Literature, Modern

A recurrent condition plaguing many of James's characters can be diagnosed as an aesthetic dependency. These characters turn their back on "the real thing" and exist in a precarious world of beauty and misplaced ideals. The novels examined present various methods James's characters utilize to elude the actual world. In The Tragic Muse, the line that separates mimetic art and actuality is nonexistent. Through imitation and performance characters create and represent what ought to be. Aesthetic immersion and imaginative constructs are opposed methods of escape in The Spoils of Poynton. The Ambassadors depicts a world where characters conspire to disguise the truth. Lambert Strether's imagination is stimulated by this milieu and takes flight. Similarly, the characters in The Wings of the Dove go to extreme lengths to realize their aesthetic visions. Ultimately, each character in these novels must deal with the sacrifices that are made when one chooses to exist in a world consisting solely of beauty and imagination.

The Cold-War mother lived in an era of angst, animosity, and anxiety. The immigrant mothers of the Beats not only had to grapple with the demands of her children, but also had to take on the post-Freudian demands of their new society. This anxiety tainted her mind, her milk, and consequently her children's writing. The works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso exhibit the dramatic effect that their mothers had on their life and cathartic writings. Mothers were the wellspring and crumbling foundation of these writers as well as the muse who inspired them to beatness.

Edward Frederic Benson's Lucia novels are comic commentaries on social change and the fragmentation of English society from the end of the Edwardian era into the Georgian, especially reflecting the disenchantment of the English people with their traditional beliefs, roles, and class structure. What Matthew Arnold referred to as the Philistines of England--the newly-risen bourgeois--struggle to imitate the upper classes and to emulate their use of leisure time. Benson's characterizations of the villagers of Riseholme and Tilling match closely the descriptions of those Philistines; however, we cannot dislike them for their weaknesses. The positive change in the author's attitude toward them compels us to cheer them on as the victors of the twentieth century.

Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead" appears to be the boy of the first three stories in adulthood. The boy's artistic mind is formed and limited by adult influences so that he dreams of escape. Gabriel has the same artistic disposition and has developed a limited outlet for his talents. He, too, envisions escape. Gabriel's epiphany and his sense of insecurity and pride are so like the boy's that the similarity suggests one character who has developed a habit of introspection. Finally, Gabriel's sexual anxiety implies that he fears women and fears his own sexuality. Joyce repeats patterns of imagery in "The Dead" that echo the boy's developing sexuality, indicating that the boy and the man suffer the same fears. Seeing Gabriel Conroy as the boy-narrator of the first three stories creates closure for Dubliners, and it gives the reader insight into the character of Gabriel.

The individual's search for absolute order and meaning within a chaotic universe is an important theme in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. In Sirens of Titan, Malachi Constant unwillingly undertakes this futile quest and is consequently victimized, philosophically and psychologically, by various agents and symbols of chaos. After spiraling outward into the chaotic cosmos, his simplistic beliefs revealed to be illusion, Malachi spirals back to himself and to Earth, literally and figuratively, only to confront the illusions within. In addition, the form of Sirens of Titan can be seen as a metaphor for meaninglessness, mirroring and echoing Malachi Constant's and the reader's absurd call for clarity within chaos.

Within the remarkable diversity of Doris Lessing's fiction, the author's interest in the interrelation between the individual and the collective remains a constant. Her early works pursued this theme within a socio-political framework; however, her continued explorations have evolved an apolitical ethos which unfolds progressively in all of her work since The Golden Notebook. The impetus of this development, which has encouraged Lessing's experiments with various narrative techniques, is her desire to articulate a formula integrating the self with society; in one form or another, the catalyst of this integration is the creative imagination. By tracing related thematic and aesthetic courses of development in four novels--The Golden Notebook, The Four-Gated City, The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight, and The Good Terrorist--this thesis will demonstrate how Lessing's quest for integration has shaped her present apolitical ethos.

The Julia character, as depicted in the essay in Pentimento,
provides a character model for Lillian Hellman's plays.
Julia's strength of personal responsibility provides Hellman
a measure by which her characters succeed or fail, a
criterion upon which personal worth is judged. Julia's
strength, compassion, and personal responsibility are
depicted in varying degrees in the characters created in
Watch on the Rhine, The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes,
Another Part of the Forest, The Searching Wind, and The
Autumn Garden. As reflected in the plays, Julia is
Hellman's model, her ideal; she is the vehicle for Hellman's
strong personal and social statements.

Gardner's use of unreliable and often intrusive narrative
voices is a structural key to the world view presented
in his novels. All the narrators, whether they be
involved central characters or intrusive third-person
voices, journey toward knowledge and affirmation in
art. In The Wreckage of Ag'athon, the aged seer is
driven by the chaos he cannot untangle to create his
own rationale. Grendel embraces a nihilistic world
view until the monster is finally lifted to a limited
sort of vision as a shaper of experience. The voice
of The Sunlight Dialogues is limited omniscient, yet
the narrator intrudes, reminding the reader that he is
dependent upon an involved point of view. In the
dream-narrative of Jason and Medeia, perhaps the best
utilization of an involved, fallible narrator, the
journey toward affirmative vision balongs more to the
narrator than the hero.

Adolescents play an integral role in Carson McCullers' work, particularly
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, and
Clock Without Hands. In these novels the characterizations of Mick,
Frankie, Jester, and Sherman are drawn with an intuitive awareness
of principles of adolescent psychology. McCullers focuses on the
expectations, uncertainties, and contradictions of the adolescent
years. However, her novels are much more than stories of troubled
teens. Largely because of their adolescent characteristics, Nick,
Frankie, Jester, and Sherman serve as fitting symbolic vehicles for
McCullers' exploration of such ageless themes as the search for self
and the search for love.

Literature is influenced by the society in which it is
written. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner and
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton have many similarities
because the societies which produced them have similarities.
The Old South and the Afrikaner society of South Africa
have many historical occurrences and cultural attitudes
in common, among them: former slave societies, wars
with aborigenes, an agrarian-industrial conflict in
which they were defeated, racial segregation, Calvinist
religion, and an intermingling of the past and the
present. Absalom, Absalom! and Too Late the Phalarope
have the following in common: tone, titles of despair,
character types, function of setting, qualities of
Greek tragedy, Biblical allusions and syntax. A sociological literary study may help to understand how
a society influences its literature.