modernism + short stories Flashcards
(45 cards)
number of people in military in WWI
70 million
number of artillery and mortar rounds fired on western front during WWI
700 million
percent of Frenchmen between ages 20-32 who died during WWI
half
percent of German men between ages 19-22 who died during WWI
35%
percent of English soldiers who were killed during WWI
12%
number of people who died for England and France in WWI
2 million
number of people who died for Germany in WWI
2 million
number of people wounded in WWI
21 million
mindset of modernism
- people lost faith that the world has coherent meaning bc of horrors of war
- “the lost generation” where people lost their purpose/way in the world
- no objective meaning to anything, subjectivity
- representing inner view of characters
Ernest Hemingway
- injured as ambulance volunteer in Italy and had unrequited love with nurse
- wrote A Farewell to Arms based on this
- In Our Time
A Farewell to Arms
- Italian soldier (Frederic Henry) and nurse fall in love, soldier flees army and nurse dies in childbirth
- represents impossibility of normal life after WWI
- at end of story, Frederic watches ants crawl into fire and he throws boiling water on the rest of them, represents fate of everyone
- Hemingway
The Sun also Rises
- American living in luxury European hotels drinking to death
stream of consciousness
author attempts to represent thought in writing, often lacking proper grammar/sentence structure because thoughts are cut off and confusing
ex. Ulysses by James Joyce, most of book is thoughts of one man over one day
Ezra Pound
- The Cantos (book)
- leader of the imagists
William Faulkner
- The Sound and the Fury
- Absalom Absalom!
- Light in August
Jean Toomer
- Cane
Zora Neale Hurston
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Great Gatsby
Winter Dreams
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
town where Dexter is golf caddy in beginning of Winter Dreams
Blackbear, Minnesota (people come from Chicago to golf there)
Dexter
- works at golf place for rich ppl in beginning, his father owns second-best grocery store and his mother is Czech immigrant
- chooses to go to Princeton where he’s considered poor instead of state school, chasing lifestyle
- worries about where he gets his suit bc he’s knowingly playing the part of the lifestyle he wants
- pursues Judy for his entire youth because she represents the lifestyle he wants
- At the end when she’s in a bad marriage and has lost her looks, he realizes she was never perfect; he never cared about her as a person
- he wasted his life on her
Judy
- very desired and has relationships with many men but is not very interesting
- Dexter sees her as perfect and a representation of everything he wants until end
Irene
- “normal” fiance Dexter leaves for Judy, he should’ve been happy with Irene
Hills Like White Elephants
- Hemingway
- represents gender struggles in 1920s Spain