MODERNISM & ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Events and trends that helped shape Modernism

History that led to Modernism

• World War I 1914-1918

• First “modern” war

• Employed new artillery firepower (machine guns, Howitzers shells, tanks, airplane bombings, and gas)

• Approximately 17 million total deaths, 20 million wounded, and many soldiers returning home with shell shock

Results of WWI

•Mass destruction led to feelings of disillusionment about the moral improvement and progress of human society.

Sigmund Freud

• The invention of psychoanalysis: actions can be explained by unconscious forces

Albert Einstein

• The theory of relativity: questions an ordered and stable universe (not everything is fixed and constant)

General facts of Modernism• An explosion of artistic movements that rejected realism,

which no longer reflected the new world• Peaked between 1900-1940 in Europe; 1914-1945 in

America• Emphasized formalism (how well wrought and stylized the

work is), autonomy of art, originality/newness• A discontinuity of time (time as discontinuous,

overlapping, non-chronological in the way we experience it; a shift from linear time to “moment time”

• More emphasis on individual psychology and subjective experience. Concentrate on moments, episodes, or epiphanies.

Modernist writing: plot• From Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms: modernists

“break up the narrative continuity”

• In other words, there is a departure from linear plots with climactic turning points and clear resolutions

• Instead modernists use discontinuous fragments, “moment time”, a-chronological leaps in time, multiple plots, and open unresolved endings

Modernist writing: character• From Abrams A glossary of literary Terms “depart from

standard ways of representing characters”

• Or, a disappearance of character summary, of discrete, well-defined characters (think of Dickens)

• Instead, the representation of the self as diverse, contradictory, ambiguous

Modernist writing: style• From Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms: modernists

“violate the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language”

• Modernists use “stream of consciousness” (tracing non-linear thought processes), moving by the “logic of the unconscious”; imagistic rather than logical connections.

Modernist writing: point of view• From Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms: POV thematically represents an ‘immense

panorama of futility and anarchy”

• Modernists show a rejection of the single, authoritative, omniscient point of view, instead following:

• A narrative focused instead through the consciousness of one character whose point of view is limited

• Or through several characters who establish relative, multiple points of view

• Or through several simultaneously-held positions maintained by the one character

• Point of view thematically represents an overwhelming sense of uselessness or ineffectiveness toward life, and social confusion and disorder. (see quote above)

Hemingway’s Modernist traits

• As you read, you will notice these characteristics in The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, & Short Stories

Subjectivity/experience

• “inner reality” over objective experience

• Emphasized in modernism with use of limited omniscient or first person narrator whose prejudices or p.o.v. shapes the story.

Elliptical plot

• Traditional plot elements (beginnings, climax, resolution) often are deleted or obscured in modernism

Nada concept

• “Nothing” is out there for you; universe is indifferent and has no purpose, meaning, or order

Hemingway Hero

•Man for whom it is a point of honor to suffer with grace and dignity; he plays the game well, while sensing that defeat is inevitable

A man’s man

• Involved in a great deal of drinking, moved from one love affair to another, participated in wild game hunting, enjoyed bullfights, and was involved in all of the so-called “manly’ activities, which the typical American male did not participate in

Hemingway’s Heroic Code

• Confront “nada” with dignity (true moral integrity defined by oneself, not society)

• Show “grace under pressure”

• Accept death as unavoidable, but confront it on his own terms

• Be a man of action, but do not talk about his actions

• Detest mediocrity

• Be devoted to a smaller, intimate group of men who are similar to himself

Anti-Hero

• Blind to reality of “nada,” lives by illusion and false values, and impulses

• Can be either stupid, idealistic/deluded, or self-centered and self-destructive

The Lost Generation• Term applied to the generation of young Americans who

lived as writers and poets in Paris after WWI (expatriates)

• Many had served in combat; no longer believed in values such as glory, honor, or patriotism

• Were not interested in politics and many left America to avoid dealing with the increasingly anti-intellectual, conservative tide

Bohemian Lifestyle

• Drank too much because it was illegal to drink in the U.S. during Prohibition

New Woman

• Bobbed hair, shorter skirts, flat is faddish (as opposed to the buxom, corseted Victorian female)

• First generation of American women to drink and smoke publicly, and for whom divorce was a reasonable solution to a bad marriage (Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises)