God’s Transition to a Feared, Cruel Deity in Modernist Literature and Poetry

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Previous literary schools, such as the Renaissance writers and Romanticism, depicted God as an extremely powerful, but benevolent deity that ensured that the conclusion to most events turned out in a positive fashion. After World War I’s catastrophic cost in lives, souls, and property, many authors and poets changed their views of God. Instead of a loving, all-powerful force for good, God turned into a cruel, supernatural being that chooses not to intervene when humans suffer. Many modernists felt that if God could not prevent a disaster such as World War I, he either looked passively at humans or even assisted in their abilities to destroy fellow men, women, and children. Authors such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway described God in this manner, especially during their European expatriate periods. Since God gave humans, the power to be cruel, God must also possess a cruel side to his image. Among such finest literary artists, the name of T.S Eliot tops the list. His work illustrates a clear view of modernism. Being a spectator of the critical conditions of the twentieth century, his demonstrations in poetry and essays confirms a supreme blend of thoughts towards religion and belief (William). Eliot’s another distinction in poetry The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was taken as an upper hand with appreciation. He mentioned the thesis of simplicity and silence in human nature. Turning towards the religious side even in his practical life as well, Eliot expressed a variety of such themes. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, he symbolized how men try to decipher the feelings of women as after the World War I they came out to be working on their new function of bread earner. The measures of women exhibit the def... ... middle of paper ... ...so Rises. EPub Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 2012. 115. eBook. MacDonald, Harold, ed. "Ash Wednesday: Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot." Insight. Lenten Poems, 2012. Web. 10 Apr 2012. Moody, Anthony David. The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 121. Print. Pound, Ezra. "Ballad for Gloom." Bartleby.com. Bartleby. Web. 6 Apr. 2012 Pound, Ezra. “The Cantos.” Baym, Nina, Wayne Franklin 1492-98. Read, Forrest. "The Pattern of the Pisan Cantos." Sewanee Review 65.3 (1957): 400-19. jam. 12 Apr. 2012. Rodgers, Audrey T. “T. S. Eliot's “Purgatorio”: The Structure of Ash Wednesday.” Comparative Literature Studies 7.1 (1970): 97-112. JSTOR. 8 Apr. 2012. Videnov, Valentin A. "Human voices in silent seas: a reading of Eliot's Love Song." The Explicator 67.2 (2009): 126+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 May 2012.

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