May Day

May Day - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald "Tales of the Jazz Age" (1922).  Published as a novelette in The Smart Set in July, 1920, "May Day" relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year, during the "general hysteria" which inaugurated the Jazz Age. The story uses the May Day Riots of 1919 as historical backdrop. During these events, as the lower-class is fighting for certain causes, a group of privileged Yale alumni meet for a dance. During the story a Jewish man is beat up by a crowd as he expounds socialist rhetoric. Fitzgerald, however, was not an anti-semite, and his characterizing of the Jewish man can be seen as a commentary of the brutality of the crowd contrasted with the man's wit and fervor.