 Welcome back!  Outlook for the rest of the year.  Grammar packets!  Intro to Modernism Ppt.  Take Notes!  Calendar & Study Guide  Gatsby Anticipation Guide  Reading?

 World War I ( ) was one of the events that changed the American voice in fiction.  The war was fought under bright banners of humanity and democratic righteousness, but became a bloodbath.  In 1916, more than a half-million soldiers were killed in a single, month-long battle near the town of Verdun in northeastern France.

 Although America emerged from the war as a victor, something was beginning to change.  The country seemed to have lost its innocence.  Idealism was turning into cynicism  American writers began to question the authority and tradition that had seemed to be America’s bedrock  America’s sense of a connection to the past seemed to be deteriorating.

 The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash in 1929 brought suffering to millions of Americans  The same hard working people who had put their faith in the boundless capacity of America to provide them with jobs and their children with brighter futures.

 American writers like their European counterparts, were being profoundly affected by the modernist movement.  This movement in literature, painting, music, etc. was swept along by disillusionment with the traditions that seemed to have become spiritually empty.  The modernists called for bold experimentation and a wholesale rejection of traditional themes and styles.

 World War I was a turning point in American Life, marking a loss of innocence and a strong disillusionment with tradition.  American writers were profoundly affected by the ideas of modernism, which called for a break with traditional themes and styles.

 Both the promise and the disappointment of this idea are reflected in works like The Great Gatsby.  For many, great wealth and the pursuit of pleasure had become ends in themselves.  For some, the belief in the promise of America has disappeared under the degradations of modern life.

 The expectation of ever- expanding opportunity and abundance.  For the most part, Americans have believed in progress-that life keeps getting better and that we are moving toward an era of prosperity, justice and joy that always seems just around the corner.

 The independent, self- reliant person.  This idea was championed by R.W. Emerson  Trust the universe and trust yourself-Emerson wrote  “If the single man plant himself indomitable on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

Bountiful America Faith in Progress Individual Triumph

 In 1919, The Constitution was amended to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol which was singled out as a social evil.  What happened: prohibition ushered in an age characterized by the bootlegger, the speakeasy, the cocktail, the short-skirted flapper, the new rhythms of jazz, and the dangerous but lucrative profession of the gangster.  In 1920 women had finally won the right to vote and women began to be more socially and intellectually active.

 Postwar writers became skeptical of the New England Puritan tradition and the gentility that had been central to the literary ideal.  In fact many of the modernist writers came from the South, the Midwest or the West (not New England)  Two new intellectual trends or movements combined to increase the pressure on traditional beliefs and values  Marxism (socialistic beliefs in direct opposition to the American system of capitalism and free enterprise)  Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud’s ideas about unconscious thought) For if our actions are influenced by our subconscious, there is little room left for “free will”

 Disillusionment was a major theme in the fiction of the time.  Hemingway introduced a new kind of hero to American fiction—the Hemingway hero.  He is a man of action a warrior, and a tough competitor; he has a code of honor, courage, and endurance. He shows “grace under pressure”.  But the most important trait is that he is thoroughly disillusioned, a quality that reflected Hemingway’s own outlook.  His character, though disillusioned shows faith in a belief in the self and in qualities like decency, bravery, competence, and skill.  He clung to this conviction in spite of what he saw as the absolutely unbeatable odds ranged against us all.  Also, he knew the importance of recognizing and snatching up the rare, good, rich movements that life (rarely) offers

 One literary result of this interest in the psyche was the narrative technique called stream of consciousness.  This writing style abandoned chronology and attempted to imitate the moment-by- moment flow of a character’s perceptions and memories.

 Reflects the need to “break from the past”  Demands “new ways of saying”  Unconventional literary appearances—no punctuation, no capital letters, endless sentences, obscure phrasing.  New or alternating Points of View  New subject matter: race, class, sex, revolution, economics, the lives and perspectives of the disillusioned, the outcast, the dispossessed, the maverick, the minority ethnic.

 Emphasis on the Self (“ as a unified external world disappeared and private, internal reality became more important, modern literature emphasized the individual perception.)  Pluralism: the existence of many distinctive groups in contemporary literature, bringing the minority experience into the forefront of literature.  “A literature of many perspectives”  The attempt to express the separateness of the self and the modern sense of isolation and alienation.  “A diverse and truly national literature”—like the kind that Ralph Waldo Emerson called for.

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