American Literature in 20th and 21st centuries
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His best-known novel is The Grapes of Wrath. It is a picture of a poor family, which is exploited by the fruit-growers in
California. Other famous works are: Of Mice and Men, East of Eden , Travels with Charley.
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Of Mice and Men is a novella (1937), it tells the tragic story of ….
Post WWII period p. 2
JEROME DAVID SALINGER (1919–2010) – expressed the feelings of the post-war generation in novel The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger wrote also nice short stories – Nine Stories.
The Catcher in the Rye, which is about a sensitive, sincere and pure teenage boy who is disgusted by the corrupted
behaviour and insincerity of people around himself. The boy runs away from his prestigious school.
Why does Holden want to be a catcher in the rye? What do the motifs of a field of rye and a cliff symbolize?
Social changes continued through the ’50s and ’60s. Family life was important, many people had children and settled in the
suburbs. Writers however looked at it a bit differently.
The 1950s gave birth to a literary movement known as the “Beat Generation”. Authors rejected traditional society and
looked for new experiences through drugs, jazz music and Eastern mysticism (Zen Buddhism).
JACK KEROUAC (1922 –1969)
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J. Kerouac was a Canadian-American novelist and poet, a pioneer of the Beat Generation
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He is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing covering topics such as, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs,
poverty, and travel.
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He died due to long-standing abuse of alcohol
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His writing is influenced by the Zen idea of spontaneity (A. Ginsberg wrote in a similar way)
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In his works he describes people “on the road” to freedom or looking for the meaning of life.
On the Road -
It is a largely autobiographical novel that was based on the spontaneous road trips of a group of Beats (Kerouac and his
friends)who travel westward across America. Symbolically, it is a trip from the „unfree“ city to the emotional, spiritual
and physical freedom of the West.
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It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug
experiences.
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It was typed on a scroll.
His next famous works are: The Dharma Bums (influenced by Buddhism) and
Big Sur (about a writer seeking solitude).
WILLIAM STYRON (1925–2006)was an American novelist and essayist
wrote an excellent novel called
Sophie’s Choice (1979) about a Polish woman who, while imprisoned in a concentration
camp was forced to make a cruel choice– which of her two children would survive and which would be killed. Her life in the
U.S.A. after the war was influenced by the bitter war experience.
The novel concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer called Stingo, who befriends the Jewish Nathan
Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish (but non-Jewish) survivor of the Nazi concentration camp.
Nathan and Sophie's relationship is intense and difficult.
Nathan claims to be a cellular biologist, which is later revealed to be a lie. He often takes drugs and as he suffers from
schizophrenia he becomes more and more violent and frighteningly jealous.
Sophie and Stingo try to flee to Virginia. On the way there, Sophie reveals her deepest, darkest secret: on the night that
she arrived at Auschwitz, she was forced to choose which of her two children would die immediately by gassing and which
would continue to live in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her seven-year-old daughter, Eva.
This heart-breaking decision has left her in mourning and unable to overcome the guilt.
Despite the fact that Stingo proposes marriage to her, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she
must return to Nathan.
Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide. Stingo is devastated.