American Modernism

American Modernism
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
- The Jazz Age  a period of pleasure seeking and reckless exuberance, care-free living
(The Roaring 20s)
- In the postwar “Big Boom”, businesses flourished, and the successful prospered
beyond their wildest dreams. For the first time, many Americans enrolled in higher
education —in the 1920s college enrolment doubled. The middle-class prospered;
Americans began to enjoy the world’s highest national average income, and many
people purchased the ultimate status symbol — a car. The typical urban American
home glowed with electric lights and boasted a radio that connected the house with
the outside world, and perhaps a telephone, a camera, a typewriter, or a sewing
machine.
- Americans fell in love with other modern entertainments. Most people went to the
movies once a week. Although Prohibition —a nationwide ban on the production,
transport and sale of alcohol— began in 1919, underground nightclubs throve,
featuring jazz music, cocktails and daring modes of dress and dance.
- Intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology, implied a “godless” world view
and contributed to the breakdown of traditional values.
- Young Americans were labelled as “the lost generation”. They had lost the supportive
family life; the settled community; the sustaining sense of patriotism; the moral values
set forward by religious beliefs —all seemed undermined by World War I and its
aftermath.
- Wall Street Crash (1920)  The world depression of the 1930s affected most of the
population: 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
- One-third of all Americans were out of work. Many saw it as a punishment for sins of
excessive materialism and loose living. The dust storms that blackened the
Midwestern sky, they believed, constituted an Old Testament judgement.
- Thanks to the New Deal programs by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, federal money
created jobs in public works and rural electrification. These remedies helped, but only
the industrial build-up of World War II renewed prosperity
- After Japan attacked the U.S at Pearl Harbour on December 1941, disused shipyards
and factories came to bustling life mass-producing ships, airplanes, jeeps and supplies.
War production and experimentation led to new technologies, including the nuclear
bomb.
LITERATURE AND AUTHORS
- Modernist novels destroy conventions by reversing traditional norms, such as gender

and racial roles. This is notable in Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (he
exposes the hypocritical attitude of high class people)
- 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 interior
monologue and stream of consciousness. This work is 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
- Another element 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. In fact, many novels feature multiple narrators.
The conflicting perspectives of various narrators and speakers reflect the diversities of
reality that modernism celebrates
- It is also marked by themes of loss and exile. Rejecting conventional truths and figures
of authority, modernists move away from religion
- But individualism results in feelings of isolation from society, exile and loss. These
themes are particularly apparent in Ernest Hemingway’s novels, such as Hills like White
Elephants
- After the economic collapse, most writers turn to a new kind of REALISM and
NATURALISM
- Modernist novels do 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. They also reflect a frank awareness of social ills and of man’s capacity for
cruelty
- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
The Iceberg Theory (The theory of omission)  The deeper meaning of a story should
not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicity

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American Modernism

LITERATURE AND AUTHORS

- Modernist novels destroy conventions by reversing traditional norms, such as gender

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