Perspectives Of T. S. Eliot And F. Scott Fitzgerald

Modernism from the Perspectives of T.S. Eliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald During the early 20th century, America faced difficult times with the presence of two World Wars and the Great Depression. Throughout this period, literature began to change with the people and their new attitude. More specifically, the The Norton Anthology: American Literature’s introduction, “American Literature: 1914-1945,” discusses exactly how this change formed into the literary movement of Modernism, which “refers to work that represents the transformation of traditional society under the pressure of modernity, and that breaks down traditional literary forms in doing so” (663). Instead of the optimistic, unifying, nature-dependent writings of the Pre-Modern World,

Despite personally feeling that Eliot reveals parts of his life and character in the poem, Joshua T. Boyd analyzes Carolina Phillips’ interpretation of the poem in his essay “The Impulse Towards Beauty in ‘Prufrock,’ the Waste Land, and Four Quartets: T. S. Eliot’s Aesthetic Response to the Spiritual Collapse of His Era” by illustrating the persona as “a mask for the poet himself” (26). Namely, the character of J. Alfred Prufrock is an embellished extension of Eliot, which creates the separation from his life and the poem. Moreover, Boyd quotes Eliot as he evaluates a review from Elisabeth Schneider: “the voice of the poet, who has put on the costume and make-up either of some historical character, or of one out of fiction.” The persona allows Eliot to express how he truly feels without fully putting himself out into the public. In “Prufrock,” the speaker addresses his anxiety about the world by worrying, “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” (45-46). Although this easily could be interpreted as Eliot’s uncomfortable place in society, the front he creates with J. Alfred Prufrock shows how New Criticism further strayed away from connectivity and focused on