Many modernist writers of the twentieth century focused their works on the concepts of identity and alienation. These artists focused their attention on the notions of self, and what it meant to be an individual. They pondered over ideas of the individual experience and what consequences our social, political, or historical environment really has on a soul, while trying to determine what the true self really consisted of. The concept of identity was very important to undertake, and these concepts are still contemplated today. Modernist authors force the reader to take a look within themselves and question who they really are, and why. Two authors that undertook these questions with great skill, would be William Faulkner and Richard Wright. These two authors are excellent examples of the modernist movement, because they experimented with identity in different ways. Richard Wright explored the relationship between the self and the historical, social, and political environment, and Faulkner, examined questions of alienation and identity of the self within the individual. Both authors contributed their ideas amazingly, and were viewed as crucial writers of the modernist movement.
William Faulkner, as well as other modernist writers, focused on the main question of how an individual can form any basis for meaningful values and experience when they feel separated from their truest self, cut off from any sense of belonging in the world in a secure way.
The truest self is assumed to be an individuals morals, beliefs, and ideas about what kind of person they really are. If an individual must deny their inner self, how can they gain from any experience they have? This question is very interesting because almost any individual if asked, can relate to a time when they denied their own beliefs, and alienated themselves from themselves in order to fit in with their society. In other words they conformed. None of them would tell you it was a good experience. By denying what the true self believes for an outside force, be it the influences of social, political, or historical nature, the individual causes inner conflict and the loss of true self. Only by controlling the interaction with the pressures of these outside conflicts can one be true to what they believe. We cannot deny that the situations that we are born into do have some effect on our true self, but it is how we deal with them that determine our inner peace.
The first psychological change Faulkner uses to show readers how he thinks of the human mind is through the sense of identity. Faulkner uses several
In his Novel Prize Address, Faulkner states that an author must leave "no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart...love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." He accuses his younger contemporaries of ignoring these noble spiritual pillars while pondering the atomic doom of mankind with questions like, "When will I be blown up?" Such physical fears, far from conflicts of the heart, are what plague his bomb-obsessed contemporaries. Yet Faulkner stands, seemingly alone, in opposition to this weakness; he "decline[s] to accept the end of man" and in rebelling, fights for the old universal truths and the glories of the past. In classical style, he brushes away passing fears and fads, settling for nothing less than the "problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." Nothing else is worth writing about and Faulkner's work is living proof.
Walter Benn Michaels is an active literary theorist, and is currently a Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism, Michaels examines American literary modernism, emphasizing its “participation in a crucial shift in American conceptions of race [and identity]” (Lee). While Progressivist racism is based upon a “racial hierarchy and the assimilation of non-Negro ethnicities” (Lee), a nativist perspective focuses upon the determination of identity through racial difference, thereby refuting any form of assimilation because of the importance of preserving racial purity. Michaels analyzes a variety of American texts of the 1920s, including The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and identifies a recurring insistence upon “identity as the determining ground of action or significance” (Michaels, 1). The differentiation of identities, or more specifically the pluralistic distinction between American and un-American, is the defining element of nativism, and Michaels asserts that the period immediately following World War I involved a “redefinition of the terms in which [this distinction] might be made” (2). Incidentally, while the term modernism is broadly used to “identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature” (Abrams, 167), Michaels suggests it is particularly characterized by an interest in the “relation of sign to referent” (Michaels, 2). By exhibiting the modernist premise that a word achieves “reality by transcending rather than being the thing it names” (74), Michaels employs the notion of the...
Porter, Carolyn. "William Faulkner: Innocence Historicized." Seeing and Being: The Plight of the Participant Observer in Emerson, James, Adams, and Faulkner. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1981. Cited as rpt. in Bloom.
“Read, read, read. Read everything-- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.” - William Faulkner. Born in September of 1897, William totally re-wrote classical literature in the 19th century, even beyond his death in July of 1962. Faulker’s work was crawling with sub-plots, details, hidden inspiration, and key elements from previously famous novelists. William Faulkner revolutionized modern literature by taking the ideas of other writers and adding personal inspiration, description, and emotion to his work.
On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald capture the essence of the modernist period, and both approach different aspects of the same genre. The goal of the modernist writer was to create an enjoyable piece of literature, while confronting issues that had never before been raised in the literary world to date. The Modernist hoped to wipe away the images of perfection in the imaginary realties of the literary past and create a clean slate filled with the reality of the modernist period. The Modernist authors will always be remembered for their exploration of language and form, and for their dedication to keeping us in a well lit place, in an otherwise deceiving reality.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.
Faulkner's theme of alienation comes up many times in his writing. In the book The Major Years, Melvin Backman states that Faulkner was reaching for a more decent life and more decent people in the midst of evil. He was reaching for love, innocence, simplicity, and strength, but he also knew that these things were being hidden by reality. "With Faulkner, as with all men, the personal condition underlay and shaped his view of the human condition" (Backman, p.183).
All throughout his novel, Faulkner presents multiple narrators who all give somewhat differing versions of emotions and events that cause the reader to question their reliability. Because he strays from the traditional practice of having a single narrator, every account is completely subjective to whoever is telling it, and therefore a wide range of events are subsequently left up to the reader to decide who and what is most truthful. Readers must sort through the various interpretations of events and each character’s emotions, as they can no longer accept the story that is usually being told by one reliable narrator. Because of this narration style, there is no final truth or final universal meaning in the novel, as everything that happens is open to an individ...
Kinney, Arthur F. Faulkner’s Narrative Poetics Style as Vision. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978
Modernists did not have faith in the external reality put forth by social institutions, such as the government and religion, and they no longer considered these avenues as trustworthy means to discover the meaning of life. For this reason they turned within themselves to discover the answers. Modernist literature is centered on the psychological experience as opposed to the external realities of the world. The experience is moved inwards in an attempt to make modernist works more representative of reality by making the experience more personal. The modernist era of literature is closely associated with the works of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, among others. These three authors stand out because they have made use of unique literary tactics and devices which emphasize the inward turn of modernist literature.
Many believed that Modernist works were not “art” because they did not always look like real life. But what is “real life”? A new outlook on reality was taken by Modernists. What is true for one person at one time is not true for another person at a different time. Experimentation with perspective and truth was not confined to the canvas; it influenced literary circles as well.
The question, “What is involved in being true to your self?” is very complicated. There are many aspects to this question. First you would need to know what is meant by being true. Being true is the act of putting forth sincerity, or being genuinely faithful. It is honesty, seriousness, and earnestness. Next you would need to realize what it means to be a self. In class we discussed the difference between animals, rational animals, and people. This topic also came up in the reading about the concentration camps. Frankl quotes,