Historical Background
Between 1914 and 1945, the United States engaged in two world wars and emerged as a modern nation and a major world power. American involvement in World War I was brief (1917–19) and left many yearning for the isolation of previous years.
A generation of American expatriates enjoyed European life thanks to a newly favorable currency exchange rate. African American soldiers and officers returned from WWI determined to see their rights in the army continue at home. And those workers who could not travel were inspired by the international Communist movement to agitate for fairer pay and conditions. After the stock market crashed in 1929 and the United States sank into the Great Depression, social tensions threatened the country’s stability for a decade, until Americans were united by World War II.
A generation of American expatriates enjoyed European life thanks to a newly favorable currency exchange rate. African American soldiers and officers returned from WWI determined to see their rights in the army continue at home. And those workers who could not travel were inspired by the international Communist movement to agitate for fairer pay and conditions. After the stock market crashed in 1929 and the United States sank into the Great Depression, social tensions threatened the country’s stability for a decade, until Americans were united by World War II.
What is Modernism?
Modernism can be referred as the rise of the bold new experimental styles and forms in the arts, architecture, and technology. This has resulted to the loss of faith in traditional values and beliefs, including the American Dream.
The American Dream
Alongside these social changes, rapid advances in science and technology contributed to the modernization of America, resulting in the birth of a mass popular culture and the sundering of empirical science from the artistic search for meaning. The increased presence of new inventions like electric lighting and appliances, telephones, phonograph record players, motion pictures, and the radio combined to make person-to-person communication quicker and easier and to standardize American tastes in fashions and ideas.
The automobile changed America more than any other invention by allowing new industries and jobs dependent on transportation, by causing a network of new roads and highways to spring up, and by dictating the birth and death of cities, suburbs, and towns based on proximity to those arteries. But while these technologies were breakthroughs in the ease and productivity of everyday life, the science underlying them seemed increasingly difficult and contrary to common sense.
The automobile changed America more than any other invention by allowing new industries and jobs dependent on transportation, by causing a network of new roads and highways to spring up, and by dictating the birth and death of cities, suburbs, and towns based on proximity to those arteries. But while these technologies were breakthroughs in the ease and productivity of everyday life, the science underlying them seemed increasingly difficult and contrary to common sense.
After the WWI begins in Europe, Cultural changes have been starting in the America during the year span of 1914-1920. During this time, women gained their suffrage rights.
National Prohibition Act of 1919
The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, was adopted by Congress in 1919 to implement the recently ratified Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. For nearly a century, temperance crusaders had attempted to impose abstinence from alcohol on American society, and the Volstead Act became the fullest expression of their effort. The act became as well known as the constitutional amendment on which it rested. In April 1933 Congress relaxed the terms of the Volstead Act, and for many Americans this represented the end of National Prohibition even before states completed the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment eight months later.
The Eighteenth Amendment approved by Congress in December 1917 and eventually ratified by well over three-fourths of the states declared a national ban on the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes to take effect one year after the amendment's ratification. A definition of intoxicating beverages as well as arrangements for enforcing their prohibition remained for Congress to establish. Because of the amendment's rapid ratification, completed January 16, 1919, federal legislators had reason to believe that the American public would welcome strong provisions for enforcement of Prohibition.[1]
Because of the Prohibitions Act of 1919, it leads to bootlegging and ushers in the Jazz Age.
[1] Kyvig, D. E., National Prohibitions Act of 1919, retrieved 3 March 2013
from http://www.enotes.com/national-prohibition-act-1919-reference/national-prohibition-act-1919
The Eighteenth Amendment approved by Congress in December 1917 and eventually ratified by well over three-fourths of the states declared a national ban on the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes to take effect one year after the amendment's ratification. A definition of intoxicating beverages as well as arrangements for enforcing their prohibition remained for Congress to establish. Because of the amendment's rapid ratification, completed January 16, 1919, federal legislators had reason to believe that the American public would welcome strong provisions for enforcement of Prohibition.[1]
Because of the Prohibitions Act of 1919, it leads to bootlegging and ushers in the Jazz Age.
[1] Kyvig, D. E., National Prohibitions Act of 1919, retrieved 3 March 2013
from http://www.enotes.com/national-prohibition-act-1919-reference/national-prohibition-act-1919
The Jazz Age
The Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age, can be described as the era of "flaming youth," in which young adults appreciated having a good time and challenged society. Conventions that had been passed from generation to generation were suddenly unpopular, and a new way of life, set with rapid changes, formed. Relationships between the sexes grew relaxed, and instead of "calling on someone," a person "picked up his date."
Motion pictures became popular during this era. Thirteen thousand movie houses existed in the United States by 1912.
Radio was extremely popular, since it reached more people than movies did. In 1926, the National Broadcasting Company was created.
Sports thrived during this time, at least partly because radio brought the games to the homes of millions of people. This era witnessed many of the great sports players, including all-around athlete Jim Thorpe, football player Harold "Red" Grange, baseball star Babe Ruth, golfer and runner Babe Zaharias, and many others.
The Twenties can also be described as the Age of the Consumer. Advertisement, in the areas of print and radio, reached a new level, as producers tried to make their goods look more attractive than their competitors'. The automobile had an important impact on America's economy during the Twenties. By 1929, an average American family owned one car.
The Twenties were definitely an era of prosperity, but this high could not last forever. On October 29, 1929 the Stock Market crashed, and the value of stocks plummeted.
Motion pictures became popular during this era. Thirteen thousand movie houses existed in the United States by 1912.
Radio was extremely popular, since it reached more people than movies did. In 1926, the National Broadcasting Company was created.
Sports thrived during this time, at least partly because radio brought the games to the homes of millions of people. This era witnessed many of the great sports players, including all-around athlete Jim Thorpe, football player Harold "Red" Grange, baseball star Babe Ruth, golfer and runner Babe Zaharias, and many others.
The Twenties can also be described as the Age of the Consumer. Advertisement, in the areas of print and radio, reached a new level, as producers tried to make their goods look more attractive than their competitors'. The automobile had an important impact on America's economy during the Twenties. By 1929, an average American family owned one car.
The Twenties were definitely an era of prosperity, but this high could not last forever. On October 29, 1929 the Stock Market crashed, and the value of stocks plummeted.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression, the decade that followed the Jazz Age, was one of turmoil and poverty. Jobless, penniless, starved people struggled through this decade with hopes that the end of the depression was just around the corner.
It was not until President Roosevelt's New Deal came into effect that the light indicating the end of the darkness began to shine for many people. Under the New Deal, the U.S. government set up many programs and agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Most people labeled the New Deal a success, since considerable recovery took place, and the Roosevelt administration had a sense of optimism. The Second New Deal set up the Social Security Act of August 1935 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). After a few years the New Deal began to wind down and lose its impact on the economy.
It was not until President Roosevelt's New Deal came into effect that the light indicating the end of the darkness began to shine for many people. Under the New Deal, the U.S. government set up many programs and agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Most people labeled the New Deal a success, since considerable recovery took place, and the Roosevelt administration had a sense of optimism. The Second New Deal set up the Social Security Act of August 1935 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). After a few years the New Deal began to wind down and lose its impact on the economy.
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl period that occurred during the drought years of the 1930s represents a remarkable era in the settlement history of the West. From a climatic perspective, the 1930s drought is still considered to be the most severe on record for many parts of the Great Plains. The dry weather began in the early 1930s and persisted through the early 1940s for some areas, with the most intense drought years occurring in 1934 and 1936.
This event also coincided with a severe economic depression, both in the United States and worldwide, that only served to exacerbate the impacts of drought. From an environmental perspective, the combination of drought, economic depression, and poor or inappropriate farming practices in the Great Plains led to one of the most serious environmental catastrophes the United States has ever experienced.
This event also coincided with a severe economic depression, both in the United States and worldwide, that only served to exacerbate the impacts of drought. From an environmental perspective, the combination of drought, economic depression, and poor or inappropriate farming practices in the Great Plains led to one of the most serious environmental catastrophes the United States has ever experienced.
World War II
The United States played a role in World War II even before 1941, helping England and France by shipping supplies, but not until the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7 did America officially enter the war.
World War II had major effects on the economy, resulting in factory conversion to wartime products and the rationing of meat, sugar, shoes, and other items. Social changes included increased marriage rates. Many young couples felt the need to establish formal bonds before the men went to risk their lives in the war. The number of women in the work force also increased during this time. By 1944, 6.5 million additional women began working outside the home. World War II brought to life the atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
This event marked the beginning of the nuclear weapons race, which remains a threat today. The year 1945 brought an end to the war, but the effects of it--the millions of lives lost, the new threat of Communism, and the potential of nuclear attack--would remain a factor in American society and politics for years to come.
World War II had major effects on the economy, resulting in factory conversion to wartime products and the rationing of meat, sugar, shoes, and other items. Social changes included increased marriage rates. Many young couples felt the need to establish formal bonds before the men went to risk their lives in the war. The number of women in the work force also increased during this time. By 1944, 6.5 million additional women began working outside the home. World War II brought to life the atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
This event marked the beginning of the nuclear weapons race, which remains a threat today. The year 1945 brought an end to the war, but the effects of it--the millions of lives lost, the new threat of Communism, and the potential of nuclear attack--would remain a factor in American society and politics for years to come.
Modern Poetry: The Harlem Renaissance
· Centered in Harlem, New York during the 1920s
· Flowering of African American art, music and literature
· The birth of Jazz music
· Poets: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay
Experiments with form
· The image = central to poetry
– T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock”
– Ezra Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro”
– William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
· Poets choose everyday words over flowery, sentimental language.
– Modernist poetry and prose tended to be short, precise, subjective, and suggestive rather than exhaustively detailed with exterior descriptions, to include fragments and disjointed perspectives rather than cohesive or coherent patterns, to favor questions over pat explanations, and to reject artificial literary order and assurances of objective truth that they did not see in the real world.
– Fragmentation and re-combination
– e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot
Fiction
· Flawed heroes: honorable yet flawed, courageous yet disillusioned
– Hemingway’s Nick Adams
– Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway
· Stream of consciousness narration
– Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
American Drama
– Broadway became the center of American theatrical activity in the late nineteenth century, had begun premiering shows and plays in New York City and then sending them to tour the rest of the United States.
– Susan Glaspell and others formed the Provincetown Players in 1915 to premier small, experimental works. Smaller houses like Glaspell’s often showed changes before Broadway, as O’Neill with elements of German Expressionism, Maxwell Anderson with blank verse, George Kaufman with jokey domestic farces, and Rogers and Hammerstein with musical comedies.
– Many of these experiments incorporated earlier vaudevillian and burlesque songs and dances, as well as new formal and stylistic conventions. As many modernists realized the potential of plays to speak to a larger audience, drama moved into the literary mainstream.
Traditional Forms
· Robert Frost writes in traditional rhyme and meter against the modernist trend
· American Modernists break new ground but keep some traditional ideas
– The ideal of self-reliance
Regardless of their experiments with literary form, writers continue to ask fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
· Centered in Harlem, New York during the 1920s
· Flowering of African American art, music and literature
· The birth of Jazz music
· Poets: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay
Experiments with form
· The image = central to poetry
– T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock”
– Ezra Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro”
– William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
· Poets choose everyday words over flowery, sentimental language.
– Modernist poetry and prose tended to be short, precise, subjective, and suggestive rather than exhaustively detailed with exterior descriptions, to include fragments and disjointed perspectives rather than cohesive or coherent patterns, to favor questions over pat explanations, and to reject artificial literary order and assurances of objective truth that they did not see in the real world.
– Fragmentation and re-combination
– e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot
Fiction
· Flawed heroes: honorable yet flawed, courageous yet disillusioned
– Hemingway’s Nick Adams
– Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway
· Stream of consciousness narration
– Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
American Drama
– Broadway became the center of American theatrical activity in the late nineteenth century, had begun premiering shows and plays in New York City and then sending them to tour the rest of the United States.
– Susan Glaspell and others formed the Provincetown Players in 1915 to premier small, experimental works. Smaller houses like Glaspell’s often showed changes before Broadway, as O’Neill with elements of German Expressionism, Maxwell Anderson with blank verse, George Kaufman with jokey domestic farces, and Rogers and Hammerstein with musical comedies.
– Many of these experiments incorporated earlier vaudevillian and burlesque songs and dances, as well as new formal and stylistic conventions. As many modernists realized the potential of plays to speak to a larger audience, drama moved into the literary mainstream.
Traditional Forms
· Robert Frost writes in traditional rhyme and meter against the modernist trend
· American Modernists break new ground but keep some traditional ideas
– The ideal of self-reliance
Regardless of their experiments with literary form, writers continue to ask fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
1. Destruction
Modernist novels did not treat lightly topics about social woes, war and poverty. John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" frankly depicts families plagued by economic hardship and strife, contradicting idyllic depictions of American life represented elsewhere in literature. Modernist novels also reflect a frank awareness of societal ills and of man's capacity for cruelty. Ernest Hemingway's anti-heroic war tales depicted the bloodiness of the battlefields, as he dealt frankly with the horrors of war. Faulkner, particularly in his most famous novel, "The Sound and the Fury," also shows how incomprehensibly cruel man can be, especially with regard to racial and class differences.
- The modernist American literature produced during the time reflects such themes of destruction and chaos. But chaos and destruction are embraced, as they signal a collapse of Western civilization's classical traditions. Literary modernists celebrated the collapse of conventional forms. Modernist novels destroy conventions by reversing traditional norms, such as gender and racial roles, notable in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," for example. They also destroy conventional forms of language by deliberately breaking rules of syntax and structure. William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury," for instance, boldly rejects the rules of language, as Faulkner invents new words and adopts a first-person narrative method, interior monologue.
- Fragmentation in modernist literature is thematic, as well as formal. Plot, characters, theme, images, and narrative form itself are broken. Take, for instance, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," which depicts a modern waste land of crumbled cities. The poem itself is fragmented, consisting of broken stanzas and sentences that resemble the cultural debris and detritus through which the speaker (modern man) wades. William Faulkner's novels, such as "The Sound and the Fury" are also fragmented in form, consisting of disjointed and nonlinear narratives. Modernist literature embraces fragmentation as a literary form, since it reinforces the fragmentation of reality and contradicts Hegelian notions of totality and wholeness.
- Modernist literature represents the paradox of modernity through themes of cycle and rejuvenation. Eliot's speaker in "The Waste Land" famously declares "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" (line 430). The speaker must reconstruct meaning by reassembling the pieces of history. Importantly, there is rebirth and rejuvenation in ruin, and modernist literature celebrates the endless cycle of destruction, as it ever gives rise to new forms and creations.
- Modernist literature is also marked by themes of loss and exile. Modernism rejected conventional truths and figures of authority, and modernists moved away from religion. In modernist literature, man is assured that his own sense of morality trumps. But individualism results in feelings of isolation and loss. Themes of loss, isolation and exile from society are particularly apparent in Ernest Hemingway's novels, the protagonists of which adopt rather nihilistic outlooks of the world because they have become so disenfranchised from the human community.
- Another element of modernist literature is the prevalent use of personal pronouns. Authority becomes a matter of perspective. There is no longer an anonymous, omniscient third-person narrator, as there is no universal truth, according to the modernists. In fact, many modernist novels (Faulkner's, for instance) feature multiple narrators, as many modernist poems ("The Waste Land", for instance) feature multiple speakers. The conflicting perspectives of various narrators and speakers reflect the multiplicities of truth and the diversities of reality that modernism celebrates.
Modernist novels did not treat lightly topics about social woes, war and poverty. John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" frankly depicts families plagued by economic hardship and strife, contradicting idyllic depictions of American life represented elsewhere in literature. Modernist novels also reflect a frank awareness of societal ills and of man's capacity for cruelty. Ernest Hemingway's anti-heroic war tales depicted the bloodiness of the battlefields, as he dealt frankly with the horrors of war. Faulkner, particularly in his most famous novel, "The Sound and the Fury," also shows how incomprehensibly cruel man can be, especially with regard to racial and class differences.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald, (1896-1940), was the leading writer of America's Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, and one of its glittering heroes. The chief quality of Fitzgerald's talent was his ability to be both a leading participant in the high life he described, and a detached observer of it. Few readers saw the serious side of Fitzgerald, and he was not generally recognized as a gifted writer during his lifetime. While he lived, most readers considered his stories a chronicle and even a celebration of moral decline. But later readers realized that Fitzgerald's works have a deeper moral theme.
John Steinback
John Steinbeck, (1902-1968), an American author, won the 1962 Nobel Prize in literature. Steinbeck's best-known fiction sympathetically explores the struggles of poor people. His most famous novel, THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939), won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize. The novel tells the story of the Joads, a poor Oklahoma farming family, who migrate to California in search of a better life during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Steinbeck effectively demonstrated how the struggles of one family mirrored the hardship of the entire nation. Through the inspiration of the labor organizer Jim Casy, the Joads learn that the poor must work together in order to survive
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway, (1899-1961), was one of the most famous and influential American writers of the 1900s. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1952).
William Faulkner
William Faulkner, (1897-1962), ranks among the leading authors in American literature. He gained fame for his novels about the fictional "Yoknapatawpha County" and its county seat of Jefferson. Faulkner patterned the county after the area around his hometown, Oxford, Miss. He explored the county's geography, history, economy, and social and moral life. Faulkner received the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature. He won Pulitzer Prizes in 1955 for A FABLE.
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