American lifestyle Essay

In your opinion what are the two most substantive characteristics of modernist literature? Use any TWO texts from the course to substantiate and bedeck your argu manpowert. In my opinion, the two most significant characteristics of modernist literature are the disheartened view of modern society or modern doubt, expressed by dementia and fragmentation, and the technique of stream of consciousness. In this essay I will discuss these characteristics and several important texts to illustrate my argument.Gertrude Steins drill is a perfect example of fragmentation, or rather in her case, literary cubism. In art, cubism means showing multiple perspectives, winning a spirt and breaking it down to rebuild it on canvas (analytical cubism) or taking materials to create a sort of collage (synthetic cubism). In modernist literature the identical process occurs populate, feelings, locations are fragmented, hardly bits and pieces are described instead of the undivided picture. As Picas so said I paint objects as I forecast them, not as I see them. Stein was inspired by modernist artists such as Picasso, and wrote a series of literary portraits, including one on Picasso. She defended the re representational nature of Cubism and believed that through the distortion, repetition and altering of a exposed one could get a resemblance of human perception. The love vocal music of J. Alfred Prufrock is a good example of both alienation and fragmentation. Both Prufrock and his domain of a function are fragmented. He cannot really colligate with the women he sees, the conversations he hears, the urban center he walks through, or the mermaids he hears.The descriptions of the women he meets are not realistic, and fragmented, the poem never visualizes the woman with whom Prufrock imagines an encounter except in fragments accouterments that are braceleted and white and bare Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. But not only the women and his environment ar e described in fragments, Prufrock himself is growing old, fading in a fragmented way I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. / Shall I burst my hair behind? Do I hold to eat a peach? Even his voice is a fragmentation of voices past and present ( Dante, Shakespeare) that several(prenominal)how harmonize. The fragmentation in the poem the worries, the interruptions, the repetitions all sum up his relation to the world. The images are used to convey meaning, coherence can be established from the ruins of fragments. Prufrocks thoughts may perhaps move from one to another, and they do so in a way that mimics our thought process. He moves from one doubt to another, and his seemingly random observations are rooted in his past and his insecurities, just like ours are.This poems fragmentation to some extent serves to display Prufrocks indecisive, second-guessing, and pessimistic nature, but it more importantly reflects the fears and uncertainties we all posses. Moreover, Pruf rocks question Do I dare// break up the universe? mirrors his insecurity and anxiety about his social standing. From the fragmented images provided by Eliot we come away with a coherent analysis of Prufrocks character. He is the typical modern man, and his fragmented and often unsure voice is inference of it. The other issue raised by this poem is the modernist feeling of alienation.Prufrock alienates his emotions from those somewhat him. He is scared to show the real him for fear of being jilted or alone. He cannot connect with hatful on an emotional level. in that respect will be magazine, there will be time to organise a face to meet the faces that you meet. In this particular recite Prufrock tells us how he is not himself, but someone people command him to be. Prufrock experiences feelings of exclusion and alienation from the modern world and industrialised society, which becomes clear in his low self-esteem and his inability to form relationships, and makes him worry a bout what people think of him.He even claims he should have been a play off of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas and feels pinned and wriggling on the wall when people scrutinise him. With the lack of self-confidence, his alienation grows stronger. The quote Do I dare? is repeated often throughout the poem. He asks himself time after time whether he should be himself or the person other expect him to be. Because of his alienation Prufrock feels unable to act on his desires, since he feels that people will automatically reject him.This can be seen as a reflection of the fast modern American lifestyle, with people feeling trapped and unable to connect with other people and to society. Another example of the alienation evident in modernist literature is Heart of Darkness. Modernist writers often present the world as desolate, and Conrads Heart of Darkness is no exception. As Marlow describes My isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contac t, the oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a contemptible and senseless delusion (p.30)