Great War on Modern Western

¶ … Great War on Modern Western Literature The Great War, or World War I, had a great and lasting impact not only on the history of the Western world, but particularly on the development of Western literature. The soldiers of the Great War came home as the Lost Generation. Out of the Lost Generation and the feelings of isolation and pessimism emerged some of the greatest writers of all time. Names like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot are icons in the Western literature cannons.

The Lost Generation is known for their trait of disillusionment, often cited as resulting from the large number of casualties of the Great War. They developed a cynical attitude towards Victorian notions of morality and optimism, instead seeing life with pessimism. This sense of disillusionment, pessimism and disdain for all things traditional is what led to the creation of the modern movement and the modern novel as we know it.

The novel and writing of the modern era focused on disrupting the novel by implementing new, literary approaches and techniques such as disjointed timelines, emancipatory metanarratives, realism and remarkable pessimism. This fact alone, more than anything, states the difference between the modern and Victorian eras: whereas the Victorian era held onto the Romantic era's use of optimism, Modernism was anything but optimistic.

Instead of portraying the "perfect Victorian" the heroes of the modern novel were often alienated, dysfunction individuals trying to make sense of a society that does not make sense. Further, the modern novel also focuses on issues of social and historical change and the use of such points-of-view as stream of consciousness. Other typical characteristics of modernism are open form, free verse, discontinuous narrative, juxtaposition, classical allusions, unconventional metaphors and the bringing in of other cultures and languages.

Clearly, the experiences of the Great War had a lasting effect on its generation of writers. Many of them served in the military during the war, such as Ernest Hemingway, and witnessed the atrocities personally. The disillusionment felt by this generation at the notion of so many deaths for no real reason created a mentality of pessisims and questioning of society as it has been. This sense of disillusionment was expressed in their writing, where the great writers shunned the traditions.