CHOICES“We are the sum total of all the choices we make.”

-Woody Allen

What choices must you make?

• To what degree do people judge you on the choices you make?• To what degree do you judge yourself based on the choices

you make?• How are your values related to your choices?

PERSONAL FUFILLMENT

SUCCESS

HAPPINESS

VALUESYSTEM

MARRIAGEFIL

IAL R

ESPONSIBIL

ITY

RELIGIO

NCAREER

LOVE

FAM

ILY

POLITIC

S

FRIENDS

20TH CENTURY LITERATURE

A Crisis in Values

MODERNISM(1910-1940)AN ARTISTIC, MUSICAL, AND LITERARY

MOVEMENT IN THE 20TH CENTURY

What are the most important issues of the last century?

VALUE SYSTEM

PERSONAL FUFILLMENT

SUCCES

S

HAPPINESS

MARRIAGE FILIA

L RESPONZ.

RELIGIO

NCAREER

LOVE

FAM

ILY

POLITIC

S

FRIENDS

How do they manifest themselves into the literature we read? RELATION TO CHOICES AND HUMAN PLIGHT

Modernism Definition ContinuedRejection of nineteenth-century optimism, presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism.

Some Modernists

Across the Arts

MODERN PAINTERS

• PICASSO• MATISSE• KANDINSKY• DALI

MODERN AUTHORS

• ERNEST HEMINGWAY• WILLIAM FAULKNER• F. SCOTT FITZGERALD• JOHN STEINBECK

MODERN POETS

• William Carlos Williams

• Wallace Stevens• Marianna Moore

• Patricia Smith• E.E. Cummings• H.D. (Hilda

Doolittle)• Robert Frost

MODERN ARCHITECTS

• WRIGHT

• GROPIUS

• LE CORBUSIER

• VAN DER ROHE

More rationale and practical.

MODERN ENTERTAINMENT MOVEMENT

SILENT MOVIES- OFTEN FOCUSED ON THE DANGERS OF THE MODERN

WORLD

MAJOR ACTORS- CHARLIE CHAPLIN & BUSTER KEATON

Characteristics of Modernism as a

Cultural Movement

FORCES DRIVING MODERNISM

• Search for reason in an unreasoned world

• Concerned with industrialization and the displacement of persons

• Bothered by the hypocrisy of Christianity

MODERNISTS’ VIEW OF THE WORLD

• The world is chaos• The world is unstable• Loss of faith• See a collapse of morality/values

MODERNIST BELIEFS• Alienation is an increasingly

common condition

• No absolute certainties and truths

CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM

• LOSS OF FAITH IN THE AMERICAN DREAM

• REJECTION OF ARTIFICIALITY “Isn’t it pretty to think so? - Hemmingway

CHECK YOURSELF (not the quiz)

• When was the modernist time period?

• Who were the pervading/popular modernist authors?

• What was one of the modernist beliefs?

Art and MentalityPICASSO’S CUBISM

• FIRST PICTURE-Self Portrait 1899-1900• SECOND PICTURE-Self Portrait, cubist

period• Role of artist changes

Art for arts sake…

Characteristics of Modern Literature

MODERN LITERARY MOVEMENT

• Major forms are poetry and fiction

• Stylistic innovations - disruption of traditional syntax and form.

• Intention is often to challenge the way readers see the world

• Time fades and dissolves regarding characters mindset

WRITING STYLE

• Imagery and symbolism- frequent

• Colloquial language• Literature as art- form, style,

and technique are important• Often includes much

dialogue• Stream-of-consciousness;

interior dialogue

• Narration is structured by narrator's or character's flow of consciousness and memory

• Associative (rather than conventional "linear")

• Often employs flashback and flash forward techniques

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

MODERN HERO IN LITERATURE

• Rejection of the ideal hero• Hero in modern story will be

flawed and disillusioned

• EXAMPLE: • Jay Gatsby- The Great Gatsby• George Milton- Of Mice and

Men

New hero: ironic, frustrating,

disappointing, self-doubting, anxious

CHARACTERIZATION IN MODERN LITERATURE

• Interest in the inner workings of the human mind

• Intense psychological characterization (Freud and Jung)

• Reader learns about characters primarily through dialogue

PLOTS AND MODERN LITERATURE

EXPLORES: • Sense of isolation

• Uncertainty• Disillusionment• Disjointedness

• Meaninglessness

MODERN LITERATURE FORMS

• Literature often lacked expositions, resolutions, and transitions.

THEMES IN MODERN LITERATURE

1. Critique of traditional values of our culture

2. Loss of meaning and hope in the world

3. Alienation from society and loneliness

4. Violence

5. Decadences and Decay

6. Loss and Despair

Mentality in action: Hemmingway

"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see. You hang around cafés."

Note- In order to understand the significance of the quote you need to know the meaning of the word expatriate: (v.) to withdraw oneself from allegiance to one’s country.

How does this reflect modernist mentality?

In this quote, it’s used as a noun…even though it’s actually a verb. We can assume, this was an intentional corruption of “ex-patriot.”

Mentality in Action: Fitzgerald

• "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." -The Great Gatsby

• The passage records Jay Gatsby's ill-fated courtship of Daisy, a captivating yet selfish and amoral woman. After renewing their tragic romance years later, Daisy proves to be the unworthy receptacle of Gatsby's idyllic dream and subsequently serves as the agent of his death.

Mentality in Action: Steinbeck

“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' … I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.‘… I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

Faulkner One-Liners

• A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

• Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.

• Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

• Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

READERS ROLE

OLD READERS• His role is passive:• HE IS:

– Taught– Entertained– Emotionally

involved

MODERNIST READERS

• The reader has an active role – must give his own

subjective interpretation

Rejection of nineteenth-century optimism, presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism