Modern Writing: What Distincts Modern Writing and How It Affects Society

Lexi Wickline

Senior Exit Project

Bradon LeBlanc and Brandi D’Lima

19 November 2021
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Lexi Wickline

Mr. LeBlanc and Mrs. D’Lima

Senior Exit Project

19 November 2021

In this era, both children and adults alike prefer the more informal, transparent style of

modern writing, mostly because it is easier to read and understand. Classic literature lacks the

same direct intellectual diction and requires deeper research for readers to grasp an

understanding. Though traditional writing is influential with its more formal and artistic

presentation, it does not contain the same affable nature compared to a broader audience like

modern literature. Because of this, modern creative writing has evolved to be a more prominent

style in everyday writing and culture.

Modern literature is commonly characterized as a creative separation from traditional

ways of writing, specifically in poetry or fictional work. However, this so-called separation does

not exclude fiction alone and stretches to a broad body of nonfiction work, including:

autobiographies, biographies, news working, essays, etc. Plus this ‘creative separation’ can entail

a listing of different traits, styles, and overall artistic innovation. This definition lacks elaboration

of what makes-up both traditional and modern literature. The difference between the two styles,

and the development of modern writing is widely interpreted and debated.

Instructor Jennifer Carnevale and expert contributor Kaitlyn Danahy from Study.co

describe contemporary literature—a synonym to modern; reflecting on constantly changing

styles—as, “...literature written after World War II through the current day. ...Works of

contemporary literature reflect a society’s social and or political viewpoints, shown through
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realistic characters, connections to current events and socioeconomic messages. …The writers

are looking… [to] illuminate societal strengths and weaknesses to remind society of lessons they

should learn and questions they should ask” (Carnevale and Danahy). Though some elements are

still vague; Carnevale and Danahy’s collaborative definition clarifies a few new points

recognized as ‘modern literature’:

- Modern literature originates between around 1940 to present time.

- Modern literature centers on significant societal viewpoints that the writers

believe need to bring attention to.

- Modern literature reflects a message using various stylistic techniques to

showcase an era.

Stating it begins near the 1940s; this production of sentimentality and imperialist rhetoric

appeared near the beginning of the industrialization era which led to a rapid change in people’s

living and working conditions. This drew several communities to push toward reform

movements as a statement of their struggles, influencing diversion and rebuilding in multiple

social units, including authors. It was only after World War II—an era of economic

depression—that modern literature spread in popularity due to its notable experimental

descriptions of loss and societal issues (The Literature of World War II, 2021). Given how

hopeless life had been at this time (men drafted and killed in war; women and children employed

to make up for the missing older men; severe worldwide poverty and homeless rates), the

prominent depictions of loss, loneliness, poverty, and overall hardships allured readers.

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway is a noteworthy example of a

novel tackling these significant issues; focusing on a Spanish professor from Montana, Robert

Jordan, who happily volunteered for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Upon the first few
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pages, Whom the Bell Tolls takes on the appearance of a basic action-packed, patriotic war story,

which can be rightfully assumed by the way the main character takes great pride as a soldier.

Readers at the time would have expected stories on the honor of war, since, during a period

amidst World War II, both American citizens and the government would brashly tell young men

in posters, articles, or common conversation to represent their country by fighting as a soldier.

However, Hemingway cleverly discourages such expectations in Chapter 1 when Robert Jordan

internally tries to reassure himself by saying, “All the best ones, when you thought it over, were

gay. It was much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was like having

immortality while you were still alive…There were very few [like] them left. And if you keep on

thinking like that, my boy, you won’t be left either” (Hemingway 18). The isolation and

hopelessness highlights the trauma and repression soldiers endure overlooks violence with a

more tangible positivity and toxic, cynical humor. This scene, along with many others, goes on to

link a theme of losing innocence. Something that returning veteran soldiers who have survived

the grotesque nature of World War II, World War I, or the Spanish Civil War resonated with.

Another example of contemporary literature is Richard Wright’s Native Son, which

focuses on Bigger Thomas, a poor, uneducated, twenty-year-old Black man trying to survive in

1930s Chicago. Most of the time fear, hatred, and oppression haunt Bigger’s life, and with it,

Wright is able to psychologically present how the effects of persecution and poverty slowly

corrupt Bigger. Nearly all of the industrialized Western world struggled with the difficulties

Wright addresses in Native Son in some way between 1929-1939. Despite the novel’s attempt to

address racism, after its release, the novel garnered controversy for its poor depictions of African

Americans. American Black novelist James Baldwin critiqued it in his passage Notes of a Native

Son (1955) that “...Baldwin blasted [the main character’s] portrayal as stereotypical and
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unsympathetic” (Controversial 1940 Novel... 2019). In spite of the controversy, Native Son

became a commercialized hit that successfully captivated readers for the shocking

acknowledgement of American segregation. To this day Native Son’s themes of racism and

capitalism still manifest in modern writing. For example Angie Thomas’s, The Hate You Give,

published in 2017, which also portrays African-American lifestyle and the impoverishment of

South Side Chicago, addresses some of the same issues Wright highlights in the 1950s.

Apart from societal topics, many modern writers were able to reach their audience

because of their uniquely crafted styles of writing alone. It was seen as a rebellion against

clearcut storytelling that resonated with the audience as much as its social themes did. The

rebellious nature of writers like Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner epitomize the identity

of modernist writing.

Traditional writing is compelling because of its more descriptive, royalistic diction. The

writing typically relays information using a stylistic flair or pattern. An example of traditional

style is shown in the epic poem, Beowulf, which is imaginative in its depictions of bodies, using

rich dialogue and kenning—combining two nouns to create a new word—to produce an

interesting image of human anatomy. An example of this is when the author details a burning

body as, “...flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house” (Beowulf I.3148). In this case, the

author uses a kenning—“bone-house”—to create the image of a body burning like a house of

bones. Beowulf shows how traditional writing uses dramatic word play to create its stories.

Yet, modern writers like Zora Neale Hurston greatly diverge from this by being very

colloquial in their writing. In Hurston’s case, she was a Black activist leader who had a fixture in

the Harlem Renaissance. Often serving in minority movements and helping protect the rights of

African Americans. So in many of her works, Hurston uses informal dialect intending to
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illustrate how Southern Black Americans spoke with each other. An example of this is in her

story Their Eyes Were Watching God, when the main character, Janie, returns home and her

neighbors asks, “What she doin’ coming back here in dem overalls…” (Hurston 2). By

expressing regional aphorisms and knowing the area, Hurston is able to properly capture an

authentic setting. Hurston also writes long, uninterrupted sentences that derail from any pattern

to create a unique style. A style of writing that greatly forks away from classic literature, but

allows Hurston to widen her dialogue and coherently follow her stories' surroundings.

While Faulkner’s style consists of long, streams of inner monologue that help develop the

psychological complexity of his short story characters or settings. One way he does this is in his

sequence of descriptions. Specifically in how he describes an object, then quickly follows it up

with a description of his character. This establishes depth by comparing his characters to

whatever he previously described, often using similar or key words in his comparisons. A

example of this type of description is in his short story, “A Rose For Emily”, when he describes

the Grierson house as: “...a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with

cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies…” and

what comes after is a portrayal of Miss Emily, describing her as “small and spare”, sharing

parallels with the house’s “heavily lightsome” frame (Faulkner 1-3). What greatly differs him

from other authors is his various stylistic techniques, which he adjusts depending on the message

he wants to convey. He often applies complex sentence structures to evolve his characters. With

his complex development of characters and setting, Faulker creates a uniquely influential writing

style.

With so many profound topics or styles craftily devised by authors, it is tempting to

group them by their similar characteristics. However, it is a vain task to find then point out every
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unique element in modern writing since it rapidly evolves with time. However, it is possible to

pair it down to four basic traits. Amy Tan, American author of The Joy Luck Club and The

Kitchen God’s Wife, distinguishes modernist literature through experimentation and

individualism. The Joy Luck Club, though commercialized as a novel, is a collection of sixteen

experimental short stories told from the perspective of club members and their daughters. Each

of the characters describe what their lives are like as Chinese immigrants in the United States.

Narratively, the device of multiple narrators breaks free from the common one or two

perspectives seen in most first person stories. Experimenting with a broad cast of characters who

are different ages helps present a conflict between generations; the young dismiss their mothers’

traditions because of their Americanized upbringing, and the older lacki an understanding of

their childrens’ desire to reach them. Experimenting with the new allows authors to explore new

concepts with a fresh sense of sensibility. The lack of rules gives writers infinite possibilities for

their stories.

Individualism is exhibited more in Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife because of the

main character’s strong need to establish identity. In the story, Tan once again explores the

generational gap between immigrants and their children. This time focused more on the child’s

perspective, Pearl, who has difficulty distinguishing her American life from her Chinese

heritage. Eventually she attempts to abandon her heritage by remaining distant from home and

her Chinese culture. Because the character shows no desire to accept her origins, she shows a

need to distance herself from her family. For example, in Chapter 1, Pearl reminisces about her

mother and imagines, “...mother sitting one table away, and [she] feel[s] as lonely as [she]

imagine[s] her to be. [She] thinks of the enormous distance that separates [them] and makes

[them] unable to share the most important matters of [their lives]” (Tan 4). Self-realization is part
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of the reason the author is able to create a unique aspect of modern literature. Establishing

identity through seeking one’s desires is an important aspect of an individual which creates an

interesting piece of modern literature. With Tan’s interpretation of South Asian immigrants and

core mother-daughter relationships, The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife hit

emotionally for plenty of Asian-Americans and immigrant families. Eventually succeeding as

critical favorites because of Tan’s achievement in creating realistic female Asian-American

characters, a community that is often erased or stripped of individuality in media.

Josh Patrick, article writer for Pen & the Pad, has a similar take to Amy Tan on

individualism and experimentation, but believes the addition of absurdity and symbolism

summate the characterization of contemporary storytelling for their profound significance in

modern creativity (Patrick). Sometimes writers want to write about the profane or the absurd

which tends to take on a theme of meaninglessness or surrealism. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

demonstrates the impactfulness of absurdity with its grotesque imagery of diseased meat and

unsanitary conditions to portray the evils of capitalism. It should first be addressed that Sinclair’s

work was not originally published past the 1940s, first springing up on November 4, 1905.

However, his usage of stylistic techniques and more informal wording when presenting his social

themes fit him in as a modernist writer.

Throughout the novel, Sinclair deliberately presents the effects of capitalism by the slow

physical and mental annihilation of the working class. He repeatedly showcases the idealistic

faith in the American Dream, then undermines the meaninglessness of those dreams by writing

intense descriptions of tortured workers or dismembered animal caracasses which helps give

perspective on how valueless the working classes' beliefs were to the wealthy. An example of

this is when the narrator numbly watches a group of cattle be driven into meat chutes, and “In
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these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch, pressing on to

their fate, all unsuspicious--a very river of death” (Sinclair 38). The cattle on “a very river of

death” represents the naive trust immigrant workers have for a work system that does not care for

them. Because of Sinclair’s vulgar details of the meat-packing industry, shocked readers

pressured the federal government to enforce working conditions. Eventually leading to the

creation of the federal food safety laws.

Symbolism is often used to produce an impression within the readers by giving objects,

actions, places and events connective meanings. It often applies multiple imaginative layers to

give depth for the messages or concepts the author wants to convey. In the novel No Longer

Human, the narrator, Oba Yozo, learns that his wife Yoshiko had been sexually assaulted by an

acquaintance of his. Instead of blaming the assailant, Yozo deems them irrelevant and blames

himself for the suffering his wife underwent. The event illuminates Yozo's inner obsession of

guilt and blame that the book hints he has been suffering with since childhood. Dazai

accomplishes this by symbolically examining the different qualities of the human face. Often

having narration laminate on Yozo’s face, which is described as dull or unimpressionable.

Sometimes, further into the book, Yozo says he has ‘lost’ his face. This helps affirm

Yozo’s self-hate by referring to himself as something putrid and freakish, lacking the social

capacity to be human, and eventually he is unable to assert himself back into society as another

person. The slow distortion of Yozo’s face eventually brings him comfort after examining the

lifeless portraits of Vincent van Gogh’s and Amedeo Modigliani’s paintings, which he describes

as “...the [pictures] of a ghost” (Dazai). No Longer Human holds a distinct focus on the

alienation of depression and finding one’s humanity. Released during a period of post-war Japan,

its internal depictions still hold strong to this day, with millions able to relate to Yozo’s intense
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feelings of despair, dread, and detachment. Rising to become Japan’s second-best-selling novel.

The symbolism shown in Dazai’s No Longer Human is only one of the many examples of

popular modern novels.

Representing as an allegorical retelling of the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm by

George Orwell is another perfect example of symbolism and abstract ideas. The central cast is a

democratic coalition of farm animals who have overthrown their human oppressor, Mr. Jones.

After toppling the farmers of the barn, the animals give in to the power of their revolt leaders, the

pigs. Who eventually grow to become the ruling class of the barn’s new society. Unlike Dazai’s

vague and obscure imagery, Orwell keeps his diction simple and concrete, quickly establishing

his critique about fascism and communism. He does this by showing the hypocrisy of tyrannical

rulers by having Napoleon, the large Berkshire boar, become a violent, corrupt opportunist. With

his stoic, quick-tempered attitude and interest in power, readers can make immediate connections

with Napoleon to the Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union leader, Joseph Stalin, who

similarly rose to a position of dictatorial power. It’s clear that Orwell heavily supports socialist

ideals, but has the self awareness to realize that the Soviet Union originally began with socialist

beliefs that grew more perverted with time. He establishes this in the novel by writing symbolic

hypocrisies that corrupt the barn’s ‘Animalist’ ideals. An example of this appears in Chapter 10

when the pigs reinterpreted one of the seven commandments (a set of basic principles the

animals wrote after their revolt), stating, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more

equal than others” (Orwell 112). This phrase is an example of how oppressive systems abuse

vague language to control the oppressed. After its release, Animal Farm became a symbol for

what was happening in the Soviet Union at the time. Broadening readers' knowledge about both

Russia and the effects of tyrannical rulers.

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Modern writing comes in many styles and forms, and can be found in novels ranging

from George Orwell’s satirical fable Animal Farm, to Amy Tan’s self-identifying collection

piece, The Joy Luck Club. Modern literature is able to reach a wider audience and address

important social issues like abuse, censorship or complicated family relationships in a way that

classic literature may not. Description, the use of symbolism, and experimentation characterize a

few of the everchanging qualifications fitting the definition of modern literature. All in all,

modern literature captures the imagination allowing readers to effectively experience the world

in a new way, from a variety of perspectives.

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Works Cited

Alexander, Michael. Beowulf. Penguin Classics, 2013.

Carnevale, Jennifer, and Kaitlyn Danahy. “Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research

Schools, Degrees & Careers.” Study.com | Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit.

Research Schools, Degrees & Careers, 15 Sept. 2020,

https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-contemporary-literature-definition-writing-style.

html.

Coodin, David. “Characteristics of 20th Century Literature.” Pen and the Pad, 5 Nov. 2021,

https://penandthepad.com/characteristics-20th-century-literature-8221336.html.

Dazai, Osamu. No Longer Human. New Directions, 1958.

Faulkner, William, and M T. Inge. “A Rose for Emily”. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970.

Griffin, John, and George Orwell. Animal Farm, George Orwell. Harlow: Longman, 1989. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York:Scribner Paperback Fiction,

1995

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Virago Press, 2018.

MasterClass, -. “Modernist Literature Guide: Understanding Literary Modernism - 2021.”

MasterClass, MasterClass, 14 Apr. 2021,

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/modernist-literature-guide#5-characteristics-of-mode

rnist-literature.

Pop, KQED. “Controversial 1940 Novel 'Native Son' Gets Updated for New HBO Adaptation.”

KQED, 3 Apr. 2019,

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https://www.kqed.org/pop/110706/controversial-1940-novel-native-son-gets-updated-for-ne

w-hbo-adaptation.

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: Vintage, 1993.