Harlem+Renaissance

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/480361/Harlem_Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of rapid growth for the African-American community in America. Its roots lie in the events following the Civil War and Reconstruction when the “freedmen” were able to learn and develop socially and economically. From 1916 to 1930, the country experienced a “Great Migration” in which millions of African-Americans moved from the impoverished south to the north. With the onset of World War I, employment was plentiful and a Negro middle class began to develop in the Harlem section of New York. The Harlem Renaissance began with the literary works of Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Jessie Fauset. McKay’s collection of poems entitled //Harlem Shadows// (1922) was one of the first works by a Black writer to be published in the mainstream. The country soon turned its eyes towards New York as musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong lead the Jazz Age and poets such as Langston Hughes depicted life in the ghettoes. Beyond the arts, Marcus Garvey shocked the country with his back-to-Africa philosophy. The common theme in this whole movement was simply a once enslaved race developing a culture of its own. This collision of new ideas is easily represented by the pile of words in a wordle. The font resembles graffiti, a form of expression that carries a sense of poverty as well as beauty. Although the 1920s was a revolutionary decade, these outlets of expression were silenced with the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

Like the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Fitzgerald had a tone of despair as he went through times of economic difficulties between a lack of bit titles and his wife’s medical bills. While __The Great Gatsby__ focuses on the life of a poor white boy who went from rags to riches, it does touch, at points, the dramatic change that is occurring in the background. On page 17, Tom states that “it’s up to the dominant race watch out or these other races will have control of things.” However, the story did take place in a time of radical changes. Tom, and all of the others who were currently wealthy, resisted change because it threatened his comfortable way of life. However, this border-line paranoia is kept out of sight until the chaos at the Plaza Hotel. As Tom and Gatsby fight over Daisy’s love, Tom claims that “family life and family institutions” were being compromised and compared it to an “intermarriage between black and white” (Fitzgerald 137). Though Gatsby’s lavish parties certainly embodies the “American Dream,” Fitzgerald used these two instances to subtly remind the readers that the white population was not the only ones who were restlessly moving around the social life of America.

Source: "Harlem Renaissance - MSN Encarta." __MSN Encarta : Online Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas, and Homework__. 27 Jan. 2009 .