THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE

REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

NAVOI STATE PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND

LITERATURE

COURSE PAPER
On the theme: The foundation of realism as a prominent literary style in
English literature in 30th-50th of XX century. (Richard Aldington's novel
"Death of a Hero", Harold Edward James Aldridge's novel "The Sea Eagle" John
Wain's novel "Strike the Father Dead")

SUBJECT: ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Researcher: ___________________

Scientific adviser: ______________

The work is defended on "__"______

and assessed at "_____" scores

NAVOI-2017

1
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................... 3

CHAPTER I. Development of English literature in the 30th-50th of

XX century.
1.1. Realism as a particular tendency of Victorian fiction...................... 6
1.2. Representative writers in the 30th-50th of XX century....................7

CHAPTER II. Novels and their historical background in the 30th-50th of XX

century.

2.1.Richard Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero" as his literary response

to the war....................................................................................................... 13
2.2. The novel "The Sea Eagle" by James Aldridge..................................15
2.3. Main characters in the novel “Strike the Father Dead” by John
Barrington Wain...............................................................................................17

CONCLUSION.............................................................................................. 20
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................... 22

2
 INTRODUCTION
The world is an increasingly globalized place where individuals are
communicating among and between multiple cultures each day. In fact,
English is now the world‘s most widely spoken second language surpassing all
others. Teaching English as a second language is an important task that produces a
number of powerful rewards. First, there is the feeling of pride that as a teacher
you have made a difference in the life of a student. Second is the
contribution you have made the international community by minting a new
speaker of the English language, one who can now communicate across
cultures and worldwide in the lingua franca of the modern age.
On December 10, 2012 the first President of the Republic of Uzbekistan
Islam Karimov signed a decree "On measures to further improve foreign language
learning system". It is noted that in the framework of the Law of the
Republic of Uzbekistan "On educational and the National Programme for
Training in the country", a comprehensive foreign languages‘ teaching
system, aimed at bringing up harmoniously developed, highly educated,
modern-thinking young generation, further integration of the country to the
world community, has been created.
It is important to know and teach the history, culture and literature of the
English speaking countries to bring up harmoniously developed, highly educated,
modern-thinking young generation.
As the theme of my course paper is connected with literature, I tried to learn
a lot of information about the theme of the paper.
The theme of my work is " The foundation of realism as a prominent literary
style in English literature in 30th-50th of XX century" and I am going to speak
about the literature in 30th-50th of XX century and their main idea.

3
 First, it is important to give literary meaning of the word “Realism”. Realism
is a style in art or literature that shows things and people as they are in real life.

Realism:

- rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward

appearances;

- usually stemmed either form artists` desire to present more honest, searching, and
unidealized views of everyday life or from their attempts to use art as a vehicle for
social and political criticism;

-Realism’s emphasis on detachment, objectivity, and accurate observation, its lucid

but restrained criticism of social environment and mores, and the humane
understanding that underlay its moral judgments.

Realism from Webster:

1. Concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary.

2. a: a doctrine that universals exist outside the mind; specifically: the conception
that an abstract term names an independent and unitary reality;

b: the conception that objects of sense perception or cognition exist independently

of the mind;

3. fidelity in art and literature to nature or real life and to accurate representation
without idealization.1

It is often thought that realism is a particular tendency of Victorian fiction,

and it is certainly significant that the earliest uses of the word realism to refer to
the faithful representation of the real world in literature or art date from the 1850s.

1
Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012.
4
 THE ACTUALITY OF THE COURSE PAPER: English language is
being learnt all over the world nowadays. It is world language and everywhere in
the world this language is spoken as native or second language. We think it
necessary for language learners to know literature, culture and social life of the
people living in the world. Learning literature helps us to understand the above
mentioned about those people.

The trend of Realism is interesting for everybody to learn, because realism

reflects real life. As the theme of our course paper has connection to realism, we
think it is significant to analyze literature of realistic period.

THE DEGREE OF THE STUDY OF THE THEME: Having said about

the scientists studied the material before we can mention that our course paper
based upon the investigations made by a number of well known English, Russian
and Uzbek scientists.
M.Bakayeva in her manual “English Literature” gives information about
literature of XX century. As well as she analyzed English writers at that period and
their most prominent works. Charles Doyle in his scientific work “Richard
Aldington, a biography” gives information about life and works done by Richard
Aldington.

THE AIM OF THE COURSE WORK: analyzing information about

prominent literary style in English literature in 30th-50th of XX century and give
detailed information about it.

THE TASKS OF THE WORK:

- to analyze English literature of thirties in XX century;

-to give information about the literature of the fourties in XX century;
-to give full description of the literature of the fifties in XX century;
-to investigate Richard Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero";
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-to study Harold Edward James Aldridge's novel "The Sea Eagle";
-to look into John Wain's novel "Strike the Father Dead";

THE OBJECT OF THE COURSE PAPER: Richard Aldington's novel "Death

of a Hero", the novel “Strike the Father Dead” by John Barrington Wain.

THE METHODS OF INVESTIGATION: If we say about the methods of

scientific approaches used in our work we can mention that the method of literary
analysis was used.

PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE INVESTIGATION:

a) The work could serve as a good source of learning English literature by

language learners at schools, colleges and higher educational establishments.
b) The linguists want to enlarge their knowledge about literature could find a
lot of interesting information about literature of the XX century.
c) Those who would like to learn pure English and to understand the real
meanings of literature will be able to understand meaning of the literature and
literary trend.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE WORK: the work consists of introduction, 2

chapters, conclusion and bibliography.

6
 CHAPTER I. Development of English literature in the 30th-50th of
XX century.
1.1. Realism as a particular tendency of Victorian fiction

It is often thought that realism is a particular tendency of Victorian fiction,

and it is certainly significant that the earliest uses of the word realism to refer to
the faithful representation of the real world in literature or art date from the 1850s.
Twentieth century English literature is remarkably for a great diversity of
artistic values and artistic methods. The present age being what it is a welter
of contradictions, conflicts and confrontations only too often leading to small
and large scale wars , a paradoxical age where the greatest triumphs go along with
dire catastrophes-literature naturally responds to its spirit and presents and
unprecedented variety of social, ethic and aesthetic attitudes. Following the rapid
introduction of new modes notes of thought in natural science, sociology and
psychology, it has naturally vacated to absorb and transform this material into
literary communication.2
Richard Aldington won be world for an audience with his "Death of a
Hero", and a more limited, but appreciative abstention with the criticism of
English middle-class ways in "very Heaven" and other novels of the period.
In James Aldridge's novels and short-stories problems of war and peace,
of national movements and international relationships are treated with
remarkable honesty and courage.
In the mid-fifties, post-war disillusionment, divergence between hopes and
reality determined the character of fiction created by a group of writers who
came collectively to be known as the "Angry Young Men". Among them were
Kingley Amis, John Wain, John Braine, John Osborne and Colin Wilson, it is
important to note that they did not belong to a clearly defined movement. Far
from it :they attacked one another in the press and some were even reluctant to

2
T.D.Volosova, Hecker M.V: English Literature. Moscow, 1974
7
appear between the same covers with others whose views they violently
opposed. But they had one thing in common-an attitude of nonconformity to
the established social order. Through their characters these writers were eager
to express their anger with society.3
The protagonists of Amis's "Lucky Jim", Wain's "Hurry On Down ", Braine's
"Room at the Top", Colin Wilson's "The Outsider" and of Osborne's play "Look
Back In Anger", no matter how different they are, represent the frustrated
young generation who defy everybody in authority. They do not seem to fit in;
they refuse to put up with society's conventions. Their ager originates in their
inability to communicate with others as fully and meaningfully as they would
like to; all of them are intelligent young men from the lawyer or lawyer-middle
classes educated at provincial universities but let loose in a society dominated
more than ever by ruthless class distinctions.
English literature is passing through a period of transition and any
forecasts concerning its further development would be arbitrary. One thing
seems certain, however the best works of contemporary prose and poetry are
being put at the service of the momentous issues of today and bear relevance to
the needs and aspiration of humanity.

Literary realism is part of the realist art movement beginning with mid
nineteenth-century French literature, and Russian literature and extending to the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Literary realism, in contrast to
idealism, attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to
depict everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of using a
romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

Broadly defined as "the representation of reality", realism in the arts is the

attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding
artistic conventions, as well as implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.
3
M.Bakayeva: English Literature. Lectures. Bukhara, 2003
8
 Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in large part a
matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. In the visual
arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of life forms, perspective, and
the details of light and colour. Realist works of art may emphasize the ugly or
sordid, such as works of social realism, regionalism.

There have been various realism movements in the arts, such as the opera
style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema.

Realism as a movement in literature was a post 1848 phenomenon,

according to its first theorist Jules-Français Champfleury. It aims to reproduce
"objective reality", and focused on showing everyday, quotidian activities and life,
primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization
or dramatization. It may be regarded as the general attempt to depict subjects as
they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without
embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules."
As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically
independent of man's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs, and thus
can be known (or knowable) to the artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality'
faithfully. As literary critic Ian Watt states in The Rise of the Novel, modern
realism "begins from the position that truth can be discovered by the individual
through the senses" and as such "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke, and
received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth
century. In the late 18th-century Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic
social and political norms of the previous Age of Reason and a reaction against the
scientific rationalization of nature found in the dominant philosophy of the 18th
century, as well as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. It was embodied most
strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on
historiography, education and the natural sciences.

9
 19th-century realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this
reason it is also commonly derogatorily referred as traditional or "bourgeois
realism". However, not all writers of Victorian literature produced works of
realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of Victorian realism,
prompted in their turn the revolt of modernism. Starting around 1900, the driving
motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois
social order and world view, which was countered with an antirationalist,
antirealist and antibourgeois program.

1.2. Representative writers in the 30th-50th of XX century

Richard Aldington was born in July 8, 1892 and died in July 27, 1962.
Edward Godfree Aldington was an English writer and poet.

Aldington was known best for his World War I poetry, the novel, Death of a
Hero, and the controversy resulting from his Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical
Inquiry. His biography, Wellington, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial
Prize.

Aldington was born in Portsmouth, the son of a solicitor, and educated at

Dover College, and for a year at the University of London. He was unable to
complete his degree because of the financial circumstances of his family.

Aldington's poetry was associated with the Imagist group, and his poetry
forms almost one third of the Imagists' inaugural anthology Des Imagistes.

Aldington joined the British Army in 1916, during the Great War, and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Sussex Regiment during 1917
and was wounded on the Western Front. Aldington never completely recovered
from his war experiences, and may have continued to suffer from the then-
unrecognized phenomenon of posttraumatic stress disorder.
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 In 1930, he published a bawdy translation of The Decameron. In 1933, his
novel titled All Men are Enemies appeared, it was a romance, as the author chose
to term it, and a brighter book than Death of a Hero, even though Aldington took
an anti-war stance again. In 1942, having relocated to the United States with his
new wife Netta Patmore, he began to write biographies.

Aldington died in Sury-en-Vaux, Cher, France on 27 July 1962, shortly after

being honored and feted in Moscow on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and
the publication of some of his novels in Russian translation. He did not approve of
the Communist "party line", though, and the Russians did not succeed in making
him endorse it. His politics had in fact moved far towards the right, but he had felt
shut out by the British establishment after his T. E. Lawrence book. He lived in
Provence, at Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and Sury-en-Vaux.

After World War II there appeared young writers like James Aldridge, who
were full of optimism, and mature writers, who had passed through a certain crisis,
but who worked to discover humanism with a positive set of values.

James Aldridge was born in 1918 in Australia in the family of an English

writer and journalist. He spent his childhood in Australia and on the Isle of Man
(near Scotland) in his mother's ancient house. He started to work at the age of 14 as
a messenger boy in Melbourne, combining his work with studies. Moving over to
England in 1939 he entered Oxford University. At the age of 21 he was sent to
Finland as a war correspondent. In the years of World War II he was a war
correspondent.

Aldridge's most successful and most widely published novel The Diplomat
was released in 1949.

Aldridge continued to draw inspiration from topical events and the Cold War
tensions between the East and West gave him the subject for his next novel A
11
Captive in the Land , set in the frozen wastes of the Arctic where an English
scientist rescues the sole survivor of a crashed Russian aircraft. Like all of his
politically themed works, Aldridge attempted to explore all viewpoints and portray
the "grey" area in-between opposing forces and beliefs. In this case, the
Englishman is initially viewed by his fellow Westerners as a hero but later he is
treated with increasing suspicision due to his efforts to allow the Russian to be
freed. W. G. Rogers, writing in the Saturday Review, praised the novel thus: "...the
moral adventure here is more challenging and better and faster reading than the
physical. But all the way its a gripping story that gets under your skin and stays
there." The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1993.

From the mid-1960s, many of Aldridge's works were written for children
and young adults and a number of his later works were set in his homeland of
Australia. His 1966 novel My Brother Tom was set in the fictional Australian town
of St Helen, closely based on the town of Swan Hill by the Murray River where he
spent much of his childhood. This novel, the first in a series of six set in St Helen,
while a novel that portrayed a love story between two young people, explored
moral and political dilemmas and ideas, in this case the severe tensions between
the town's Catholic and Protestant citizenry. The novel became a TV mini-series in
1986, starring Gordon Jackson and Keith Michell. Another of the St Helen series,
The True Story of Lilli Stubeck, was the 1995 Children's Book Council of Australia
book of the year. His 1973 children's novel A Sporting Proposition was adapted as
the 1975 Disney film Ride a Wild Pony.

John Barrington Wain was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated
with the literary group "The Movement". For most of his life, Wain worked as a
freelance journalist and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the
radio.

12
 Wain was born and grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, the son of a
dentist, Arnold Wain, and his wife Annie, née Turner. He had an older sister and a
younger brother, Noel. After attending Newcastle under Lyme High School, he
entered St. John's College, Oxford, gaining a first in his BA in 1946 and MA in
1950. He was a Fereday Fellow of St John's between 1946 and 1949.

He wrote his first novel Hurry on Down in 1953, a comic picaresque story
about an unsettled university graduate who rejects the standards of conventional
society. Other notable novels include Strike the Father Dead (1962), a tale of a
jazzman's rebellion against his conventional father, and Young Shoulders (1982),
winner of the Whitbread Prize, the tale of a young boy dealing with the death of
loved ones.

Wain was also a prolific poet and critic, with critical works on fellow
Midlands writers Arnold Bennett, Samuel Johnson (for which he was awarded the
1974 James Tait Black Memorial Prize), and William Shakespeare. Among the
other writers about whom he has written are the Americans Theodore Roethke and
Edmund Wilson. He himself was the subject of a bibliography by David Gerard.

Wain taught at the University of Reading during the late 1940s and early
1950s, and in 1963 spent a term as professor of rhetoric at Gresham College,
London. He was the first fellow in creative arts at Brasenose College, Oxford
(1971–1972), and was appointed a supernumerary fellow in 1973. In that same
year, he was elected to the five-year post of Professor of Poetry at the University of
Oxford: some of his lectures are collected in his book Professing Poetry. Wain was
appointed a CBE in 1984. He was made an honorary fellow of his old college, St
John's, Oxford, in 1985.

Wain was often referred to as one of the "Angry Young Men", a term
applied to 1950s writers such as John Braine, John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe and

13
Keith Waterhouse, radicals who opposed the British establishment and
conservative elements of society at that time. Indeed, he did contribute to
Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the philosophy,
and a chapter of his novel, Hurry on Down, was excerpted in a popular paperback
sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men.

Nevertheless, it may be more accurate to associate Wain with "The

Movement", a group of post-war poets including Kingsley Amis, D.J. Enright,
Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin. Amis and Larkin, good friends
of Wain's for a time, were also associated, with equal dubiousness, with the
"angries". But, aside from their poetry, it may be more accurate to refer to these
three, as was sometimes done at the time, as "The New University Wits", writers
who desired to communicate rather than to experiment, and who often did so in a
comic mode. However, they all became more serious after their initial work. Wain
is still known for his poetry, for example, his Apology for Understatement and
literary interests, his work for "The Observer", though his work is no longer as
popular as it was. Critical remarks about Wain by Amis and Larkin in their
posthumously-published letters may have contributed to dimming his reputation.

Wain's tutor at Oxford had been C. S. Lewis. He encountered but did not
consider himself part of the group of Lewis's literary acquaintances, the Inklings.
Wain was as serious about literature as the Inklings, and believed as they did in the
primacy of literature as communication, but as a modern realist writer he shared
neither their conservative social beliefs nor their propensity for fantasy.

In the fifties there appeared a very interesting trend in literature, the

followers of which were called "The Angry Young Men". The post-war changes
had given a chance to a large number of young people from the more democratic
layers of society to receive higher education at universities. But on graduating,
these students found they had no prospects in life. Unemployment had increased
14
after the war and besides that, English society continued to follow the old
conservative rules of life and apparently did not need them No one was interested
to learn what their ideas on life and society were. They felt deceived and became
angry with everything and everybody. Outstanding writers of this trend were John
Wain, Kingsley Amis, and the dramatist John Osborne.

CHAPTER II. Novels and their historical background in the XX century.

2.1. Richard Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero"as his literary response to

the war

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 Richard Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero" published in 1929, was his
literary response to the war, commended by Lawrence Durrell as the best war
novel of the epoch. It was written while he was living on the island of Port-Cros in
Provence as a development of a manuscript from a decade before. Opening with a
letter to the playwright Halcott Glover, the book takes a variable but generally
satirical, cynical and critical posture, and belabours Victorian and Edwardian cant.
He went on to publish several works of fiction.

Death of a Hero is the story of a young English artist named George

Winterbourne who enlists in the army at the beginning of World War I. The book
is narrated by an unnamed first-person narrator who claims to have known and
served with the main character. It is divided into three parts.

The first part details George's family history. His father, a middle-class man
from England's countryside, marries a poor woman who falsely believes she is
marrying into a monies family. After George's birth, his mother has a series of
lovers.

George is brought up to be a proper and patriotic member of English society.

He is encouraged to learn his father's insurance business, but fails to do so. After a
disagreement with his parents, he relocates to London to become an artist and live
a socialite lifestyle.

The second section of the book deals with George's London life. He ingrains
himself in socialite society and engages a number of trendy philosophies.

After he and his lover, Elizabeth, have a pregnancy scare, they decide to
marry. Although they do not have a child, the marriage endures. They decide to
leave their marriage open. George takes Elizabeth's close friend as a lover,
however, and their marriage begins to fall apart. Just as the situation is becoming
particularly heated, England declares war on Germany. George decides to enlist.
16
 George trains for the army and is sent to France. No particular location in
France is mentioned. The town behind the front where George spends much of his
time is referred to as M. He fights on the front for some time. When he returns
home, he finds that he has been so affected by the war that he cannot relate to his
friends, including his wife and lover.

The casualty rate among officers is particularly high at the front. When a
number of officers in George's unit are killed, he is promoted. Upon spending time
with the other officers, he finds them to be cynical and utilitarian. He loses faith in
the war quickly.

The story ends with George standing up during a machine-gun barrage. He is

killed. At the end of the book there is a poem written from the point of view of a
veteran comparing World War I to the Trojan War.

Aldington, a veteran of World War I, claimed that his novel was accurate in
terms of speech and style. It contained extensive colloquial speech, including
profanity and graphic descriptions of the war and of trench life. There was
extensive censorship in England and many war novels had been banned or burned
as a result. When Aldington first published his novel, he redacted a number of
passages in order to ensure the publication of his book would not be challenged.
He insisted that his publishers include a disclaimer in the original printing of the
book with the following text:

"To my astonishment, my publisher informed me that certain words, phrases,

sentences, and even passages, are at present taboo in England. I have recorded
nothing which I have not observed in human life, said nothing I do not believe to
be true. At my request the publishers are removing what they believe would be
considered objectionable, and are placing asterisks to show where omissions have

17
been made. In my opinion it is better for the book to appear mutilated than for me
to say what I don't believe."

2.2. The novel "The Sea Eagle" by James Aldridge.

The Sea Eagle is a novel by Australian war correspondent and novelist

James Aldridge. Set in Axis-occupied Greece and Crete after the Nazi invasion
during World War II, it follows the attempts of two Australian soldiers to make
passage to Cairo with the help of Greek partisans. Winner of the John Llewellyn
Rhys Prize in 1945 and hailed as "the finest work of fiction yet produced by the
war", it has since fallen into obscurity. His second novel "The Sea Eagle" was also
devoted to the struggle of the Greeks against fascism. His other books are 'The
Diplomat", "In Italy", "The Forty-Ninth State", a satirical play which tells how
Britain depends on the USA, and others. In 1974 his latest novel "Mockery in
Arms" was published.

His main characters are ordinary people who struggle for the liberation of
their countries from foreign armies and fascism. For his antiwar novels James
Aidridge has won the International Prize for Peace Among the Nations.

2.3. John Barrington Wain's novel Strike the Father Dead

John Barrington Wain was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated
with the literary group "The Movement". For most of his life, Wain worked as a
freelance journalist and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the
radio.

He wrote his first novel Hurry on Down, a comic picaresque story about an
unsettled university graduate who rejects the standards of conventional society.
Other notable novels include Strike the Father Dead, a tale of a jazzman's rebellion

18
against his conventional father, and Young Shoulders, winner of the Whitbread
Prize, the tale of a young boy dealing with the death of loved ones.

Strike the Father Dead is John Wain's fifth and best novel to date. The story
is narrated by three people: Jeremy, son and jazz pianist, Alfred, father and
Professor of Classics, and Eleanor, aunt and sister. From these different
standpoints Jeremy's progress is viewed, at the start objectively and later with the
first light of understanding that all three: passionately, reluctantly and instinctively
according to their temperaments are groping towards the ultimate safety of truth.
Jeremy runs away from home in 1942 when he is just seventeen. For three
uneasy years he lives in the half-world of wartime London, evading call-up, living
close to the criminal fringe on forged papers and black market food. Scandal and
misery at home: instability and guilt in London. But he learns to play jazz; and he
meets Percy, a vast, gentle American negro horn-player who, by example, teaches
him much more than jazz. Success comes for Jeremy and Percy in Paris after the
war. It lasts long enough for Jeremy to learn something of the bitterness of
compromise and the sharp edge of integrity abandoned. Their band disperses:
Percy vanishes; and Jeremy involves himself in a futile search for love and reverts
to hack work at the piano. Later, from different ends of the same wilderness, they
meet again to find the old enchantment of their music unimpaired.

Percy is a wonderfully realized character and his ability to cope with the
problems raised by his colour and his uncompromising genius give added point to
the rebellions and struggles of the three narrators. Strike the Father Dead is a major
novel: moving, honest, and powerful.

Jeremy Coleman is the son of a Classics Professor, and a constant

disappointment to the self-disciplined and austere old man, who thoroughly
disapproves of his love of playing jazz piano. After some episodes of teenage
rebellion set father and son at odds, Jeremy disappears into the dives of wartime
19
London to play jazz for a living in seedy nightclubs, leaving his father and his
loving but quivery aunt Eleanor to face the disapproval and malicious curiosity of
neighbours and colleagues.

Evading wartime conscription, the young man soon encounters the other
denizens of this strange twilight world of draft-dodgers and itinerant musicians.
Jeremy then meets a genuine Black American jazz man, slide trombonist Percy
Brett, and together they move to the shabby-chic surroundings of postwar Paris to
form a band. When success beckons, however, Jeremy finds that Percy has brought
his own issues with him from his upbringing in the American South.

Meanwhile Professor Coleman is stricken with grief and remorse, his own
feelings, long suppressed, from his time as a junior officer on the Western Front
coming back to reproach him. The two strands of the story come together finally in
1950′s London, where a racial attack on Jeremy and Percy brings father and son
together in an unforeseen way…

John Wain was a lifelong fan of jazz, growing up with the thirties and forties
jazzmen like Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Stephane Grapelli, Bill Coleman and
the gipsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. This love and knowledge of what is now
called ‘trad’ jazz permeates Strike The Father Dead, although ultimately the
book’s theme is love and tolerance transcendent. The novel is given to three
narrators, Jeremy, his father and his aunt Eleanor, and the three perspectives give it
a fascinating multiple vision of youth and age and vulnerability. It takes a violent
attack on Jeremy and Percy to bring father and son together, yet in a strange way
good comes out of the evil:

[Jeremy is telling the story]

To see you so hurt, makes one feel – well, rather abashed [says Professor
Coleman to Percy, seeing him in hospital after the hate attack].

20
 So that was it. The old man, ashamed, was trying to apologize to Percy on
behalf of England and the English. Percy shrugged. ‘It happens,’ he said, spreading
out his huge hands.

It happens. That was all you could say. Percy had been beaten and kicked by
whites because he was black. the old man had been gassed and shot by Germans
because he was an Englishman. It happens. What else was there to say?

At the end of the book, in one of its best scenes, Percy and Jeremy’s band
are back playing jazz gigs; but now a new taste has overtaken the popular music
scene, Rock n Roll. Their understated jazz band is slow-handclapped off the stage
at a local dancehall by kids in thrall to Rockin’ Rod Tempest and his group, and
Percy and Jeremy realize that their days of making a living this way might be
coming to an end. This final act, as well as giving John Wain a chance to take a
broadside at what he thought of as an utterly debased musical form, gives the two
a richer understanding of keeping the faith in life, the real reason to keep creating
…. well, art.

You’re pretty cool, I said, sipping my pint. Don’t you realize we’ve just had the
bird? That affects the money side of things, said Percy. Can’t see no reason for it to
affect the music side. We’ll just get jobs in the Post Office or something and play
jazz in our spare time, if we have to.

We sneaked back into the empty dancehall, now closed for the night, and went up
on the stage, lit only by moonlight from one of the high windows. I sat at the piano
and lifted the lid. Percy opened the lid of his slide trombone case.

He was right. What was the difference? You live by doing the things you have to
do. Percy lifted his horn to his lips, and we started.

21
 CONCLUSION

The 20th century English literature is remarkable for a great diversity

of artistic values and artistic methods. Following the rapid introduction of
new modes of thought in natural science , sociology and psychology , it has

22
naturally reacted to absorb and transform this material into literary
communication.4

The years between 1917 and 1930 form the first period. This was a
time when the crisis of the bourgeois world reached its highest point.

Aldington's works opposes mythological images of Ancient Greece to

unlovely pictures of life in industrial cities. The harmony and beauty of
Greek art he sees as an ideal lacking in contemporary reality.

In the 20th century in English Literature appeared such young writer

like James Aldridge, who created his works in the spirit of optimism. He is
mature writer with anti - imperialist and anti - colonial point of view. In the
fifties there appears a very interesting trend in literature the followers of
which were called " The Angry Young Men " and he was member of this trend.
The post - war changes had given a chance to a large number of young
people from the more democratic layers of the society to receive higher
education at universities. But on graduating , these students found they had no
prospects in life. Unemployment had increased after the war. No one was
interested to learn what his or her ideas on life and society were. They felt
deceived and became angry.

There appeared works dealing with such characters , angry

young men that were angry at everything and everybody.

James Aldridge is a progressive English writer. Aldridge had always been

interested in aviation and could be often seen piloting a plane. Later he took an
interest in the ocean. In Australia he saw how people were attacked by sharks. He
heard many stories of sharks attacking people in the water. He wanted to find out if

4
M.Bakayeva: English Literature. Lectures. Bukhara, 2003
23
these stories were true, and went down under the water to make a film about
sharks.

We can see the novels we discussed in our course paper created in the style
of realism. Realism was a literary movement or tendency used detailed realism to
suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in
shaping human character. It was a mainly unorganized literary movement that
sought to depict believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as
Romanticism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic or even
supernatural treatment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Scientific literature:

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1. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic
Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012.
2. Azizov K., Kayumov O. Chet el adabiyoti tarixi.–T.: O’qituvchi, 1987.
3. Bakoeva M., Muratova E., Ochilova M.”English Literature” Tashkent - 2006
4. M.Bakayeva: English Literature. Lectures. Bukhara, 2003
5. Н.П.Михайлов, Б.И.Пуришева. Зарубежная литература XX века. M.:
Просвещение, 1981.
6. Duglas Bush. Prefaces to renaissance literature. New York: Norton library,
1965.

7. A.Sokhan, T.Antonova: Readings from English Literature.

8. T.D.Volosova, Hecker M.V: English Literature. Moscow, 1974.

9. P. John, Mc Donnel Helen: England in Literature. London, 1988.

10.Ranson House Webster’s College Dictionary. New York, 1990.

11.Davies, Marion Wynne, ed. (1990), The Bloomsbury Guide to English

Literature, New York: Prentice Hall.

12.Drabble, Margaret, ed. (1996), The Oxford Companion to English

Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13.Fulk, RD; Cain, Christopher M (2003), A History of Old English Literature,

Malden: Blackwell.

14. Thomas MacGreevy. In: Richard Aldington: An Intimate Portrait. 1965

15.Charles Doyle. Richard Aldington, a biography. 1989

16.Hatziolou, Elizabeth (1997). John Wain, A Man of Letters.

17.Glyer, Diana (2007). The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R.

Tolkien as Writers in Community.

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18."L'Art de John Wain, Poete": Edward Black, PhD Thesis, Universite de
Caen 1965.

19."The Novels of John Wain": Dr. K. Kumar, PhD Thesis, Ranchi University,
1979

20."Wain, John Barrington". Who Was Who. Oxford University Press.

December 2007. Retrieved 5 February 2009.

Literary literature:

21. Richard Aldington's novel "Death of a Hero"

22.Harold Edward James Aldridge's novel "The Sea Eagle"

23.John Wain's novel "Strike the Father Dead". 1962

Internet resources:

24.http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/poets.html
25.http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/Preface.html

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