Gatsby: Cultural Background

The Great Gatsby Curve represents inequality by showing that citizens in countries on the far right of the horizontal axis and high up on the vertical axis will have a more difficult time moving from a low economic class to a higher, wealthier economic class.

Growth and excess marked the decade known as the Roaring Twenties (1920–1929). It was a time when people chased after the American Dream and society embraced bold and new things. But underneath this glamorous exterior were struggles and inequalities. Lines were frequently drawn between the young and the old, the established and the rebellious, the well-mannered and the hedonistic, the citizens and the outsiders.

Americans grappled with the implications of industrialization, technological progress, urbanization, and mass immigration with startling vigor and creativity in the 1920s even as wide numbers kept their eyes as much on the past as on the future.