EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AND MODERNISM 1901 – 1950

NORTH AMERICAN HISTORY

As the 20th century dawned, the United States was poised to change the relationship with the
rest of the world. Up until then it had been content to stay out of international disputes, but as its
economic power grew, it saw how the colonial influence over other countries had benefited European
powers and consequently began to end its historic isolationism.

The United States did not embark on a blatant policy of colonization. In 1898, the inhuman
treatment of Cuban rebels at the hands of the Spanish colonists had strongly affected public opinion in
America and led to a short war with Spain which saw the United States victorious. The United States,
therefore, had become, almost overnight, a colonial power.

Following the Second World War, the United States officially took on its role as leader of the
western world.

THE ECONOMY

While foreign policy changed, the economy continued to expand. Average incomes rose steadily,
there was a fivefold increase in exports, and the world looked on admiringly at the economic miracle of
the age.

The 1920s, known as the Roaring Twenties, were years of excess end enjoyment as people put
the First World War firmly behind them. The prosperity of those years, however, was to come to a
sudden end in 1929 when the Stock Exchange in Wall Street collapsed. Public confidence in financial
institutions vanished, and America slipped into the Great Depression during which millions lost their
jobs while some farmers were reduced to starvation.

SOCIETY

Despite the great hardship of the 1930s American society continued to evolve and develop.

One of the major features of the Roaring Twenties was the freer role allowed to women. In the
jazz era young women, often preferring a masculine to a feminine style of dress, danced and drank the
night away in illegal drinking clubs.

These clubs were illegal because between 1920 and 1933 the sale and consumption of alcohol
was prohibited, but the only lasting effect of the measure was the increased power and influence of
organized crime gangs who trafficked in alcohol.

Money that could not be spent on alcohol was spent on other goods as a consumer society was
born. The consumer boom only really started after 1945, but before that, the radio, telephone and
fridge had become features of most American homes.

Along with the improved status of women, the changing attitude towards nonwhite Americans
was a significant social development. Although racism was still widespread in 1950, the participation of
two million blacks in the defence forces during the Second World War marked their conditional
acceptance into mainstream American life.

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 Race relation would remain a major issue right up the present day, but the first tentative steps
were being made towards the creation of a multicultural nation.

In 1950 this nation, thanks to its economic power and military might, had become a superpower
that was ready to face and challenge the world’s other superpower, the Soviet Union.

NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE

The 19th century had seen the beginnings of a Native American literature with the publication of
such classics as ‘The adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Moby Dick’ and the emergence of a national
poet in the shape of Walt Whitman. In the first half of the 20th century, American writing was to move
from being a peripheral adjunct to the world of English letters to being a dynamic and fully accepted
branch of world literature. Writers like Hemingway and Faulkner were translated into every major
language and helped put an end to America’s literary isolation at the same time as the United States was
coming out of political isolation.

FICTION

Perhaps the greatest contribution that American writers made to the world literature was in the
field of fiction. In the early years of the century, the realism of European novelists like Emile Zola was
much admired, as it allowed novelists to describe graphically the dynamic, competitive and often violent
nature of American life. One of the most strikingly realistic writers was Jack London.

When America emerged rich and strong from the First World War, and as the world watched
and envied the excesses of the Roaring Twenties, a group of writers began to question the unswerving
belief in limitless progress and fabulous wealth that the United States was seen to represent. In so doing
they brought to their writing a directness and clarity that have become one of the hallmarks of American
writing in English.

The first, in chronological order, of this group was F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose work is inexorably
linked with the 1920s. Fitzgerald was a product of and an active participant in the carefree madness of
his age but in his book he reveals the darker side of the glamour. In ‘The Great Gatsby’ the veneer of
youth, beauty, wealth and success fails to cover up the moral black hole at the centre of American
society.

The world of William Faulkner is very different from that of Fitzgerald, but a similar sense of
decadence pervades his work. His decaying world is that of the Deep South, in which old established
white families fall into disrepute and where traditional values are slowly eroded. By using the stream of
consciousness technique, he builds up a comprehensive picture of the intense pride and passion of the
people who make up the racial cauldron of the South.

Like Faulkner and Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway dealt in his work with the more primitive and
elemental sides of human life. In a deceptively simple direct style he presents an almost nihilistic vision
of reality in which man is constantly fighting against the forces of death. The struggle against hostile
nature is the main theme in ‘Death in the afternoon’ and ‘The old man and the sea’, while the
destructive folly of war acts as a backdrop to personal tragedy in ‘A farewell to arms’.