Modernism

Modernism is an international literary and cultural movement which flourished in the first
decades of the 20th century. The term modernism can be applied both to the content and
to the form of a work, or to either in isolation. It reflects a sense of cultural crisis which
was both exciting and unsettling, as it opened up a whole new range of human
possibilities while questioning or interrogating any previously accepted means of
grounding and evaluating new ideas. Modernism is marked by experimentation,
particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute.
The period between the two world wars - the United States’ traumatic “coming of age,”
(although U.S. direct involvement was relatively brief and there were e fewer casualties).
Shocked and permanently changed, Americans returned to their homeland but could
never regain their innocence. Nor could soldiers from rural America easily return to their
roots. After experiencing the world, many now yearned for a modern, urban life.
New farm machines such as planters, harvesters, and binders had drastically reduced the
demand for farm jobs; yet despite their increased productivity, farmers were poor. Crop
prices, like urban workers’ wages, depended on unrestrained market forces heavily
influenced by business interests; government subsidies for farmers and effective workers’
unions had not yet become established.
In the postwar “Big Boom,” business flourished, and the successful prospered
beyond their wildest dreams. For the first time, many Americans enrolled in higher
education — in the 1920s college enrollment doubled. The middle-class prospered;
Americans began to enjoy the world’s highest national average income in this era, and
many people purchased the ultimate status symbol — an automobile. The status of
women changed – they were allowed to vote in 1920. Americans of the “Roaring
Twenties” fell in love with other modern entertainments (dancing, automobile touring,
movie-going and the radio). Although Prohibition — a nationwide ban on the production,
transport, and sale of alcohol instituted through the 18th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution — began in 1919, underground “speak-easies” and nightclubs proliferated,
featuring jazz music, cocktails, and daring modes of dress and dance.
The world depression of the 1930s affected most of the population of the United
States. Workers lost their jobs, and factories shut down; businesses and banks failed;
farmers, unable to harvest, transport, or sell their crops, could not pay their debts and lost
their farms (Midwestern droughts). At the peak of the Depression, one-third of all
Americans were out of work; many saw the Depression as a punishment for sins of
excessive materialism and loose living. While the United States had preached a gospel of
business in the 1920s; in the 1930s, many Americans supported a more active role for
government in the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (federal
money created jobs in public works, conservation, and rural electrification).

Modernism in American Literature

Western young people were rebelling, angry and disillusioned with the savage war, the
older generation they held responsible, and difficult postwar economic conditions.
Intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism
(like the earlier Darwinian theory of evolution), implied a “godless” world view and
contributed to the breakdown of traditional values (Americans living abroad, especially in
Europe, absorbed these views and took them back to the United States where they took
root).
Despite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleled material prosperity, young
Americans of the 1920s were “the lost generation” (Gertrude Stein)”: without a stable,
traditional structure of values, the individual lost a sense of identity. The secure,
supportive family life; the familiar, settled community; the natural and eternal rhythms of
nature that guide the planting and harvesting on a farm; the sustaining sense of
patriotism; moral values inculcated by religious beliefs and observations — all seemed
undermined by World War I and its aftermath. Numerous novels, notably Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920), evoke the
extravagance and disillusionment of the lost generation.
Literary Modernism (1915-1945) was a response to a “sense of social breakdown”
(reaction to WWI); the world was perceived as “fragmented” (pattern of construction out
of fragments, life was fragmented; the point of view was remote/detached from the
subject (ironic but not unfeeling); the poetry was very allusive, and many authors/artists
wondered about the role of literature, poetry, art, in a world falling apart).

Some characteristics found in literary works:

Alienation from society and loneliness
Procrastination/An inability to act
Agonized recollection of the past
Fear of death and the appearance of death
Inability to feel or express love
Man creating his own myths within his mind to fall back upon

Formal features of narrative:

Experimental nature
Lack of traditional chronological narrative (discontinuous narrative)
Break from traditional forms (fragmentation)
Moving from one level of the narrative to another
A number of different narrators (multiple narrative points of view)
Self-reflexive about the act of writing and the nature of literature (meta-narrative)
Use of interior monologue technique
Use of the stream of consciousness technique
Focus on a character’s consciousness and subconscious
 Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)

Anderson strongly influenced American writing between World Wars I and II,
particularly the technique of the short story (based on everyday speech and derived from
the experimental writing of Gertrude Stein).
One of seven children of a day laborer, Anderson attended school intermittently as
a youth in Clyde, Ohio, and worked as a newsboy, house painter, farmhand, and racetrack
helper. He worked as an advertising writer in Chicago until 1906, then moved back to
Ohio to try his hand at business, and finally returned to Chicago. There he was
encouraged to write by the members of the Chicago literary movement/renaissance, such
as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Floyd Dell, and he published experimental verse and
short fiction in various literary magazines.
Winesburg, Ohio (1919) was his first mature book and made his reputation as an author.
Anderson also wrote other novels, such as Many Marriages (1923), which stresses the
need for sexual fulfillment; Dark Laughter (1925), which values the “primitive” over the
civilized; and Beyond Desire (1932), a novel of Southern textile mill labor struggles. His
best work is generally thought to be in his short stories, collected in Winesburg, Ohio
(1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and Death in the
Woods (1933).
Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg, Ohio (1919) was a volume of stories innovative in two important ways: the
individual stories break with the tradition of tightly plotted, linear stories in order to tell
and retell a significant moment until all its meaning is revealed, and the fact that it is a
story cycle, a grouping of stories which, in Anderson’s own words, “belong together.”
The individual stories have their own unity and beauty, but the cycle itself acquires an
artistic integrity because of the relationship of all of the stories to each other.
Its twenty-four sections are interconnected accounts that focus on various inhabitants of
Winesburg, a Midwestern town, around the turn of the century. The book opens with a
framing device: the prologue-like section entitled "The Book of the Grotesque," in which
a nameless old writer has a bedtime vision of human beings who pursue various "truths"
to so great an extent that they become "grotesque." These hallucinations prefigure the
lives of the inhabitants of Winesburg. The story cycle depicts the ways in which the souls
of the Winesburgers are all somehow deformed (by alienation and loneliness). The stories
are about loneliness, fragmentation, and the search for beauty and wholeness. Indeed, the
unhappiness of married life is a persistent theme in the book. Again and again, characters
reach out to other people, hoping to quell their loneliness through love or companionship,
and again and again, they are disappointed.
The characteristics of the masterpieces of Anderson's story-telling art include direct
authorial address to the reader; a circular, not linear, narrative structure; plot subordinated
to characterization; simple style and vocabulary; and images drawn from elemental
aspects of nature.
Themes in Winesburg, Ohio
• Life in Death
Most of the figures share the similar history of a failed passion in life, of some kind or
another. Many are lonely introverts who struggle with a burning fire which still smolders
inside of them. The moments described by the short stories are usually the moments when
the passion tries to resurface but no longer has the strength. The stories are brief glimpses
of people failing.
• The Pastoral
The narrator often employs a theme of mock sentimentality toward the old, colloquial
farmland that Winesburg represents as small town. More largely, it provides a background
for examining the break down of the archetypal patterns of human existence: sacrifice,
initiation, and rebirth.
• Rebellion against Values dominating American Culture
The degeneration of communal bonds between people - familial, friendship, ritual modes
of religion - was a common theme first traced by Anderson and then by many of the next
generation. It originated after World War I because of the disillusionment toward the
modern society which was materialistic and business- or industry-oriented. The isolated
human of modernity was unfit for the love of men or community.
• Winesburg as a Microcosm of the Universal
The figures of Winesburg were forced to handle issues and events which people
universally underwent. Many common threads between man and between the self in
relation to the world exist which the grotesque figures deal with in a manner to which any
reader could relate. Winesburg then becomes Any Town, USA, and the characters
symbolize flaws and struggles in the universal human experience.
 Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

Lewis was an American novelist and social critic who punctured American complacency
with his broadly drawn, widely popular satirical novels. He won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1930, the first given to an American.
Lewis graduated from Yale University (1907) and was for a time a reporter and also
worked as an editor for several publishers. His first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn (1914),
attracted favorable criticism but few readers. At the same time he was writing with ever-
increasing success for various magazines. The publication of Main Street in 1920 made
his literary reputation. Main Street is seen through the eyes of Carol Kennicott, an
Eastern girl married to a Midwestern doctor who settles in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota
(modeled on Lewis’ hometown of Sauk Centre). The power of the book derives from
Lewis’ careful rendering of local speech, customs, and social amenities. The satire is
double-edged—directed against both the townspeople and the superficial intellectualism
that despises them. In the years following its publication, Main Street became not just a
novel but the textbook on American provincialism.
In 1922 Lewis published Babbitt; followed by Arrowsmith (1925), a satiric study of the
medical profession, Elmer Gantry (1927), and Dodsworth (1929), concerning the
experiences of a retired big businessman and his wife on a European tour (Lewis
contrasted American and European values and the very different temperaments of the
man and his wife).
Lewis’ later books include It Can’t Happen Here (1935) and Kingsblood Royal (1947).

Themes in Main Street

• The Reality of Small-Town America
Lewis attacks the narrow-mindedness, mediocrity, and conformity of small-town America
in the early twentieth century (rather shocking for his 1920s audience because before this
novel, many Americans still viewed the small town idealistically, as the last bastion of
good people and traditional American morals and values in the midst of a changing and
somewhat frightening modern world). Lewis exposes this myth of the goodness of small
town-life as a falsehood; he portrays the narrowness of small-town life in its rigid
demand for conformity, its interest only in material success, and its lack of intellectual
concern; he satirizes many small-town archetypes and institutions, and exposes the
hypocrisy he sees in small-town America.
• The Individual vs. the Community
The main conflict of the novel stems from Carol's desire to change the town in the face of
the town's resistance to such change, a conflict that creates an atmosphere of hostility and
suspicion. Although Carol is unable to bring about any radical changes to Gopher Prairie,
she does partly triumph as she at least puts up a fight. She does not mindlessly conform to
Gopher Prairie's standards and tries to maintain a sense of individuality (she also reflects
the position of the modern "emancipated woman.“
• Disillusionment
Carol experiences disillusionment both in her marriage and in her interactions with the
community of Gopher Prairie. (Chapter 3, when Carol tours Gopher Prairie for the first
time).
• The Reality of Marriage
The novel is both a realistic depiction of life in a modern American small town (a
microcosm for America as a whole), and a realistic depiction of a modern marriage (carol
and Kennicott are presented as representative of the American husband and wife). While
Carol represents change, Kennicott embodies Gopher Prairie's resistance to change in his
preference for maintaining the status quo.
Three major characteristics define Lewis's work: detail, satire, and realism. Lewis
remarkably portrays ordinary life, ordinary characters, and ordinary speech (his ability to
meticulously reproduce different dialects and speech). He used vivid detail to create
scenes of the American middle class. His social satire was critical of American life and
certain types of Americans and institutions which he felt harmed Americans and
prevented the country from living up to its democratic ideals.

Lewis's novels fit under the umbrella of American social fiction, fiction whose
primary purpose is to represent contemporary American society, primarily in a realist
style with realistic language. Lewis artfully described American culture and life of the
time, helping Americans see their own lives with their many flaws. In the wake of World
War I, amidst the culture of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression, Lewis revealed to
Americans their lives at a time when they were ready to listen. Lewis's representation of
the middle class and its discontent was presented through satire and social
criticism. Main Street is the epitome of the "Revolt from the Village" novel and the
logical conclusion to a literary trend started by such writers as Edgar Lee Masters and
Sherwood Anderson. Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry serve as critiques of
different aspects of American society such as consumerism and conformity, the medical
profession, and organized religion. It Can't Happen Here is a warning against the growth
of fascism in the US.
 The Roaring Twenties

F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term "Jazz Age" to describe the decade of decadence and
prosperity that America enjoyed in the 1920s, which was also known as the Roaring
Twenties. After World War I ended in 1918, the United States and much of the rest of the
world experienced an enormous economic expansion. The surging economy turned the
1920s into a time of easy money, hard drinking (despite the Prohibition amendment to the
Constitution), and lavish parties. Though the 1920s were a time of great optimism,
Fitzgerald portrays the much bleaker side of the revelry by focusing on its indulgence,
hypocrisy, shallow recklessness, and its perilous—even fatal—consequences.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

He was famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s), his most
brilliant novel being The Great Gatsby (1925).
Fitzgerald was the only son of an unsuccessful, aristocratic father and an energetic,
provincial mother. Half the time he thought of himself as the heir of his father’s tradition,
which included the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Francis Scott Key, after whom
he was named, and half the time as “straight 1850 potato-famine Irish.” As a result he had
typically ambivalent American feelings about American life, which seemed to him at
once vulgar and dazzlingly promising. He also had an intensely romantic imagination,
what he once called “a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,” and he charged into
experience determined to realize those promises. He studied at Princeton University, but
left in order to join the army. In 1920, he published This Side of Paradise and married
Zelda Sayre.
This Side of Paradise (1920) marked the beginning of Fitzgerald's career as a
novelist and was built largely around experiences and observations made while at
Princeton. He became famous, and this fame opened to him magazines of literary
prestige, and high-paying popular ones. This sudden prosperity made it possible for him
and Zelda to play the roles they were so beautifully equipped for. Though they loved
these roles, they were frightened by them, too, as the ending of Fitzgerald’s second
novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), shows. The Beautiful and Damned describes a
handsome young man and his beautiful wife, who gradually degenerate into a shopworn
middle age while they wait for the young man to inherit a large fortune. Ironically, they
finally get it, when there is nothing of them left worth preserving.
To escape the life that they feared might bring them to this end, the Fitzgeralds
moved in 1924 to the Riviera, where they found themselves a part of a group of American
expatriates. Shortly after their arrival in France, Fitzgerald completed his most brilliant
novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). All of his divided nature is in this novel, the naive
Midwesterner afire with the possibilities of the “American Dream” in its hero, Jay
Gatsby, and the compassionate Yale gentleman in its narrator, Nick Carraway.
Fitzgerald worked on his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night (1934), sporadically
for almost ten years after the publication of The Great Gatsby. The novel depicts the
society on the Riviera that he and Zelda frequented in the 1920s. At the time of his death
in 1940, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon (1941), a novel based upon his
experiences in Hollywood. About half the novel was completed at the time of his death
and, according to some literary critics, The Last Tycoon quite likely could have been his
greatest critical success, had it been completed.
Aside from his novels, Fitzgerald amassed a considerable collection of short
stories, composing over 150. Beginning in 1919, Fitzgerald's works were frequently
published in national publications, and he also published three collections of short stories
during his lifetime: Flappers and Philosophers (1920), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), All
the Sad Young Men (1926). In addition to his novels and short stories, at three distinct
points in his career Fitzgerald earned his living as a screenwriter in Hollywood (in 1927,
1931, and 1937). Fitzgerald stayed in Hollywood, and between 1939 and 1940, he
freelanced with most of the major studios while writing his final novel.
At the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald had slipped into relative obscurity.
However, after World War II, interest in his work began to grow. By the 1960s, he was
considered one of the great twentieth century American authors. Together with Zelda, his
personal life has become a part of the American landscape, linked forever with the
youthful exuberance of the 1920s. Professionally, his works provide a valuable voice for
exploring themes of ambition, justice, equity, and the American dream — themes that are
still current — affording him with a well-deserved place in the American literary canon.

Themes in The Great Gatsby

• The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. However,
although all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922
and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New
York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in
particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity
and material excess.
The American Dream—that hard work can lead one from rags to riches—has been a core
facet of American identity since its inception. Settlers came west to America from Europe
seeking wealth and freedom. The pioneers headed west for the same reason. The Great
Gatsby shows the tide turning east, as hordes flock to New York City seeking stock
market fortunes. The Great Gatsby portrays this shift as a symbol of the American
Dream's corruption. It's no longer a vision of building a life; it's just about getting rich.
Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in
its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance
that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the
opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the
corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure
surpassed more noble goals.
As Fitzgerald saw it, the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism,
and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money
and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The
main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is
ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make
enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her
lifestyle.
When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought
the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced
made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy,
empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to
a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as
people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social
background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families
with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators.
Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social
trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound
cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers
and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for
wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s
symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-
made rich. Meyer Wolfsheim’s and Gatsby’s fortunes symbolize the rise of organized
crime and bootlegging.
Gatsby symbolizes both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted Dream. He
sees wealth as the solution to his problems, pursues money via shady schemes, and
reinvents himself so much that he becomes hollow, disconnected from his past. Yet
Gatsby's corrupt dream of wealth is motivated by an incorruptible love for Daisy.
Gatsby's failure does not prove the folly of the American Dream—rather it proves the
folly of short-cutting that dream by allowing corruption and materialism to prevail over
hard work, integrity, and real love. And the dream of love that remains at Gatsby's core
condemns nearly every other character in the novel, all of whom are empty beyond just
their lust for money.
• Class (Old Money, New Money, No Money)
The Great Gatsby portrays three different social classes: "old money" (Tom and Daisy
Buchanan); "new money" (Gatsby); and a class that might be called "no money"
(George and Myrtle Wilson). "Old money" families have fortunes dating from the 19th
century or before, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and tend to
hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The members of the "new
money" class made their fortunes in the 1920s boom, and, therefore, they have no social
connections and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth.
The Great Gatsby shows the newly developing class rivalry between "old" and "new"
money in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy. As usual, the "no money"
class gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving middle and lower class people
like George Wilson forgotten or ignored.
• The Hollowness of the Upper Class
One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth,
specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the
old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens
represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom,
represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy,
ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a
monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick
up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In
contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by
the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East
Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s
ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans
exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house
far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand,
whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart,
remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make
sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead
to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be
punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to
remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.
• Past and Future
Nick and Gatsby are continually troubled by time—the past haunts Gatsby and the future
weighs down on Nick. When Nick tells Gatsby that you can't repeat the past, Gatsby says
"Why of course you can!" Gatsby has dedicated his entire life to recapturing a golden,
perfect past with Daisy. Gatsby believes that money can recreate the past. Fitzgerald
describes Gatsby as "overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth
imprisons and preserves." But Gatsby mixes up "youth and mystery" with history; he
thinks a single glorious month of love with Daisy can compete with the years and
experiences she has shared with Tom. Just as "new money" is money without social
connection, Gatsby's connection to Daisy exists outside of history.
Nick's fear of the future foreshadows the economic bust that plunged the country into
depression and ended the Roaring Twenties in 1929. The day Gatsby and Tom argue at
the Plaza Hotel, Nick suddenly realizes that it's his thirtieth birthday. He thinks of the
new decade before him as a "portentous menacing road," and clearly sees in the struggle
between old and new money the end of an era and the destruction of both types of wealth
Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the
end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their
dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that
she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its
object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object
—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era
in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in
Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is
left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American
values have not decayed.

The Great Gatsby epitomizes the Jamesian novel of selection, where every detail fits and
nothing is superfluous.