Disillusion, Defiance,

1
Disillusion, Defiance, Discontent

• Modernism
• 1914-1946

2
Story of the times

• America was hailed a world power, albeit we were
  losing our youthful innocence brash innocence.
• Within a world of wars, America was becoming
  disenchanted with that which came before.

3
Time of Invention conflict

• Continued industrialization
• Continued inventions technology
• Social problems
• Union difficulties
• World War I broke out, and President Woodrow
  Wilson put home troubles on the back burner.

4
War in Europe

• Bloodiest most tragic conflicts ever
• The machine gun changed the way war was fought
• Almost an entire generation of European men
  fought died in this war

5
War in Europe

• President Wilson wanted to remain neutral, but
  that proved impossible
• In 1915, a German submarine sank the Lusitanian,
  a British merchant fleet
• 128 Americans were on board
• America sided with the Allies, and two years
  later joined the Allied cause

6
Authors in war

• American entered the war carefree, but they would
  soon realize it was not so
• American authors, E.E. Cummings, Ernest
  Hemingway, John Dos Passos all served in some
  capacity

7
Prosperity Depression

• The end of WWI in 1918 brought little peace to
  America since prohibition began a year later
• The sale of liquor became illegal
• This led to increased bootlegging, widespread law
  breaking, underground bars, war fare between
  mob families

8
1920s (we will get more into this era later)

• Through the 20s the nation was on a binge
• The economy boomed
• Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, which detailed
  the decadence of the time
• In 1929 the Stock Market crashed marking the
  beginning of the Great Depression

9
The New Deal

• By 1932 12 million Americans were out of work
• Unemployment increased, the food lines became
  longer
• Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover for the
  presidency
• Roosevelt created the New Deal, a package of
  economic reform to turn around the economic state
  of America

10
World War II

• Twenty years after the Treaty of Versailles,
  German invaded Poland
• As with WWI, America wanted to stay out of the
  war
• When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December of
  1941, we could no longer ignore the war going on
  around us

11
An atomic end

• The allies including the United States, the
  Soviet Union, Great Britain, France- defeated
  Germany, Japan, Italy
• A major event leading to the end of WWII was the
  invention of the Atomic Bomb, which American
  dropped on Hiroshima Nagasaki in 1948

12
Birth of Modernism

• Devastation of WWI left many Authors disenchanted
• They no longer trusted the ideals values of
  America
• This new group of writers were called Modernists
• They attempted to capture the new modern way of
  life of America in their writing

13
Expatriates

• Postwar disenchantment led a number of American
  writers to move to Europe
• Many of these writers created a community in
  Paris
• Most notably, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway,
  T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound F. Scott Fitzgerald