choices “we are the sum total of all the choices we make.” -woody allen what choices must you...
TRANSCRIPT
CHOICES“We are the sum total of all the choices we make.”
-Woody Allen
What choices must you make?
• To what degree do people judge you on the choices you make?• To what degree do you judge yourself based on the choices
you make?• How are your values related to your choices?
PERSONAL FUFILLMENT
SUCCESS
HAPPINESS
VALUESYSTEM
MARRIAGEFIL
IAL R
ESPONSIBIL
ITY
RELIGIO
NCAREER
LOVE
FAM
ILY
POLITIC
S
FRIENDS
20TH CENTURY LITERATURE
A Crisis in Values
MODERNISM(1910-1940)AN ARTISTIC, MUSICAL, AND LITERARY
MOVEMENT IN THE 20TH CENTURY
What are the most important issues of the last century?
VALUE SYSTEM
PERSONAL FUFILLMENT
SUCCES
S
HAPPINESS
MARRIAGE FILIA
L RESPONZ.
RELIGIO
NCAREER
LOVE
FAM
ILY
POLITIC
S
FRIENDS
How do they manifest themselves into the literature we read? RELATION TO CHOICES AND HUMAN PLIGHT
Modernism Definition ContinuedRejection of nineteenth-century optimism, presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism.
Some Modernists
Across the Arts
MODERN PAINTERS
• PICASSO• MATISSE• KANDINSKY• DALI
MODERN AUTHORS
• ERNEST HEMINGWAY• WILLIAM FAULKNER• F. SCOTT FITZGERALD• JOHN STEINBECK
MODERN POETS
• William Carlos Williams
• Wallace Stevens• Marianna Moore
• Patricia Smith• E.E. Cummings• H.D. (Hilda
Doolittle)• Robert Frost
MODERN ARCHITECTS
• WRIGHT
• GROPIUS
• LE CORBUSIER
• VAN DER ROHE
More rationale and practical.
MODERN ENTERTAINMENT MOVEMENT
SILENT MOVIES- OFTEN FOCUSED ON THE DANGERS OF THE MODERN
WORLD
MAJOR ACTORS- CHARLIE CHAPLIN & BUSTER KEATON
Characteristics of Modernism as a
Cultural Movement
FORCES DRIVING MODERNISM
• Search for reason in an unreasoned world
• Concerned with industrialization and the displacement of persons
• Bothered by the hypocrisy of Christianity
MODERNISTS’ VIEW OF THE WORLD
• The world is chaos• The world is unstable• Loss of faith• See a collapse of morality/values
MODERNIST BELIEFS• Alienation is an increasingly
common condition
• No absolute certainties and truths
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM
• LOSS OF FAITH IN THE AMERICAN DREAM
• REJECTION OF ARTIFICIALITY “Isn’t it pretty to think so? - Hemmingway
CHECK YOURSELF (not the quiz)
• When was the modernist time period?
• Who were the pervading/popular modernist authors?
• What was one of the modernist beliefs?
Art and MentalityPICASSO’S CUBISM
• FIRST PICTURE-Self Portrait 1899-1900• SECOND PICTURE-Self Portrait, cubist
period• Role of artist changes
Art for arts sake…
Characteristics of Modern Literature
MODERN LITERARY MOVEMENT
• Major forms are poetry and fiction
• Stylistic innovations - disruption of traditional syntax and form.
• Intention is often to challenge the way readers see the world
• Time fades and dissolves regarding characters mindset
WRITING STYLE
• Imagery and symbolism- frequent
• Colloquial language• Literature as art- form, style,
and technique are important• Often includes much
dialogue• Stream-of-consciousness;
interior dialogue
• Narration is structured by narrator's or character's flow of consciousness and memory
• Associative (rather than conventional "linear")
• Often employs flashback and flash forward techniques
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
MODERN HERO IN LITERATURE
• Rejection of the ideal hero• Hero in modern story will be
flawed and disillusioned
• EXAMPLE: • Jay Gatsby- The Great Gatsby• George Milton- Of Mice and
Men
New hero: ironic, frustrating,
disappointing, self-doubting, anxious
CHARACTERIZATION IN MODERN LITERATURE
• Interest in the inner workings of the human mind
• Intense psychological characterization (Freud and Jung)
• Reader learns about characters primarily through dialogue
PLOTS AND MODERN LITERATURE
EXPLORES: • Sense of isolation
• Uncertainty• Disillusionment• Disjointedness
• Meaninglessness
MODERN LITERATURE FORMS
• Literature often lacked expositions, resolutions, and transitions.
THEMES IN MODERN LITERATURE
1. Critique of traditional values of our culture
2. Loss of meaning and hope in the world
3. Alienation from society and loneliness
4. Violence
5. Decadences and Decay
6. Loss and Despair
Mentality in action: Hemmingway
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see. You hang around cafés."
Note- In order to understand the significance of the quote you need to know the meaning of the word expatriate: (v.) to withdraw oneself from allegiance to one’s country.
How does this reflect modernist mentality?
In this quote, it’s used as a noun…even though it’s actually a verb. We can assume, this was an intentional corruption of “ex-patriot.”
Mentality in Action: Fitzgerald
• "He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." -The Great Gatsby
• The passage records Jay Gatsby's ill-fated courtship of Daisy, a captivating yet selfish and amoral woman. After renewing their tragic romance years later, Daisy proves to be the unworthy receptacle of Gatsby's idyllic dream and subsequently serves as the agent of his death.
Mentality in Action: Steinbeck
“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' … I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.‘… I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”
Faulkner One-Liners
• A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.
• Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
• Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
• Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
READERS ROLE
OLD READERS• His role is passive:• HE IS:
– Taught– Entertained– Emotionally
involved
MODERNIST READERS
• The reader has an active role – must give his own
subjective interpretation
Rejection of nineteenth-century optimism, presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism