Modernist writers and their connections to modernist traditions

Ernest Hemingway & T.S. Eliot

Modernism in Literature: Comparative Analysis of the works of Ernest Hemingway and T.S. Eliot

As the world entered the 20th century, world literature have become influenced with the emerging ideology of modernism, a new thinking that promotes the potential of humanity to achieve more than they imagined possible. That is, modernism has promoted the idea that humanity has the potential achieve more than the present state they are living; the future offers numerous opportunities for human society to become more developed and further enlightened.

The optimism that modernist ideology in human society pervaded even the domain of literature, specifically in Western literature, the primary civilization that induced modernization to the world through the industrial revolution. American literature is an example of a Western literature wherein modernism became the main ideology of the 20th century. The promise of modernism is apparent in the works of T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway, famous writers during the period who expressed diverse opinions and feelings about modernism in the 20th century American society. This paper argues that T.S. Eliot expresses feelings of dismay because of the inability of humanity to cope with the promise that modernism gives to society, while Hemingway expresses optimism and hope for human society, as it moves forward further social, material, and intellectual progress.

T.S. Eliot's poetry, particularly the poems "The Waste Land" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," demonstrate his disillusionment of human society and social progress in the midst of the modernist era. In "The Love Song," Eliot expresses his dismay through the character of J. Alfred Prufrock how social progress have become a dismal occurrence in the lives of people, who failed to take advantage of the opportunity to explore possibilities that can take civilization to a higher level. In the poem, he explicates his feelings by stating, "And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while ... To have squeezed the universe into a ball ... " The last lines illustrates, through Eliot's sarcasm, that despite modernism, human society is not far from what it was centuries ago, and have not achieved true enlightenment through self-realization and -- discovery. A similar thesis is adopted in "The Waste Land," wherein the title itself brings into lucidity how human society has become a "waste land" -- a market for goods, services, and ideas/ideologies that create confusion instead of clarity in understanding the real purpose of humans in this world. The line "London Bridge is falling down falling down" is another illustration of the downfall of humanity in the midst of technological advancements that it has achieved over the years.