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Shanell Johnson
04/22/2011
American Lit
The Turn of the Twentieth Century…
The turn of the twentieth century was a pivotal movement in American
literature. It contributed to understanding important underrepresented individuals
in society. Those underrepresented individuals dealt with issues related to class,
race, and gender. These issues were explored through characters created by
breakthrough authors of the twentieth century. Hemingway, Chopin, Crane, and
Wright were a few breakthrough authors of the time that created those characters
who dealt with those issues. Crane, introduced the idea of naturalism throughout his
novel, Maggie. Naturalism came known to be the study of human behavior and
characters within the context of their surroundings. Richard Wright would later
implement this idea in his novel, Native Son. While Wright and Crane were
implementing naturalism in their writing, novelists Ernest Hemingway and Kate
Chopin were using modernism. Modernism is the belief that the world is created in
the act of perceiving, that is, “the world is what we say it is”. Hemingway explores
this idea throughout his novel, “The Sun Also Rises”, and Chopin through, “The
Awakening”. Though their breakthroughs with modernism and naturalism are
significant, what is even more significant is the effect those themes had on the
people who read the novels. These authors presented a new way of thinking about
societal problems such as, race, gender, ethnicity, and class. They used their
characters to portray thought processes of women, African-Americans, woundedwar veterans, and low-income families. This paper will explore how the turn of the
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twentieth century in American literature’s themes, writing styles, and author’s,
effected the thought processes of the people receiving the literature. (Gale, 1)
Richard Wright is considered one of the essential pioneers for AfricanAmerican literature. In Wright’s novel, Native Son, he explores how it is to be Black
in America. It was a breakthrough novel because it was the first of its kind to expose
the harsh realities of life for poor Black people in America. In writing this novel,
Wright wanted to, “…write a novel that could not be wept over, that would be so
hard and deep that his readers would have to face it without the consolation of
tears…” Through this quote, it is clear of how Wright wanted the readers to be
affected by his novel. He wanted his readers to know the truth about the issues in
the Black community. (Gale, 2)
After publication of the novel and criticism began, James Baldwin called
Native Son, “the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet had of what it
means to be a Negro in America.” This quote is proof that, Wright’s intentions for the
interpretation for the novel were met by the readers. Throughout the text Wright
puts the reader into the mind of Bigger and really gives the reader an idea of how he
thought and reacted. Through his writing, he demonstrated how it felt to be Black in
America. In that way, he affected the thought process of the people receiving the
literature. Wright’s use of naturalism through Native Son helped to influence other
black writers such as Chester Himes, Ann Petry, Willard Motley, and Lloyd Brown.
Wright’s novels and themes not only had an affect on how readers came to
understand Black people in America, but it also influenced an entire era of writers
that would come in the future. (Gale, 2)
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Stephen Crane is regarded as one the most important and influential
American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is praised
for being an innovator and of his era critics say, “he produced a significant and
influential body of work which heralded the literary trends and thematic concerns
of the twentieth century”. This quote says that he basically gave birth to the trend of
themes in the twentieth century, which were naturalism and realism. His language
in writing, “Crucially influenced Cather, Hemingway and his daring extravagances of
imagery inspired Faulkner and Ellison.” Another, common theme in the twentieth
century was modernism, which was a response to naturalism. Therefore, in him
“fathering” naturalism he helped influence modernistic writers such as Cather and
Hemingway. (Cengage, 3)
In Crane’s novel, Maggie, it explores the life of a girl whose family is lowincome, and she and her siblings deal with abuse from their parents. Maggie
receives attention from a guy, she is kicked out of the house, after denied by the guy,
and is forced into prostitution for survival. Eventually, she turns up dead. Crane
believed in looking at the environment and evaluating the type of people that were
created as a result. This idea is portrayed in Maggie, he wanted to portray that it was
not the persons fault that they are the way they are, but it is due to the social
organization of society. Those are the ways he wanted his readers to be affected.
After criticism of his writing, Gandal concludes that, “Crane perceives in the turn-ofthe-century slums, not vice, but an alternative reality—and moral inspiration.” This
quote confirms the idea of the alternative reality for those people that Crane writes
about and what he wanted people to recognize and understand. He does it
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affectively throughout his naturalists themes portrayed in his writing. Modernism,
the response to naturalism, is also a common theme throughout the twentieth
century. (Cengage, 3)
Ernest Hemingway is another one of those important and influential writers
of the twentieth century. He explores themes of war, love, death, masculinity, and
individual courage. His signature, however, is his writing style, “…his greatest
literary contribution is his spare understated writing style, which marked an end to
the ornamental prose of the Victorian era, and altered the direction of American
fiction.” One of the most significant ways that Hemingway affected readers was his
unique writing style. He did not write in long prose and complicated sentences, in
his writing style, he helped to alter the future of American literature with concise
sentences. (Gale, 4)
Hemingway is also known as a modernistic writer. In Hemingway’s novel,
The Sun Also Rises, he explores the lives of characters wounded from the war. War is
a common theme in his novels, and he is praised, “for defining and immortalizing the
disillusionment of the post- World War I “lost generation”. Because this idea of
writing about the “lost generation” occurs within his writing, Hemingway exposes
his readers to the wounds those characters carried around and how they were
affected by it. Throughout the novel, several of the characters experienced the war,
one character, however, Robert Cohn, did not. The way that Hemingway writes the
novel and portrays the characters, he reveals that the war-wounded characters are
searching for fulfillment but cannot ever be completely fulfilled because of the war
wounds they have to carry around. The way they deal with that is by drinking and
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partying all the time. Cohn, however, does not understand the disadvantages of the
war wounds, and is not received well by the others because of his lack of
understanding. In a way, Cohn represents everyone in the world that did not suffer
from the war. Through these characters, Hemingway exposes the feelings of the
people who suffer from those war wounds to the readers who did not suffer from
them. In this way he affects readers with his “lost soul” theme in taking them
through the thought process of something they were not aware of. His significance
and successfulness in this theme is undeniably effective for the twentieth century.
(Gale, 4)
Kate Chopin was breakthrough female writer for the twentieth century. In
Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, she explores many groundbreaking themes such as
female sexuality, guiltless adultery, and the conflict between marriage, motherhood,
and self-fulfillment. The novel was not well received because of these themes
covered in the novel, it conflicted with the time the novel was written. People did
not want to hear about women’s sexuality and self-fulfillment. Although it was not
received well the truth in novel was undeniable, “(The Awakening)the most
important piece of fiction about the sexual life of a woman written to date in
America,…” Chopin writing was valid and definitely an outcry for people to
understand the emotional conditions of a woman at that time, however, the world
was not ready to receive it. Later in the 1970s and 1980s the novel received critical
notoriety throughout the feminist movement. It was relevant because of its themes
of recognizing female sexuality, and self-fulfillment. Although, Chopin had to wait for
her novel to receive notice, it helped sponsor the feminist movement: a major
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breakthrough for women in America. Chopin’s use of the modern themes mixed
with uncommon themes of a time, which exposed a woman’s want for selffulfillment in the twentieth century helped to influence a movement later on.
Through her character Edna Pontellier, she helped expose two traditions: “domestic
feminity and romantic individualism—and whose death reminds us of not only
human limitation but also of human possibility.” (Gale, 5)
The turn of the twentieth century had a lasting affect on the writer’s that
were to come, the writing styles they would emulate, and the themes they would
implement in their own writing. Themes of naturalism and modernism raised
awareness to readers about unfortunate experiences of war, poverty, gender, race,
and ethnicity. The basis for these themes were stemmed from the writers personal
experience with the subject. The authors, Wright, Hemingway, Crane, and Chopin
bring the reader into the minds of the characters, and breaks down the way they
think and why and how they came to those conclusions. It truthfully explains, the
idea of being a product of the environment, and the reactions that happen there of.
The most important reason why these authors were very significant for their time is
because they talked about issues no one wanted to face the truth about, and they
made readers undeniably face the truth about those issues and understand them as
well. Future thematic sequences, plethora of future writers, and those who
implement the new birth themes of naturalism and modernism were influenced by
the unique innovators who emerged in the turn of the twentieth century. (Gale, 5)
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