Culture During The Great Depression

T.S. Eliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two famous writers with exceptional talent, whom both bring something different to the literary world. Eliot was a groundbreaking 20th century poet who found his love for writing by leaving the United States and finding his inspiration in England where he spent the rest of his life. One of his most famous works, as well as his first, is “Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock” which was published in 1915. It is a modernist poem about a man who is very unhappy and is afraid of living, so he never seeks any kind of adventure resulting in boredom. At the time, not a lot of people particularly liked this poem, but eventually it became well appreciated. F. Scott Fitzgerald, on the other hand, was solely focused on writing short stories and novels. He is most famous for the way he portrays the Jazz Age in his stories, especially in “The Great Gatsby”. He has many writing techniques that he incorporated such as: similes, rhetorical strategies, and especially diction. His era was the 1920-30s where he went from partying and seeking pleasure to experiencing the gloomy aftermath of excess, known as The Great Depression. The story “Babylon Revisited” was written immediately after the stock market crash, it is both a personal and national story.

Both of these writers lived during the 1920s and the 1930s, experiencing both the extravagance of the Jazz Age and the financial crisis because of it. Fitzgerald in “Babylon Revisited” writes about “his experience” of stock market crash of 1929. He does not really spend his time trying to find who is to blame rather to take a look at the general responsibility of what caused the Great Depression. Regret comes into play because Fitzgerald has to find a way for his character, as well as himself, to atone for his behavior. Do the people of the 1920s regret their way of life during that decade or was it worth it? “I spoiled this city for myself. I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.” (Fitzgerald p.647) When it came to Eliot’s poems, people did not really favor them. They consider him to be a “wicked satirist who pokes fun at ‘the man’” while using dark humor. When Eliot wrote “Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock” it was before the start of World War I when Britain was considered the most modern country in the world. This was not a time to be writing about anything happy or beautiful because it was one of the most violent wars in history; it was a good source of distraction, but no one saw it as that. “And would it have been worth it, after all, would it have been worth while . . .” (T.S. Eliot p. 357)

Cite this page