The The ModernsModerns

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Important Happenings• 1905- Einstein

formulates theory of relativity

• 1906-Great earthquake and fire ravages San Francisco

• 1912- Titanic sinks

• 1914- Panama Canal opens

• 1914- WWI begins in Europe

• 1917- US enters WWI

• 1919- Baseball scandal Chicago White Sox paid to throw World Series game with Cincinnati Reds

• 1920- 19th Amendment passed Women given right to vote

• 1927- Charles Lindberg completes first transatlantic solo flight

• 1927- The Jazz Singer opens one of 1st sound pics w/dialogue

• 1929- US stock market crashes leads to GREAT DEPRESSION

• 1933- Adolph Hitler comes to power in Germany

• 1939- WWII begins Germany invades Poland

• 1945- US enters WWII after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

• 1945- Germany surrenders

• 1945- US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan; Japan surrenders

• 1945- United Nations formed

• 1948- State of Israel established

• 1950- Korean War begins

• 1950- US population about 151 million

Sherwood Anderson, in a letter to his

son, November 1929

• “I had a world, and it slipped away from me. The War (WWI) blew up more than the bodies of men…It blew ideas away—”

• GREAT WAR aka WWI (1914-1918) one of the events that changed the voice of American fiction.

• Fictious voice “brash..not original and uncertain as an adolscence’s”

• In 1917 US entered WWI a conflict fought under “bright banners of humanity and democratic righteousness” that became a “bloodbath.”

• In 1916 over half-million soldiers were killed in a ten-month-long struggle in Verdun, France.

Paradise lost….

• America victorious in WWI yet SOMETHING had changed--- loss of innocence

• “Idealism was turning into cynicism.”

• Writers began to question “authority and tradition”

•NEW MORAL CODES

•Short skirts•Bobbed hair•Slang

expressions

• “Americans’ sense of a CONNECTION to their past seemed to be deter-iorating”

OTHER FACTORS

• “ This movement in literature, painting, music and other arts– swept along by disillusionment with traditions that had seemed to have become spiritually empty—called for bold experimentation and a wholesale rejection of traditional themes and styles” (Leggett & Brinnin, pg. 525, 2000).

“The American Dream”

•PURSUIT OF

•PROMISE

• Three central ideas– “admiration for America as a new Eden, a

land of beauty, bounty, and unlimited promise.”

– “optimism” a belief in “progress…life keeps getting better and …moving toward an era of prosperity, justice, and joy that always SEEMS just around the corner.”

– “the importance and ultimate triumph of the individual—the independent, self-reliant person.”

• “The era of the 1930s in the United States was marked by triumph and tragedy, growth and hardship” (Leggitt

& Brinnin, 2000, p. 528)

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

POPULATION

• Between 1890 and 1940, the population MORE THAN DOUBLED• From 63 million to 132 million

• Presently as of last census (2000)• ALABAMA: 4,486,508

• UNITED STATES: 288,368.698

POPULATION BREAKDOWN

• Caucasian: 90.5%

• African Americans: 10%

•Other ethnic groups: .5%

The BAD

• The Great Depression

• By 1933 between 25% to 33% of population UNEMPLOYED

• Bread lines, ate out of garbage cans, slept in sewer pipes, tents, and shacks

The GOOD

• Technological advances– Amelia Earhart becomes first woman to fly solo

across Atlantic– THREE FAMOUS STRUCTURES ARE

BUILT• The Empire State Building (NYC, 1931)

• Boulder (now Hoover) Dam (AZ/NV border, 1936)

• Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, 1937)

The Empire State Building

• 1931 in New York City

Hoover Dam

• 1936 Arizona/Nevada Border

Golden Gate Bridge

• 1937 San Francisco, California

Golden Age of MOVIES

• Laurel and Hardy

• Marx Brothers

• GONE WITH THE WIND ( 1939 )

RADIO

• Most common form of entertainment

• 2/3 of all American households owned at least one radio

• Halloween broadcast 1938 SIX MILLION listeners tuned to Orson Welles’s “Invasion from Mars” broadcast. 100s flock and clog eastern highways in a panic.

Breakdown of Beliefs and Traditions

• WWI combined with stock market crash SEVERLY DAMAGED ideas of America as an EDEN.

• LITERARY focus shifts AWAY from NEW ENGLAND

• Most MODERNISTS were from: the SOUTH, MIDWEST, and the WEST

New Intellectual Trends

• MARXISM: Karl Marx: Socialism (govt controls all aspects of society: EQUALITY

• PSYCHOANALYSIS: Sigmond Freud: Unconscious mind and sexuality

– Continued to pressure traditional beliefs and values

The JAZZ AGE

• PROHIBITION: 1919 Constitution amended to PROHIBIT the manufacture and sale of ALCOHOL, which was singled out as a CENTRAL SOCIAL EVIL

• Had opposite effect … became an age of…

• Bootleggers

• Cocktails

• Short-skirts

• Jazz

• Gangsters

• The “Roaring 20s” Fitzgerald’s novels

• American writers expatriate to Europe

New American Hero

• DISILLUSIONMENT major theme in the fiction of the time

• Most influential: Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s Hero

• Many embraced as a protagonist and role model• Man of action• A warrior• A tough competitor• Has a code of honor• Courage• Endurance• “grace under pressure”

Most Important Trait

• THROUGHLY DISILLUSIONED– Held true to Hemingway’s own outlook

• Feared at the center of it all lay nothing

Poetry

• During this time poetry took a break– Ezra Pound– T. S. Eliot

– SYMBOLISM

– IMAGISM

– Some poets still retained traditional verses

Harlem Renaissance

• African American culture found expression in poetry in two different ways:– Conventional forms: more readily adopted by

white audiences– Unique contributions used diction and street

talk

The American Dream REVISED

• How do you define the American dream now?

• How has it changed?• How has it remained the same?• What forces might shape it in the future?

• Construct a 100 word essay that answers these questions. Turn in tomorrow!