MODERN AMERICAN PROSE

General Overview
The socially and culturally emancipating years between World War I and World War II
inspired ground breaking developments in American literature generally. For the
American fiction, it had suffered a slow and difficult start. The novel in the formal sense
began at the end of the 18th century. It is perhaps natural that it should have been
preceded by the chronicles of adventure, the sermons, the diary, history, the essay and
verse. It is certain that when the first formal efforts at novel writing appeared in the
century, it was at a dull moment in the history of the British novel. The first novel of full
length written by an American was The Power of Sympathy, published anonymously in
1780. It has been attributed to Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton. The novel may have been
written by William Hill Brown, a playwright and the known author of a posthumously
printed novel Ira and Isabella but the evidence is not conclusive. The Power of Sympathy
publicized the embarrassing account of the love affair between prominent Bostonian
Perez Morton and his wife‘s sister. Such books served only to reinforce the moralist‘s
judgments against fiction.

By the middle of the 19th century, American novelists began to turn from heroic
depictions to the material of familiar life. There was a transition from an idealistic to a
realistic presentation of life. Characters drawn from the humbler walks of life began to
take their place as central figures. The tragedies of economic oppression were portrayed.
At the same time, there was still the interest in romance and fantasy. This form often
made use of realistic methods but its distinguishing quality lay in the unusual plots,
powerful imagination and fantasy and the greatest names in the early fiction of fantasy
were those of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Writing about The Great
American Novel, Edith Wharton said that the scene may be laid in an American small
town or in a European capital. It could deal with the present or the past, with great events
or trivial happenings and it could be related to something greater.

Speaking of the American modern novel, the year 1900 is an important year as this was
the year in which many changes happened and a new world was born. Great
technological advancement changed the attitude of the people and transformed the whole
society. Americans felt that the twentieth century was the American century and therefore
they felt a responsibility for it. The early years of the century experienced naturalism as
the dominant form while some hints of expressionism were also traceable. The second
decade of the twentieth century experienced radical changes. World War I made many
people and writers believe in decline of civilization. The American mind was under
the influence of cultural disorientation and disorder.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Well known by his pen name Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a great
humorist. His novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called ―The Great
American Novel. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is another noted novel of Mark Twain.
He was popular for his wit and incisive satire and was lauded as the greatest American
humorist of his age. He won a worldwide audience for his stories of youthful adventures
of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In Green Hills of Africa, Prince and the Pauper, A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur‘s Court are some of his famous novels.

Twain‘s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an adventure in understanding changes in

America itself. The book is at the center of American geography and consciousness. It re-
examines definitions of ―civilization and freedom, right and wrong, social
responsibility and inhumanity. Published in 1885, the novel recounts those pre-civil war
days when the controversy over slavery, with designated slave and Free states, disfigured
the face of America and its view of itself as a land of the free. Both geographically and
otherwise, the story is an examination of life at the center: the center of America‘s
premiere river, the Mississippi in the middle of the geographical United States, with slave
states below, free states above. This is the route toward freedom and escape for Huck and
Jim. It is also the center of one of the foremost conflicts on American soil, slavery, which
soon results in a civil war. It is the center of the coming of age of both a young man and a
nation that struggle to understand redefinitions of nationhood and freedom, right and
wrong; and the center of a shift from Romanticism to Realism in art and letters that
would provide for a new way for Americans to express themselves. The novel offers an
excellent example of American picaresque fiction and meaningful use of dialect. The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a profoundly important work in American letters. As
Shelley Fishkin suggests in ―Teaching Mark Twain‘s Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn,―Mark Twain‘s consciousness and awareness is larger than that of any of the
characters of the novel… Huck is too innocent and ignorant to understand what‘s
wrong with his society and what‘s right about his own transgressive behavior.
Twain, on the other hand, knows the score.‖ The novel has stirred controversy since 1885,
both as a commentary on American race relations, class divisions, and violence, and
as an examination of humanity‘s social responsibility attendant in its pursuit of
freedom. It brings to the fore discussions of race, conformity, slavery, freedom,
autonomy and authority, and so much more. This novel requires an understanding of the
pre-Civil War slavery controversy, free and slave states, and the Mississippi River‘s
division of East from West and North from South. The river was a primary conduit for
people and goods. It will benefit you to read slave narratives, especially of those who
escaped slavery via waterways. Examples are Frederick Douglass, Linda Brent/Harriet
Jacobs, and Olaudah Equiano. These oral histories offer a basis on which to consider the
portrayal of Jim, a slave in Twain‘s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as the
attitudes and life styles that surrounded slavery.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. When
he was four, the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. This home would be the
site of considerable tragedies for the family which would serve Twain in his future
writings. These include the deaths of a younger sister and brother, and his father‘s death
from pneumonia when Clemens was twelve years old. In Hannibal, he would also witness
the ill treatment of slaves. There was also the violent behavior of both civilized and
uncivilized people, the economic disparity among these frontier settlers, and the religious
zeal and hypocrisy coexisting in communities. Although Twain moved frequently and
ranged widely in the world, it was his upbringing on the Mississippi River that played
perhaps the most important role in developing his understanding about the power of
imagination and of friendship in harsh circumstances.

After his father‘s death, Sam joined his brother Orion at the Hannibal Journal newspaper,
where he honed his writing skills and learned typesetting. These skills led to his move to
St. Louis and a job as typesetter at the St. Louis Evening News. From there, he moved
East to New York City and Philadelphia. Although he traveled widely in America and
Europe, he returned at the age of 24 to the Mississippi. This was where he received his
pilot‘s license as a river boat pilot. This profession he incorporated into his novels and
into his pen name, Mark Twain. He first used the pen name as a writer for the Nevada
Territorial Enterprise. Although he enjoyed a fortunate life with his wife Olivia Langdon
and his family, the early deaths of his four children would later lead to depression and
anxiety. He died in Connecticut at the age of 75. In his works are the characteristic
humor, realistic dialect, local color, satire, and humanitarian themes.

Earnest Hemingway (1899-1961) A Farewell to Arms

Earnest Hemingway was one of the most important and influential writers of the 20 th
Century. His fiction, especially his early work was dominated by two types of characters.
The first type includes people affected by World War I, people who had become detached
and cynical, yet emotionally strong. The second type includes simple, plain-speaking
individuals of direct emotions. Death and violence were constant themes in Hemingway‘s
life and writing. Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. A Farewell
to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, To Have and Have Not are
some of the famous novels of Hemingway. Hemingway‘s novels brought a great change
in the art of storytelling and gave a new dimension to fiction. Hemingway belonged to the
American Adamic tradition, with its commitment to the primacy of the individual, the
supreme importance of the single, separate self. Consistently, for Hemingway, as for
many earlier American writers, the essential condition of life is solitary, and the
interesting, only really serious business, is the management of that solitude.

Hemingway is one of the many American writers who lived during World War I. He
wrote a number of well-known war novels and the most famous of them is the war novel
titled A Farewell to Arms which he wrote in 1929. It focuses on the effects of the war as
a blow to human civilization. It calls to question the civilization human kind claims. The
novel is based on the themes of war and love. He engaged irony to show contrast
between the ideal and the real of the world of war. The war severely affected Hemingway
and he became disillusioned and depressed. The novel is based on Hemingway's own
experience as a participant in World War I. He enlisted in the war as an ambulance driver
in the Italian army. He joined the army purposely for his own romantic notions about
war. This novel remarkably reflects his attitudes towards war as the novel shows how he
saw the war with all its ugliness, violence, insanity, and irrationality. Besides giving an
accurate account of the war, Hemingway gives an insightful description of the
psychology of the soldiers. Tired with war and its irrationality, the soldiers begin to
search for peace. He was initially enthusiastic before enlisting for war but he became
depressed and pessimistic by the time he returned from the war. He was seriously
wounded in 1918 at the Italian front when a large number of Austrian mortar shell fell
nearly. One of his comrades died instantaneously and another one lost his legs.
Hemingway lost consciousness as a result of the shock. After regaining his
consciousness, he tried to rescue one of his injured comrades by carrying him to a nearby
first aid dugout. During this course, he was shot in his leg by a machine gun fire. The
effect of all these is captured in his introduction the book Men at War: "when you go to
war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people got killed; not you.
Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion."

Like many Americans in the pre-war period, Hemingway took World War One as an
adventure and therefore; participated in it with great zeal. During the war, he saw the
difference between the ideal world and the real world of war. The novel has Frederic
Henry as its central character through whom Hemingway expresses his disillusionment
with the war. As an American enlisted in the Italian Army, Henry goes through the
horrifying experience of war. Observing the irrationality and absurdity of the war, Henry
tries to escape from it in order to find what he calls 'separate peace' alone with Catherine
Barkley, a nurse he falls in love with. He receives the worst blow when Catherine dies in
childbirth leaving Henry alone in the world. Through the plight of Henry, Hemingway
has tries to convey that an escape is not always possible in life. Peace can't be achieved in
isolation from others. Hemingway advocates for endurance because he feels that life is
essentially tragic. The theme of war in this novel is woven with the theme of love. War
contrasts sharply with the noble emotion of love. In fact the novel can be called a tragic
love story of Henry and Catherine set the First World War.

William Dean Howells

For Howells, realism was the appropriate response to the drastic changes taking place in
America in the late nineteenth century. He believed that the writer who could achieve that
realism could also be described as the creator of a truly democratic, essentially American
art that captured the importance and the meaning of the commonplace. Howells was
eventually to occupy a position at the center of literary life in America. Howells had
pieces published in various national magazines. The first of his forty or so novels, Their
Wedding Journey (1872) and A Chance Acquaintance (1873), made use of his travels
abroad. These were followed by two fictions dealing with the contrast between
Americans and Europeans, A Foregone Conclusion (1874) and A Lady of Aroostook
(1879). With his first major novel, A Modern Instance (1882), Howells moved beyond
explorations of manners to detailed and serious consideration of wider social issues. The
novel is structured around the twin themes of divorce and journalism. Howells was the
first novelist to focus on journalism, and developed the theme of divorce after attending a
performance of a Greek tragedy. It is a book on what would happen to a couple whose
marriage gradually deteriorates. What is remarkable about it is the way that, in a strategy
characteristic of literary realism, it links the personal and the political, the emotional and
the social. Howell‘s 1885 novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, also demonstrates what he
called the ―fidelity to experience and probability of motive‖ that he felt was an
imperative for the American storyteller. It also invites the reader to what he called ―the
appreciation of the common.