1. Redefining the American Dream
The Moderns:
Redefining the American Dream
“Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.”
-Willa Cather

2. Overview
Life during the early part of the 20th Century was marked by tremendous change.
Political
Social
Psychological
Spiritual
Each decade brought the new upheaval,
and each upheaval required a new
adjustment in attitude.

3. During this period of time, look for answers to these questions:
What is the American Dream?
What happened to the American Dream in the
early twentieth century?
In what ways did modernism challenge tradition-especially in what people valued in art and literature?

4. War Changes Everything
World War I (the Great War) was one of the events that changed the
American voice in fiction.
The country lost its innocence
Many Americans began to
question authority
(Modernist Movement)
- Disillusionment with
traditions that seemed to have become
spiritually empty.

5. The American Dream: Pursuit of a Promise
American as a new Eden
A belief in progress
Triumph of the individual

6. America as a New Eden
American is a promised land of beauty, unlimited resources, and endless opportunities.
-The Great Gatsby
(F. Scott Fitzgerald) 1925
- Great wealth and pursuit of
pleasure had become ends
in themselves for many
people.
Gatsby was a self-made man
whose wealth has mysterious & illegal origins.
His extravagant gestures are in pursuit of a dream.

7. A Belief in Progress
The American birthright in one of ever-expanding opportunity.
Progress is a good thing.
We can optimistically expect life to keep getting better & better.

8. Triumph of the Individual
The independent, self-reliant individual will triumph.
Everything is possible for the person who places trust in his or her own powers and potential.
Idea was championed by Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Trust the universe and trust yourself.”

9. A Crack in the World: Breakdown of Beliefs and Traditions
The devastation of WWI & the economic crash a decade later severely damaged the three tenets of the American Dream.
Writers became skeptical of the New England Puritan tradition & the gentility that
had been central to the literary ideal.
Most writers came from New England,
where American started but
modernist writers came from
the South, the Midwest, and the West.

10. Two New Intellectual Theories or Movements
Marxism
Psychoanalysis

11. Marxism and the Challenge to Free Enterprise
Russia during WWI – Marxist revolution toppled & murdered the anointed ruler, the czar.
Karl Marx’s socialistic beliefs powered the revolution in 1917.

12. Karl Marx Believed…
The capitalist system could not be fixed and had to be destroyed to make way for a classless society.
All property would be owned by everyone as a community and people would receive equal benefits and rewards.
Sounds great, right? However,
they followed the mantra:
“All men are equal, but some
men are MORE equal than others.”
Hence, Animal Farm

13. Capitalism is Threatened
Some Americans believed that certain elements of Marxism would provide much-needed rights to workers.

14. Freud and the Unconscious Mind
Vienna, Austria ( )
Sigmund Freud, the found of psychoanalysis
He said our actions were influenced by the subconscious
New understanding of human sexuality and the role it plays in our unconscious thoughts.
His beliefs left little room for humans to have free will.

15. Unconscious Mind Continued…
A literary result of this study of psychoanalysis was a narrative technique called stream of consciousness.
Stories weren’t told chronologically
Attempted to imitate the moment-by-moment flow of a character’s perception & memories
James Joyce in Ulysses
Katherine Anne Porter
William Faulkner

16. At Home and Abroad: The Jazz Age
Prohibition- In 1919, the Constitution was amended to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

17. Prohibition Added the Following Words to Our Vocabulary…
Bootlegger
Speak-easy
Cocktail
Flapper
Gangster
Jazz
F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the
time period a new name:
The Jazz Age

18. The Jazz Age Continued…
1920- Women got the right to vote
Gave women an opportunity to move into artistic, intellectual, and social circles.

19. Expatriates Abroad Many American writers & artists left
America to enjoy life to the fullest in Europe.
Living was cheap in Paris, the French Riviera, and Italy
Life was more exotic there
They could drink alcohol freely
American Expatriates were a hint that something had gone wrong with the American Dream

20. American Expatriates F. Scott Fitzgerald (& wife Zelda)
Ernest Hemingway
Ezra Pound
Gertrude Stein

21. Grace Under Pressure: The New American Hero
Ernest Hemingway was
the most influential of
the post-WWI writers.
He strove for plain style; reduced literary style to
the bare bones-reflects
his past as a news reporter for the Kansas City Star
Introduced a new kind of hero-The Hemingway Hero

22. Hemingway Hero Man of action (warrior, tough competitor)
Has a code of honor, courage, & endurance
He shows “grace under pressure”
He has thorough disillusionment-at the
mysterious center of the universe lay
nothing at all-this is Hemingway’s
own philosophy.
Belief in self: decency, bravery,
competence, and skillfulness.

23. Modern Voices in Poetry: A Dazzling Period of Experimentation
The last traces of British influence were washed away and the American writers began a period of experimentation.
Many writers went to Europe to soak up artistic influences there.
Influenced by modernist artists like Matisse & Picasso

24. Period of Experimentation
Poets created works that invited new ways of seeing and thinking (Ezra Pound,
T.S. Eliot, & E.E. Cummings)
- Symbolism
- Imagism

25. Voices of American Character
Many American poets rejected the revolution of modernism and stayed home in America.
Their individual accents revealed the regional diversity and character of American life.
Example: Robert Frost’s
poems embodied “New England
speech” and subjects.

26. The Harlem Renaissance
In the 1920s, a group of black poets focused on the unique contributions of African-American culture to America.
Poetry based its rhythms on spirituals and jazz and blues based its diction on the street talk of the ghettos.

27. Why is it called the Harlem Renaissance?
Geographical center of the movement was in Harlem, a New York City neighborhood.
People here were too long ignored, patronized, or otherwise shuffled to the margins of American art.
When this poetry joined with music echoing from New Orleans, Memphis, & Chicago, it became part of the Jazz Age.

28. The American Dream Revised
Writers of this era experimented boldly with forms and subject matter.
Also tried to find answers to the following questions:
Who are we?
Where are we going?
What values should guide us on the search for our human identity?
This echoes the philosophy of humanism in the European Renaissance.