Reader 20th Century Literature V4 PDF

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Literature Fourth Form

“Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our lore and legends. They bring order into our confusing world. Think about how many times a day you use stories to pass along data, insights, memories or commonsense advice.” - Edward Mille

What is literature? You might think to yourselves, ‘ugh, literature. Why do we have to do this?’ Now, you might be right in thinking it could be uninteresting, but you have to realize one thing first: without literature, or more specifically, without stories, life would be rather boring (and there would be nothing to watch on Netflix!). Storytelling is as old as humanity itself, and writing isn’t that much younger. Be it paintings of hunting parties in the Chauvet cave in France, hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs or reliefs on ancient Greek temples, we have been telling stories by using images. Stories that were familiar to all who saw those images.

When actual writing first started can be debated, but some of the oldest stories that we still know are the Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 1800 B.C.) and the Iliad & Odyssey by Greek writer Homer (ca. 1260–1180 BC). Though written thousands of years ago, we still read and teach these stories to new generations. Why do this? Because they are important in teaching us about our world, about our history, about people, about morality, and about right and wrong. Think of all the stories you’ve read, seen, or heard, and just imagine all of them finding a common ancestor in a hunting party painted on the wall of cave 36.000 years ago.

“You’re never going to kill storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.” - Margaret Atwoo

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That is why studying literature is important. We ought to not just take in the stories, but learn how they are created and more importantly, why they are told. The why is important. Over times, the stories changed as humanity changed. We have gone from just retelling events on a temple relief to giving characters psychological depth and meaning on a digital page. We don’t just convey what a person looks like, but we dig into their feelings and fears. We love or hate characters, and perhaps you’ve found yourselves screaming at one for doing something stupid or brave. All this comes from us and our innate desire for stories. This is where literature comes into play. After all, which stories (out of millions!) deserve to labelled ‘Literature’ (with a capital L)?

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.”- Sue Monk Kid

We could just simple give you a definition and leave it at that. It is, however, not that simple. What one considers a masterpiece of storytelling another might think is absolutely boring. So, by going over several literary movements from just the 20th century alone, we are going to have a look at what has been labelled ‘Literature’ and what, perhaps, should be deserving of the same title. Besides literary movements we will have a look at some of the genres that sprung up during the 20th century as well. This particular time in human history is our first focal point because of the great variety in works that we can review and the many developments in storytelling that have taken place. What changed in our writing? Whose voices could (finally) be heard? How could writers influence politics, popular culture, and even a war? And perhaps most importantly, which writers left a lasting impression on history. After these lessons perhaps, and hopefully, you will finish this reader with a different view on what we call literature.

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

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Contents: 1. Introduction to Britain and early 20th century history

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2. War and its writers: Britain’s War Poets

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a. The Soldier – Rupert Brooke b. Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen 3. The Interbellum: Modernism and the Stream of Consciousness

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a. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn b. Life of Pi – Yann Martel 4. When war is over: Postmodernism

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a. On the road – Jack Kerouac b. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson 5. Visions of our world: Dystopian novels

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a. 1984 – George Orwell b. The Power – Naomi Alderman 6. Black voices: the Harlem Renaissance & Civil Rights

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a. Countee Culleen & Langston Hughes b. The Color Purple - Alice Walker c. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas 7. Finding identity: Postcolonialism

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a. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe b. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 8. Escaping reality: Fantasy and Science Fiction

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a. Stardust – Neil Gaiman b. The Martian – Andy Weir 9. Final assignment

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1. Introduction to Britain and the early 20th century history At the beginning of the twentieth century Britain was still the leading world power, with a large part of the world either being part of their colonies or trading partners. Coming out the Victorian Age (Queen Victoria’s reign was a long one: 18371901) and into the new century, there were scientific advancements, calls for social reform and universal suffrage, and a boom in artistic expression. Sadly, many of the political, social and economic conditions were unchanged from the Victorian Age. This changed soon enough with the formation of the new Labour Party and the Trade Unions, both of which formed and spread socialist ideas to the masses. A change was coming to a long established division between rich and poor, man and woman, educated and uneducated. However, it was World War 1 (the Great War) that temporarily stopped all this (and weirdly enough, sped them up when the war ended). Many of the UK’s young men died in the trenches in the north of France and Flanders. England, like France and Germany, was badly damaged by the war and had to settle for a more modest role on the world’s stage. With the US entering the war late and reaping the rewards of winning, the financial centre of the world shifted from London to New York and some of the colonies (Ireland, India) started to claim independence, leading to rebellions, more bloodshed, and more opposition to the established order. In 1929, some ten years after the war had ended and the Roaring 20s came to an end, the Wall Street Crash had a huge impact on the British economy, leading to large numbers of unemployment and more cries for social reform. And in those years, across the pond in Germany, the country people thought had been crushed in by the war, started to re-emerge as a leading power in Europe under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. We all know what that would lead to. Here are some video’s to help you along with understanding the history of Britain (and it’s colonies) in the 19th and 20th century: • • • • •

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frF33emgn5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alJaltUmrGo&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C 9&index=35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPZQ0LAlR4&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80 C9&index=36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y16AgszWfqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_sGTspaF4Y

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2. War and its writers: Britain’s War Poets World War I, or The Great War as it is known in the UK, was one of the most deadly and horrible wars the world has ever seen. The invention of new weaponry, including the horrible biological agent known as mustard gas, let to a death toll never before seen in any war. Between 1914 and 1918 some 11 million soldiers had died either in battle or from its consequences, such as illness, injury, or ‘shell shock’ (what we now know to be PTSD). When war broke out in July 1914, many people were relieved that the long-awaited showdown between Germany and her allies against Britain, France, and Russia had finally come, since the precarious balance of power was coming to a head. With the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the stage was set for all-out war. The general sentiment was that the war would be over by Christmas that same year. Boy, were they wrong. After two months of old-fashioned mobile warfare, the fronts in both Eastern and Western Europe hardened into a trench war that lasted for four years. In futile efforts to capture just a few hundred yards of territory, an entire generation of European, Russian, Canadian, Australian, and American men died in the trenches, not to mention the colonial subjects fighting in places such as Africa and Asia. It really was a Great War and was promoted as being ‘the war to end all wars’. Sadly, that was the wrong moniker as history would be repeated some 25 years later. This is where we start with our literary inquiries. With all the world grinding to a halt to fight over who gets to keep a piece of Belgium, the arts world followed. Few writers and artists continued working during these 4 years. But as you know, we are still storytellers at heart and even in war one can find a way to tell others about their experiences. So this is where we start, at the point where humanity showed us its worst, and with those men who witnessed it first-hand directing their words at the rest of us.

The War Poets At the beginning of the war many of Britain’s bright young men volunteered for the army and the poets among them wrote patriotically inspired poems, expressing that it was an honourable thing to die for your country. War often starts like this, with the government promoting it positively. With young men seeking adventure and glory, its not hard to imagine them writing about the war in such an optimistic way. Once poetsoldier who wrote like this, and whose poem is famous still, was Rupert Brooke. Consider the poem The Soldier: If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 1

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. The Soldier was the last of five poems of Brooke's War Sonnets about the start of World War I. As Brooke reached the end of his series, he turned to what happened when the soldier died while abroad. When the poem was written, the bodies of soldiers were not regularly brought back to their homeland but buried nearby where they had died. In World War I, this produced vast graveyards of British soldiers in "foreign fields," and allows Brooke to portray these graves as representing a piece of the world that will be forever England. Writing at the start of the war, Brooke foreshadowed the vast numbers of soldiers whose bodies, torn to shreds or buried by shellfire, would remain buried and unknown as a result of the methods of fighting that war. For a nation desperate to turn the senseless loss of its soldiers into something that could be coped with, even celebrated, Brooke’s poem became a cornerstone of the remembrance process and is still in heavy use today. It has been accused, not without merit, of idealizing and romanticizing war, and stands in stark contrast to the poetry of Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), whose work we shall look at in a bit as well. Religion is central to the second half of "The Soldier," expressing the idea that the soldier will awake in heaven as a redeeming feature for his death in war. The poem also makes great use of patriotic language: it is not any dead soldier, but an "English" one, written at a time when to be English was considered (by the English) as the greatest thing to be. The soldier in the poem is considering his own death but is neither horrified nor regretful. Rather, religion, patriotism, and romanticism are central to distracting him from the war. Some people regard Brooke’s poem as among the last great ideals before the true horror of modern mechanized warfare was made clear to the world, but Brooke had seen action. On top of that, he, like his fellow English soldiers, was well aware of a history where soldiers had been dying on English adventures in foreign countries for centuries and still wrote it. Brooke would not see the war drag on, dying of an infection on his way to the island Skyros in 1915. Rather ironically he, like the soldier in his poem, was buried in a ‘foreign field’, on the island of Skyros. To this day, his burial site has been maintained and a statue was later erected in his honour. So like his poem, he too is remembered.

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As the war dragged on other poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon wrote raw, shocking poetry about what the war was really like: death, suffering, destruction and loss. These men witnessed first-hand that to die for you country was not glorious at all but horrifyingly brutal. Out of the two, Sassoon lived to see a world beyond the war. Owen, however, would die in November 1918, a mere week before the war ended. Wilfred Owen is mostly remembered as one of the leading War Poets, and his work stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time. Perhaps his most famous poem is the Latin titled Dulce et Decorum Est, written in 1917. In the poem, he describes a gas attack on a retreating group of very tired soldiers. As they scramble to put on their gas masks one of the men drops his mask. The narrator sees the man choking in the toxic fumes. This vision is disturbing and intentionally so. To Owen, there was not honourable of glorious about dying this way. The Latin phrase that makes up the title and final lines of the poem was well known and often quoted by supporters of the war and were, therefore, of particular relevance to soldiers of the era. The words ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ directly translate to ‘it is sweet and honourable to die for your country’. Owen does not agree to this as he refers to it as "The old Lie”. Although the dying soldier in "Dulce et Decorum Est" is an individual character within the narrative, he also stands in for a generation of young men exposed to the brutality of World War I. The narrator's argument rests on the implicit truth that the dying soldier's experience isn't isolated and that there were many, many deaths like this one. That the soldier is associated with the word "innocent" in line 24 emphasizes the injustice and horror of his death and that of others like him. The poem also connects the soldier to the "children" of line 26, who are also, because they are children unaware of the cruel world, "innocent." The dying soldier, and the generation he represents, cannot be saved. Their lives have already been forfeited to war. But the poem makes clear that the next generation—the children— are doomed to repeat the pattern, unless the "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" phrase is finally seen for the lie it truly is. Such is the power of words, whether they be poems or novels. Even in a short work like a poem, a story is told and lesson learned or a warning given. That is how literature has always worked: passing on a message to the generations following us, be it how to hunt a buffalo 36.000 years ago, or how to prevent another senseless war from consuming us all a little over a 100 years ago.

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Dulce et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen, 1917

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

˚ The narrator describes the soldiers

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! —An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

˚ Then a gas shell drops beside them and they quickly put on their gasmasks. One soldier doesn’t succeed to put it on in time and the narrator describes him choking, without him being able to help.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, — My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

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retreating from the front line, through the mud.

˚They are so tired that not even the sound of explosive shells falling behind them, some have lost their boots, but they don’t seem to notice anymore.

˚ Now, much later, he sees this in his dream, and feels helpless. ˚ He now addresses the reader, telling him that if he had seen this man lying on the wagon, and could hear the blood gurgling out of his lungs every time the wagon jolted, then they wouldn’t tell young men the lie that they are told when they go to war: that it is sweet and honourable to die for your country.

˚ “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and honourable to die for your country) is a quote from Horace which was inscribed on the wall of the chapel of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and this is what Owen refers to when he mentions ‘the old lie’.

3. The Interbellum: Modernism and the Stream of Consciousness After the war, a lot of things changed for Britain (and the rest of the world). All men and women finally got to vote and socialist views were on the rise ever since communists took control in Russia. Leading up this was a movement in literature we call Realism. Especially significant in the later Victorian Age, the writers of the movement wrote about real people, common people, living their ordinary and often harsh lives. These writers wanted to show how ordinary lives are just meaningful as those the upper classes and can be full of drama. They were intend on showing the ‘big picture’ of society and thus comment on its shortcomings. Famous writers from this movement that we still read and refer to today are Charles Dickens (Britain) and Leo Tolstoy (Russia). Their novels have been turned into tv-series and films so there is something to say the way to told their stories. After all, their genre was popular with everyone. The straightforward language they wrote it could be read and understood by all. After all, they focused on contemporary issues without any romanticism, showing their readers the harsh realities of life instead of escaping them. The foundation of realism is the conviction that the world can be described in an objective manner. We do not actually get to look inside the heads of the characters or form an opinion about them based on their innermost thoughts or desires, as we often do with characters today. We love or hate them, talk to them in our heads of out loud when they think or act in ways that we believe might cause them harm or trouble. We become apprehensive when these characters make the wrong choices or think the wrong things. We live the story through them and sometimes realize that they weren’t really who we believed them to be. Where did this particular aspect of storytelling originate?

Modernism The answer lies in a literary mo...