MODERNISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE1914-1945

1. MODERNISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE1914-1945

2. NATURALISM: Life is a cruel joke I. WORLD WAR I (1914-18), the “war to end all wars” – Post-War cultural upheaval brings a decline in American worldview reflected in literature

3. The USA entered the war after three years, declaring war on Germany April 6, 1917. A truce was signed November 11th, 1918. The US entered social upheaval.

4. a. Increased mobility of Americans: - the automobile assembly line style!

5. b. Modern Communications: radio (1922) and television (200 sets worldwide in 1930, by 1948 1 million)

6. c. Silent Movies (1913) talkies by late 20s, color by 1960

7. “The lost generation” despite the gay look, the prosperity, the youth were called the lost generation. Named this by Gertrude Stein. No stable, traditional values, individual loss of identity, no supportive family life, no familiar small town community, with life revolving around planting and harvesting activities. All were undermined by WWI and its aftermath

8. II. THE ROARING TWENTIES the Jazz Age

9. Women’s Fashion from 1890 to 1920

10. a. Irresponsibility i. Political US had just fought for democracy and now ignored the world, after merging as the strongest world power. We pursued a policy of political isolationism. We were anxious to forget the war. Entering WWI we had recognized that America’s interests do extend beyond our own borders, but we now introverted our focus.

11. ii. Moral Shocked and permanently changed, Americans returned to their homeland but could never regain their innocence. Western youths were rebelling, angry and disillusioned. In a search for personal freedom and new interests, we threw aside the traditional values of the previous generations. The most popular dance was the Charleston - the wildest dance - a type of moral abandonment. The dance symbolized the behavior of many people. We began pursuing pleasure and wealth.

12. I. T.S.Eliot’s long poem, The Waste Land (1922) Western civilization is symbolized by a bleak desert in desperate need of rain (spiritual renewal).

13. The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) Epigraph – I have seen with my own eyes the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her "What do you want?" She answered,"I want to die."

14. iii. Leisure has been declared the basis of culture. Leisure provided the freedom for men like Jefferson and Franklin (and later, Einstein) to develop invention, read, write, and further theological understanding.

15. iv. Mindless Entertainment stifles creativity and precludes contemplation of God and theological issues Most people went to the movies once a week!

16. a. The Flapper: American women, in particular, felt ‘liberated’ Many had left farms and villages for homefront duty in American cities during World War I, and had become resolutely modern. They cut their hair short ("bobbed"), wore short "flapper" dresses, and gloried in the right to vote assured by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1920.

17. The ‘flapper’ with ‘bobbed’ hair

18. b. The Bootlegger: Illegal alcohol during Prohibition

19. c. Lawlessness: Gang leaders like Al Capone ruled cities, making millions from liquor, extortion, and prostitution.

20. d. Church Attendance: fell to the lowest level in our country’s history!

21. v. Economic Personal Wealth: The post-war Big Boom The Wall Street speculation and lifestyle depicted in Melville’s “Bartleby.”

22. Bartleby Wall Street dehumanizes people like Bartleby. He is no longer an individual; he is a human copy machine. Theme: loss of individuality

23. Bartleby the scrivener Melville emphasizes the intellectually stultifying atmosphere of the Wall Street world, since scriveners create nothing of their own but instead mechanically copy the ideas and work of others. In fact, the lawyer is initially attracted to Bartleby because he seems to lack a strong personality and independent will, making him seem like a model employee.

24. Bartleby The office is on Wall Street. The windows look out at walls. Bartleby stares out blankly. He is a victim of wage-slavery; he must work but the work has ruined him as a human being. The tone of the story is nihilistic. Bartleby is an empty Christ-type.

25. “Melville emphasizes the intellectually stultifying atmosphere of the business world, since scriveners create nothing of their own but instead mechanically copy the ideas and work of others. In fact, the lawyer is initially attracted to Bartleby because he seems to lack a strong personality and independent will, making him seem like a model employee.”

26. “While the religious readings of "Bartleby" seem to be on the wane, at least two critics continue to make cases. Donald Fiene (1970) argues that the uncompromising clerk is not just a Christ-like figure, Bartleby is Christ exactly.

27. Nathan Cervo (1972) takes the next logical step by arguing that Bartleby is God. Thus, the lawyer's rejection of the clerk is a metaphor for the rejection of genuine spirituality for "Economic Darwinism in its Calvinistic American form” Commentary on Bartleby

28. V. Economic Personal Wealth: The post-war Big Boom cont. In 1914 our nation had 4,500 millionaires. By 1926 we had 11,000. Land sales boomed in warmer climates, like California and Florida. Many people purchased the ultimate status symbol -- an automobile.

29. 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, all modern and American made.

30. 1. "The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed in 1925, and most agreed.

31. III. THE GREAT DEPRESSION: Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929 - the bottom dropped out of the stock market. Within 3 years, even the most stable stocks had plummeted. General Motors dropped from $91 per share to $7. Sears Roebuck dropped from $181 to $9.

32. a. Bank Failures: Business failures • Economic disaster: Drastic rates of unemployment. Millions lost both jobs and their savings. Yes, our great-grandparents saved their money!

33. ii. New Deal Programs set up by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45): Our confidence was replaced by unrest. The Depression was worldwide, but we felt it more because our previous decade had been so prosperous.

34. By 1935 1 out of every 6 or 7 Americans was on government relief. The average annual family income for a third of the nation was less than $500. The upper third of Americans lived on $2,000 annually.

35. A Plymouth cost just over $500, a loaf of bread $.10, and a pound of apples was $.05. Prosperity did not return until the 1940s. Midwestern droughts turned the "breadbasket" of America into a dust bowl. Many farmers left the Midwest for California in search of jobs, as vividly described in:

36. l. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) At the peak of the Depression, one-third of all Americans were out of work. Soup kitchens, shanty towns, and armies of hobos -- unemployed men illegally riding freight trains -- became part of national life.

37. Many saw the Depression as a punishment for sins of excessive materialism and loose living. This novel is the stark account of the Judd family in the poverty of the Oklahoma dust bowl and their migration to California during the Depression of the 1930s.

38. IV. WORLD WAR II a. America blinded by economic worries

39. i. Ignored invasions by Japan (1931), Germany and Italy, until Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939.

40. In 1939, ‘Germany’ meant, ‘Hitler.’

41. ii. An attempt of neutrality: As we shipped weapons and money, trying to stay out of the war, Italy and Japan became more aggressive, expanding their war fronts. 1. Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941: America moves from shock to action, entering the war, and changing the course of history.iii. The Cost of War: $300 billion by 1945, when the war ended. 22 million dead, 34 million wounded.iv. Pouring money into Germany and Japan, our former enemies: now, both are important allies.

42. b. The War’s Aftermath - Social Revolution: • Women enter the workforce, and stay. • Civil Rights groups form to protect minority groups from oppression. iii. Moral revolution from the feeling of power and autonomy. Who needs God if you’re an American? It seemed that man could control the world and instill peace.

43. But man found that not only could he not control the world, he could not even control himself. And man was impotent to maintain world peace. Korean War 1950 - 1953 Vietnam 1964 – 1973 iv. The romantic idealism and optimism in literature becomes cynical and pessimistic. Modern literature takes form.

44. V. DARWIN AND HIS INFLUENCE a. CHARLES DARWIN (1809 - 1882): Origin of Species (1859), the formulation of Darwin’s thoughts on evolution, claimed to give scientific support to the theory of man as a higher animal form.

46. i. Man: Animal or god? These are the two dominant views. A person committed to Darwinism considers everything, from lungs and vertebrae to intelligence and religious inclination, as products of materialistic processes. For him, moral truth is not a universal standard of transcendent origin; it is a set of ethical preferences defined by the dominant culture. In the end, morality for the Darwinist is whatever the ruling class says it is.

47. ii. No immortality, no fellowship with God • Theology suffered and theologians split: Conservative theology is the remnant; Modernist Theology embraced ‘science’ that seemed to otherwise threaten extinction to traditional theology. Cults arise and expand.

48. iv. Supremacy of the Caucasian male: racism, genocide, communism, abortion, homosexuality, female inferiority, and promiscuity are resultant. • For example: male promiscuity - behavioral differences (the aggression in males) is chalked up to evolution. Thus males will be disloyal. Aberrant, or animalistic behaviors are justified. Enter ‘barnyard morality’ II. Females have smaller brains. Children, women, and the senile white have the intellect of an adult Negro, per science textbooks: inviting slavery and abuse.

49. b. SIGMUND FREUD (1856 - 1939): Psychoanalytic theories were embraced by the elite in the 1920s. Freud interpreted Darwin into human behaviors: implied a “godless” world view and contributed to the breakdown of traditional values.

50. i. One of the lasting influences was his diagram of the human personality.