The writer in his time

My presentation will deal with the theme The writer in his time.

The work of some authors sometimes reveals their view in a particular time in history or society. To illustrate this subject i am going to examine three documents, first an extract from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925, my second document will be a poem, Juke box love song by Langston Hughes, published in 1926 and for the third one i choose a painting, Into bondage by Aaron Douglas made in 1936.

In my opinion, these three documents are linked by the Jazz age and the will to reveal things. So we can ask ourselves : How do these artists reveal society through their work ?

The Great Gatsby is set in New York, during the prohibition era. Through his story and his characters, Fitzgerald capture this time of excess, with a lot of money, of class and power. And Gatsby’s parties are typical of this period, he has the illusion to live the American dream.

Gatsby devotes his life to accumulating riches.

The description of these parties written by Fitzgerald makes it clear of how he feels about the upper class : admiration, jealousy…

It's an era that Fitzgerald dubbed “the Jazz Age” due to the importance of music. For him, the Jazz Age was a beautiful time with creativity and exuberance but also there was a form of corruption in the relations between people because of superficiality. This story is a reflection of his own life.

I will now move to the second document, it’s a poem called Juke Box Love Song written in 1926 by the American poet Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance is a movement that marks a major turning point in Black American literature, which is gaining recognition and wider distribution outside of the Black American elite.

In this poem, Hughes takes the sounds and sides of Harlem and makes of them the setting for a dance with a girl. He makes Harlem the setting for a musical piece, where taxis, lights, etc. are used as music and atmosphere, as if he was creating urban music with the unconscious collaboration of Harlem's people.

The third document is a painting made in 1936 by Aaron Douglas, he was also a well-known artist in the Harlem movement. In his drawing, we can clearly see cold but bright colors and realistic forms.

In it, the artist describes the liberation of people, chained by slavery, these people saw a flourishing world and the light of freedom and rose up there to never be slaves again. I think the thing to remember from this drawing is that you should never give up your dreams and always move forward for improving the world and his society.

To conclude, I think that these three authors describe their societies and sometimes its failings each in their own way, the first by making a fiction, the second by making something poetic out of it and the third by expressing himself through a drawing.

Fitzgerald criticizes the society of the 1920s while Hughes in his poem describes society on the side of Harlem and its urban music. As for Douglas, through his drawing, he tells us about the liberation of people and the opening to a new society without chains.

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