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English 45C: Modernism, Georgia_O'Keeffe_Red_Canna_1919_HMA,…

- - - - The narration of Quentin's story does not explicitly mention it, but revolves entirely around his plan to commit suicide: in it, he buys tire irons, which he later uses to drown himself.
      - Mrs. Dalloway ends with the suicide of Septimus, the information of which shocks Clarissa out of her own depressive, and possibly suicidal mindset into an acceptance of her situation as a housewife. Clarissa and Septimus are foils of each other; however, while he finds release in his own death, she finds release in abandoning her old dreams.
  - - - Homosexuality
        
        Both Clarissa and Septimus have in the past their own respective homosexual experiences: Clarissa with Sally Seton, a childhood friend, and Septimus with Evans, a fellow soldier in the First World War. Both lose their loves and end up in heterosexual marriages, undershadowing their alienation from the society they find themselves in.
        
        The poetry of H.D. takes up much the Sapphic tone, not only in way of H.D.'s own loves and romantic relationships, but in her writing of female eros and ancient Greek poetry, from which she derives much in the name of the poet Sappho.
      - Symbols of Sexuality
        
        Flowers: Both Georgia O’Keefe and H.D. use flowers as erotic forms of art: O’Keefe in the form of paintings that render female genetalia, and H.D. in poetry such as “Sea Rose” and “Eurydice,” where flowers are a sign of liveliness and beauty.
        
        The Pear Tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God: Janie’s first experience with sexual desire occurs when she watches the blossoms on a pear tree. This motif reoccurs in the novel, particularly when she finds romantic satisfaction with Tea Cake.
        
        The smell of grass: In The Sound and the Fury, Benjy observes Caddy much through her smell, particularly how she “smells like trees.” However, when she matures and loses her virginity, Benjy associates the smell with her innocence, and considers that she no longer smells of trees.
    - - Sally Seton, the former love of Clarissa, continuously acts in a nonconforming way, from her defiance of family (the pawning of the ruby brooch) to her open homosexuality. However, when she appears at the end of the novel, she too has conformed to English standards, vanishing the old dream of her rebelliousess.
      - "Make it New!"
        
        In the Harlem Renaissance, artists of various mediums (painters, musicians, authors) sought to create an individual black American art, not dominated by white standards. In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes writes of the necessity to own race with art, as to not simply conform to white institutions.
        
        Ezra Pound, quoted of the slogan "Make it New!" defined much of early Modernism: in his essay, "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste," he defines the virtues of poetry to be its ability to leave an "image" behind, citing several rules of not using any more words than necessary, not muddling the senses, and more.
        
        The Modernist movement is hard to describe as one fluid, defined "movement:" it is, in bulk, only a loose collection of artists who sought to redefine what art means in the modern world, and in fact protested against the constraints of being classified as a singular group.
      - The titular Bartleby of Herman Melville's "Bartleby: The Scrivener" refuses to do what is expected him: he replies to commands with a simple "I would prefer not to," and does not cooperate with even the most basic requests. Particularly, he does not work with anyone else, though soon progressing into a refusal to move or even eat.
- - - - Unreliability
        
        The unnamed narrator of The Turn of the Screw is brought into question when her perception of the ghosts of Bly Manor is not backed up by any evidence except for her own thought. However, as the entire story is told epistolarily through her hand, there is no way of discerning otherwise from her observation.
      - "Stream of Consciousness"
        
        The speech of Lucky in "Waiting for Godot" is a stream-of-consciousness parody of philosophic thought: when commanded to "think," he spouts off paragraphs of rambling concepts that reference academic pursuit, but are inevitably meaningless by their haphazard association.
      - Dialect
        
        The first three narrators of The Sound and the Fury speak in their own accents (only breaking away from the whole book by Faulkner's hesitation to write a black voice completely). This compounds the nature of the book to speak directly from the mind, including the misspellings and slang terms the characters would have used in common speech.
        
        African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
        
        Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God's dialogue entirely in AAVE, forcing the reader to hear characters "in their race."
        
        Langston Hughes wrote poems using African American rhythm styles, incorporating the spoken word and dialect style into his poetry with an audio style.
        
        The Harlem Renaissance saw some infighting on the usage of the vernacular; however, the spotlight of jazz, AAVE, and original black arts in the end won out, with Hughes' essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" describing the imperative of black artists to embrace their culture.
      - Modernism saw a singular upheaval of the narration of literature: between the breakdown of poetic meter and the changing of speaking styles, the movement redefined what narration meant and its influence on what is "true" in passing information.
    - - Both Vladimir and Estragon display anxiety over the fact that their thoughts might not matter; reversing the maxim of "I think, therefore I am," Vladimir refuses to hear Estragon's "private thoughts," while worrying that if Godot's messenger boy does not remember him, his existence is irrelevant.
    - - As the social and technological spheres increasingly took over, some Modernists turned to nature, and times without human impact. This is mirrored in the racist "Primitivism" movement of art, though here actively calling the non-European world "more natural" by inferiority.
      - "Spring and All" displays William Carlos Williams' belief in the restoration of nature: despite the barrenness of the world, life still goes on, and plants grow again.
      - The Countryside
        
        In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," Yeats describes a longing for the Irish countryside deep in his heart, gently romanticizing an existence at peace with his nation.
        
        At the end of "The Dead," Gabriel reminisces over the importance of the countryside to both his family (Gretta's lost love) and all of Ireland, as the snow covers the whole island.
- - - - In Mrs. Dalloway, which takes place in 1923, the scars of the First World War are both present, and almost normalized. Clarissa considers how the quality of gloves has gone down since the time "before the War," while instinctively hearing the noise of a car backfiring as a gunshot.
      - The new technology of the First World War contributed to the Apocalyptic-leaning angst of the Modernists, demonstrated in Yeats' "The Second Coming," wherein the post-war landscape is akin to a world about to be destroyed.
    - - Things Fall Apart chronicles the breakdown of Igbo society under the pressure of colonialism, where white men systematically fracture local institutions, penalize rebellion, and finally condense African culture into "primativism" when they have finally taken fully control.
      - The British colonization of India appears in Mrs. Dalloway as the respectable, bourgeois life Peter Walsh has lived, although he there has leave behind his own problems while developing irritation to the locals for not adapting to his standards, such as through using English wheelbarrows.
  - - - Toxic Masculinity
        
        Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart is fiercely defendant of his place in Igbo society, which bleeds over into his intense masculinity and abhorrence of anything not to his standard. He wrestles, and prides himself as indomitable, while clashing with his wives and sons
        
        Though not as avert in it, Gabriel in "The Dead" struggles much to maintain his position as the masculine, providing figure in a family. He makes awkward comments to Lily, and frets over his speech, doing his best to appear the part of manliness while inevitably failing with the ambitions of his marriage, when Gretta refuses his sexual advances.
    - - The Compsons are a damaged family, who cycle into their own destruction. In contrast, the Gibsons, who are employed as their servants, learn to thrive despite their circumstances, most acutely seen in Dilsey's ability to tell time with a broken clock in contrast to Quentin's destruction of a working one.
      - Marriage
        
        Janie struggles much throughout three different marriages in Their Eyes Were Watching God, being first used like a commodity, then barred from social life, before ending in a love-match.
        
        What damages Caddy's reputation so much is her relation to marriage: though she is nearly wedded to a banker, whose income would guarantee stability; however, when he finds she has already been in a relationship, he abandons the prospect. As unmarried, Caddy's sexuality is criminal, and is associated with the downfall of the family (especially by Jason, who views it as a personal slight).
  - - - In "The Dead," Gabriel struggles with his cultural identity as a Dubliner. When Mrs. Ivors accuses him of being a "West Briton," he freezes and keeps the comment in mind for a long while, though not particularly trying to defend himself against it.
      - By the time of "Easter, 1916," Yeats had progressed into a much more robust nationalism, speaking of the war as "a terrible beauty."
      - Septimus originally enlists into the war effort of Britain out of his romanticization of his own nation's history, thinking of Shakespeare as adequate support for his mind to defend.
      - Expatriation
        
        Many of the Modernist authors (T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway) moved away from their home countries and found themselves in Europe, looking for a more rich cultural experiecne.
        
        Gabriel struggles with his lack of desire to stay within Ireland; he dreams of tours of France while feeling disillusioned from Irish Nationalism.
    - - The narrator of Poe's "The Man of the Crowd" uses phrenology much on the people he passes by, to try and discern their social respectability through their facial features. However, he is cast into anxiety upon finding someone he cannot apply this "empirical" reasoning to, echoing the growing Modernist angst of society's breakdown.
      - In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo's exile takes place as the racial hierarchy is introduced to the Nigerian land, with the concept of "white men" being at first scoffed at by the Igbo people who had never seen them before. However, by the end, the culture is entirely repressed under missionary control.