought in the war, and returned home to find a changed America. The person who coined this saying was an American poet by the name of Gertrude Stein, who, when talking to Ernest hemming way said, "you are all a lost generation"(What is the Lost Generation?). Many of the people from the “Lost Generation” that had gone to war came back changed. As a result of this, many of them dejected American values and sought to separate themselves from this society. More specifically though, The Lost Generation was a group of American authors who after the war, refused to accept the American way’s of life, and moved to Paris. These authors included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Josh Dos Passos (What is the Lost Generation). Having seen friends die, they no longer knew what to do with their life, and struggled to find their place in society again. Very much like Fitzgerald, Amory Blaine, the main character in This Side of Paradise represents this idea exactly. He grew up a privileged child with his mother, traveling the United States. He decided to live a more conventional life though, and attended a prep school by the name of St. Regis. From there, he decides to enroll in Princeton, where he meets his group of friends, who want to make themselves known in their class. After making no progress into the upper echelons of the class, Amory resides himself to stop trying, and begins to slack in his schoolwork, and begins to delve into the festivities of the Jazz era. The painting “Three Musicians” by Pablo Picasso encapsules the time era in which it was painted. The art form, known as Cubism was beginning to thrive when Picasso painted this masterpiece, and Picasso explored all three types of it. Both of these works encapsulate the time period in which they represent, mirroring the happenings, the movements, and the ideas of the decade they model after.

The 1920’s began with President Woodrow Wilson in power. Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, and was the president that saw our entry into World War I in 1917. After many attempts at trying to keep America out of the war in Europe, Wilson finally entered the war after the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram. The Zimmerman Telegram was a coded telegram sent by Arthur Zimmerman, the German Foreign Minister, directed to the German Minister in Mexico, attempting to persuade Mexico to attack the U.S. in return for land controlled by the U.S. (The Zimmerman Telegram). At the end of the war, Wilson went to Versailles to attempt to forge a treaty between the Central and the Allied powers. He was unsuccessful in pushing through his idea for a treaty, called the “Fourteen Points”. One of the main points of this treaty was to form a League of Nations. Though after this, the United States refused to accept the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and therefore was not allowed to enter the League of Nations. The reason behind this was that the United States wanted a “fair and lasting peace,” (The Treaty of Versailles) and the United States believed that this treaty would cripple Germany economically for the future.

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