The Lost Boy Thomas Wolfe Essay

624 Words2 Pages

Meghan Horn
Discussion 7
Dr. Frechie
March 20th, 2015
Thomas Wolfe Thomas Wolfe was a type of writer that was completely different than other modernist prose writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. His books were written and published from about 1920-1940 reflecting on American culture and also much of what was going on in his life. Wolfe didn’t want to write about the government or the wars of America, he wanted the readers to know about all the good moments of our lives (Loeffelhotz). Wolfe went on to write four novels over eight years and had more than 10 works published after his untimely death in 1938. After Wolfe’s death, another writer of the time, William Faulkner, said that Wolfe might have had the best talent of …show more content…

Throughout The Lost Boy, it’s four sections all are viewed through the perceptions of the character Grover (Robert), his mother, sister, and brother Eugene. The story of this family offers a four-angled view of The Lost Boy: 1) an episode involving Robert and his father, 2) a view of Robert through his mother’s eyes, 3) an older sister’s account of his illness and death, and 4) the attempt of the author-brother to recapture time and his lost brother by returning years later to the house in St. Louis where they had lived …show more content…

The short story stressed the emotional connections between all of the characters and their feelings within the story. All the complex ties, especially the emotional ones, within the story make this even more modernistic. Eugene, the narrator, goes on a journey to find the house his brother died in. Making friends with the new owner, he convinced her to take him on a tour. This emotional tie between the people and location make this a strong modernist piece of work. Modernist short-story writers like Wolfe, rejected traditional attitudes regarding form in the short story. (The Influence of Modernist Structure) One of Wolfe’s modernist theories was “seeing is believing.” Wolfe believed that visual art, if it is to be deeply decorative, should be representational, not abstract (Tom Wolfe's Epiphany, 2006). This, to me, shows that Wolfe is very different than other modernist writers we have learned about in this class. For Stein and others who had similar ideas, the paintings that reflected their own work and vice versa, never looked similar. Wolfe wanted the art to represent directly what he was writing

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