The Modern Era
1914-1950
Tasneem Bholat, Loreine Callejas,
Sarah Good, Tabitha King,
Clifford Ude
Objectives
Students will understand the different
styles of the modern era.
Students will be able to identify
rhetorical devices in literature and
analyze how they affect the modernist
style of writing.
Historical Context
 World War I
 Lasted from 1914 to 1918, with the U.S. entering the war in
1917
 Lost Generation questioned humanity and war after WWI
 Led to a period of isolationism and disillusionment, fear of the
“red menace”/communism, and resentment towards
immigration
 Poetry using symbolism and imagism
 The “Roaring Twenties”/Jazz Age
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Women’s suffrage in 1920
Temperance movement
Booming economy
Radio and film gained popularity
Novels: fiction based on realism influenced by the Jazz Age and
the “Lost Generation” of WWI
Historical Context (cont’d)
 Harlem Renaissance
 Cultural movement based on African American writers
 Influenced by the Jazz Age
 Great Depression
 Stock market crash in 1929
 1/3 to 1/4 of Americans were unemployed
 Journalists, novels, and poets used Freudian
psychology/“stream of consciousness” in their writing
 World War II
 Lasted from 1939 to 1945, with the U.S. entering in 1941
after the bombing of Pearl Harbor
 Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
 Nonfiction literature based on the war
Values and Beliefs
 Values did not revolve around religion, as in previous
eras
 Values in literature and poetry mainly centered around
events and social changes in the time period
 Lost Generation
 War veterans from WWI (or people closely associated with
them) questioned/rejected American beliefs of the 1920’s
 People lost faith in moral guideposts because they had gone to
war for a good cause but only had only been traumatized by it
 Women’s Movements
 Temperance—18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol passed in
1919
 “Votes for Women”—suffrage for women given in 1920
 Flappers—rebelled against society in the 1920’s; cut hair and
wore shorter skirts to assert their independence
Genre and Style
 Modernism includes:
 Influences of realism and naturalism from previous eras
 In poetry (around WWI):
 Symbolism: not typical symbolism used to describe feelings or
ideas; rather it was used to evoke emotions and ideas in the
reader
 Imagism: used common language and precise images and words
to show feelings and ideas;
 In novels (around Jazz Age and Great Depression):
 Fiction with realism: fictional stories that accurately portray
life and are not romanticized
 Stream of consciousness: originates from Freudian psychology
and psycho-analysis; used to show character’s thought
processes
Significant Authors and Works
 T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
 poetry, plays
 “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
 “The Waste Land”
 Robert Frost (1874-1963)
 poetry
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“The Road Not Taken”
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
“Birches”
“The Death of the Hired Man”
 Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
 novels
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The Sun Also Rises
A Farewell to Arms
The Old Man and the Sea
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Significant Authors and Works (cont’d)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
 novels, short stories
 This Side of Paradise
 The Great Gatsby
 Tender is the Night
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
 novels, plays, screenplays
 The Grapes of Wrath
 Of Mice and Men
 Cannery Row
Highlighted Passage 1
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
(page 770)
“The yellow fog that rubs it back upon the
window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the
window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from
chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”
Highlighted Passage 2
“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
…
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute
will reverse.”
Guided Practice
from The Grapes of Wrath, page 894
“The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the
side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they
took the migrant way to the West. In the daylight they
scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark
caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and
to water. And because they were lonely and perplexed,
because they had all come from a place of sadness and
worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a
mysterious new place, they huddled together; they talked
together; they shared their lives, their food, and the
things they had hoped for in the new country.”
Independent Practice
Locate two or three examples of literary
devices that contribute to the
modernist/realist style. Quote and cite at
least one example of each literary
device. Explain and analyze how the
devices portray the modernist/realist
style in The Grapes of Wrath.