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Essay / The Free Life in Fitzgerald's Echoes of the Jazz Age
Fitzgerald does not associate the Jazz Age with jazz music, but he associates it with free men and women. Fitzgerald believes that the Jazz Age was a time of not worrying and living life to the fullest. He says “therefore eat, drink, drink and be glad, for tomorrow we will die” (16). This shows that people in the Jazz Age didn't care what happened tomorrow as long as they lived the present fully. When he says “something had to be done with all the nervous energy stored up and unspent during the war” (13), he shows why people were so free. Fitzgerald said people didn't know if there would be another war or when they would die, so they had to live their lives today and not wait for tomorrow. He says people will do everything they can to make sure they have as much fun as possible while they're still on earth. It was not just a lifestyle but a social trend in the 1920s. Girls changed how they felt about their husbands and their lives. Fitzgerald says that “a whole world of girls yearned for the young Englishman; old America...