America in the Postwar "Big Boom"
America tended to do well economically during the postwar "big boom," when more citizens enrolled in college and the nation continued to experience the highest per capita income. A traditional middle-class home had power, a radio, a telephone, and most likely a sewing machine or a typewriter, demonstrating the introduction of new technologies. People adopted mass entertainment in the early twentieth century, with most adults going to the cinema at least once a week. With increased beer demand, most clubs saw an increase in entertainment featuring jazz music and cocktails. Most women had left to urban areas during the war where they felt liberated. Many young people became rebellious and disillusioned. This made the rich writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, to live abroad, whereby they absorbed different traditional views which influenced their works.
The Emergence of Modernism
Modernism emerged in America and Europe in the early twentieth century, whereby art was mainly used to demonstrate a shift from Western civilization's classical traditions. The modern life was characterized by faster, more scientific and technological art and literature. The increased attention to techniques in art was greatly supported by the technological development in factories and machines. For instance, the electrical light was of great importance to the writers and artists. Most advertisements of the period consistently exhibited images of floodlit skyscrapers and light rays coming out of watchtowers and illuminating the outer world. This symbolized an illumination on the outer darkness, which was a change in the old-fashioned traditions (Ahearn 15).
A Shift in Narrative Perspective
The modernist literature also laid more importance on both vision and viewpoint, whereby it was no longer critical to only tell a third-person narrative. Both the story and the technique of telling it became more important. This made most writers and poets begin to experiment with fictional point of view. A school of "new criticism" emerged in American art, whereby the artists examined situations, shedding more light and insights upon them. It will be essential to consider the works of specific artists as a way of confirming the above-mentioned situation at this point:
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in a family which afforded the best education that would have been provided to any competent American poet of his time at Harvard College. He specialized in Sanskrit and Oriental philosophy which boosted his poetry. He was also an influential essay and drama writer. Eliot is best remembered as a critic through his formulation of the "objective correlative," which is described in his poems as the way in which human beings express their emotions through a chain of events or a set of objects. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock gives a clearer understanding of his approach when Prufrock thinks that he has measured his years in coffee spoons, symbolizing a wasted lifetime (Eliot 5).
The Harlem Renaissance
The black community, Harlem, which was located uptown in New York City displayed exceptional creativity in their jazz music. Their music was significantly appreciated due to its frank, sensual and emotional lyrics. The Harlem expressed the bittersweet life of African Americans which was characterized by economic and social inequality. One of the native poets, Countee Cullen, wrote rhymed poems which were much liked by the whites. His poems expressed the belief in not allowing race differences to dictate the subject matter of his poems (McKay 9).
William Carlos
Carlos explains his objective of capturing "immediacy" of experience in his poem To Elsie. Understanding of this poem is dependent on the ability of the reader to intuit the spiritual fineness of the American society in the twentieth century. He succeeds in delivering a conspiracy meaning, which is still used by today's poets (Ahearn 14).
Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers wrote Shine, Perishing Republic in 1925 as an expression of the prevailing economic conditions in America. He displays an optimistic nature, whereby his title depicts the hope of America rising once again. The poem inspires the reader to focus on the hope of shining, even though Jeffers wanted the reader to pay attention to the decaying fruit. He, therefore, enables the reader to have an understanding of the fact that although American seemed to be perishing, it would later shine of the right actions were put in place (Jeffers 3).
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is mainly remembered for his novel The Great Gatsby which is an economically based story about the dream of a self-made person. It is the need for self-fulfillment and love that the protagonist, Jay Gatsby, comes to realize the immeasurable costs of success. Fitzgerald was able to bring out the picture of the desperate life in the twentieth century. This can be attributed to the life he led after his marriage to a fiancé who had previously declined his proposal because he was poor, leading him to a life that was characterized with mismanagement of funds in the search for fame (Fitzgerald 11).
Conclusion
The artists' works in the twentieth century are a rich source of information of the prevailing circumstances in America. Most of the literature and art took a critical approach that enabled the reader to analyze the dominant economic, social and political situation critically. This study acknowledges the fact that the artists succeeded in inspiring the stakeholders to take the necessary actions of saving the succumbing economy, hence making a positive change.
Works Cited
Ahearn, Barry. William Carlos Williams and Alterity: The Early Poetry. Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. New Canadian Library, 2016.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and James L.W. West III. Fitzgerald: All The Sad Young Men. Vol. 8.
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Jeffers, Robinson. Centennial Essays for Robinson Jeffers. University of Delaware Press, 1991.
McKay, Claude. hSelected Poems. Courier Corporation, 2012.
