The Great White Way, Times Square, c. 1925. Howard A. Thain. Oil on canvas, New York Historical Society.

634
Howard A. Thain/New York Historical Society, New York/Bridgeman Art Library
 U N IT F IVE

BEGINNINGS
OF THE
MODERN AGE
1910–1930s
Looking Ahead
Modern American literature developed in a turbulent era characterized by
extremes—both despair and exuberance. The violence of World War I
caused many people to lose faith in traditional values. Following the war,
an economic boom ushered in an age of prosperity and confidence.
Writers of the time created new literary works that mirrored this period of
rapid change and clashing values.

Keep the following questions in mind as you read:

How did World War I change Americans’ view of the world?
How was Modernism a departure from the American literary tradition?
What social and cultural forces shaped the Harlem Renaissance?

O B J EC TI V ES
In learning about the beginnings of the modern age, you will focus on the following:

• analyzing the characteristics of a literary period and how the issues of this period influenced its writers
• clarifying and understanding informational texts
• evaluating the influences of the historical period that shaped literary characters, plots, settings, and themes
• connecting literature to historical contexts, current events, and your own experiences

6 35
 TIMELINE Hemingway

1910 –1930s passport

AM E R I C AN L I T E R AT U R E

1910 1920
1910 1914 1919 1920
Twenty Years at Hull-House Tender Buttons Winesburg, Ohio by The Age of Innocence by
by Jane Addams by Gertrude Stein Sherwood Anderson Edith Wharton
1912 1916 1920
Harriet Monroe founds Chicago Poems Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse by Carl Sandburg
1921
1913 American Indian Stories
A Boy’s Will poetry by Zitkala-Sa
collection by Robert Frost

U N I T E D STAT E S E V E N TS

1910 1920
1910 1913 1920
W. E. B. Du Bois founds Henry Ford introduces Prohibition Amendment
the Crisis magazine assembly-line productivity 1916 outlaws the sale of alcohol
1911 1913 Great Migration begins 1920
National Urban League formed U.S. mint issues first “buffalo,” 1917 Nineteenth Amendment
to assist African Americans or “Indian head,” nickel United States declares war gives women the right
moving into cities on Germany to vote
1914
1911 Marcus Garvey founds 1919 1920
The Nestor Company builds Universal Negro Improvement Black Sox Scandal rocks The nation’s first commercial
the first Hollywood film studio Association American baseball radio station, KDKA, begins
broadcasting in Pittsburgh

WO R L D E VE N TS

1910 1920
1910 1912 1920
Mexican Revolution begins Titanic sinks after striking an First meeting of the League
iceberg near Newfoundland of Nations in Geneva,
1910
Switzerland
Japan takes over Korea 1913 1914 ▲
The Rite of Spring by Russian Panama Canal opens 1921
1911
composer Igor Stravinsky Diego Rivera begins work on
Manchu Dynasty 1914
marks the beginning of his first mural in Mexico
overthrown in China World War I begins
Modernism in music
1921
1912 1918
1913 Mongolia gains
Native American Jim Thorpe Armistice signed November
Marcel Proust publishes the independence from China
stars at the Olympic Games 11 in France, ending World
first volume of Remembrance
of Things Past War I

636 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F T HE MODE RN AGE

(t)National Archives/John F. Kennedy Library, (c)Fotosearch/Comstock Royalty Free, (b)Imageworks
 Langston Hughes

1930
1921 1923 1926 1930
All–African American Edna St. Vincent Millay The Weary Blues by Langston Flowering Judas by Katherine
musical Shuffle Along opens wins Pulitzer Prize in poetry Hughes ▲ Anne Porter
on Broadway
1925 1926 1936
1922 The New Yorker magazine The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Eugene O’Neill wins Nobel
The Waste Land by established Hemingway Prize in Literature
T. S. Eliot
1925 1928
1922 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Home to Harlem by Claude
The Enormous Room Fitzgerald McKay
by E. E. Cummings

1930
1924 1927 1927 1931
Immigration Act bars nearly Conclusion of Sacco- First feature-length “talkie,” “The Star-Spangled Banner”
all Asians Vanzetti murder trial draws or talking motion picture, becomes national anthem
world attention The Jazz Singer, is released
1925 1935
Schoolteacher John Scopes 1927 ▲ 1929 George H. Gallup begins the
goes on trial for teaching Charles Lindbergh flies the League of United Latin Gallup Poll
evolution in Tennessee first nonstop solo flight American Citizens founded
1938
across the Atlantic Ocean
1926 1929 Minimum wage is
Jelly Roll Morton and his 1927 The stock market crashes; established in the Fair Labor
Red Hot Peppers begin a Babe Ruth hits 60 home Great Depression begins Standards Act
series of jazz recordings runs, a record until 1961

1930
1922 1928 1930
Irish writer James Joyce Fifteen countries sign the Mohandas K. Gandhi leads
publishes Ulysses Kellogg-Briand Pact, protest against British salt
condemning war monopoly in India
1926
Economic turmoil leads to a 1928
general strike in Britain Joseph Stalin starts
eliminating private ▲ Mohandas K. Gandhi
businesses in Soviet Union

Reading Check
Analyzing Graphic Information How many changes
Timeline Visit www.glencoe.com for of government throughout the world are shown on
an interactive timeline. this timeline?

INT ROD UCTION 637

(t)National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY, (c)David J. & Janice L. Frent Collection/CORBIS, (b)Austrian Archives/CORBIS
 BY THE NUMBERS
COST OF A MODEL T, 1908–1924 WORLD WAR I MILITARY DEATHS

$1,000
$900
$800
$700
$600
Cost

$500
$400
$300
$200
Germany 1,773,000 Romania 335,700
$100
Russia 1,700,000 Ottoman Empire 325,000
0 France 1,385,000 United States 107,000
Austria-Hungary 1,200,000 Bulgaria 87,500
1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 British Empire 908,400 Others 74,200
Source American Vision
Year Italy 650,000

HERO’S WELCOME IMMIGRATION

Back in My Day Charles Lindbergh thrilled people • More than 17 million immi-
in the United States and abroad grants entered the United
The value of a dollar and the cost of in 1927 with his nonstop, 33½- States in the first quarter of
goods changed dramatically during hour flight from New York to the twentieth century.
the course of the twentieth century. Paris. Upon returning he received:
Here are some economic numbers • In 1921 Congress passed the
from 1915:
• ticker-tape parade in New Emergency Quota Act, restrict-
York City that used 1,800 ing newcomers from Europe
Average Yearly Income pounds of shredded paper to 3 percent of a nationality’s
• 7,000 job offers U.S. population in the 1910
• Workers in finance, insurance,
census. In 1924 this was cut
and real estate $1,040 • 3.5 million letters down to 2 percent and was
• Industrial workers $687 changed to reflect the 1890
• Retail trade workers $510 census population numbers to
• Farm laborers $355 GREAT MIGRATION further limit immigration.
• Domestic servants $342 • In 1910, 75 percent of African
• Public school teachers $328 Americans lived on farms, and THE SHORTENING SKIRT
90 percent lived in the South.
Price of Goods • In 1919, the average distance of
• In the late 1910s and the a skirt hem above the ground
• Bicycle $11.95 1920s, 1.5 million Southern in proportion to a woman’s
• Baseball $1.15 blacks moved to cities—a height was 10 percent.
• Hotel room $1.00 movement called the “Great
Migration.”
• In 1924, it was 15 percent.
• Dozen eggs .39
• In 1925, it was 20 percent.
• Glass of cola .50 • During this period, Chicago’s
• Large roll of toilet paper .70
black population increased by • In 1927, it surpassed 25 per-
148%, Cleveland’s by 307%, cent, reaching the knee.
and Detroit’s by 611%.

638 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F T HE MODE RN AGE

 A
A 1910s farmhouse in rural New
England, similar to the one in
BEING THERE
Derry, New Hampshire, in which At the beginnings of the modern era there was war,
Robert Frost lived and wrote. economic boom and collapse, and the rise of an
international culture. These images show the East
Coast of the United States, an area strongly affected
by these developments.

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B Women Walking with Girls in Harlem,
ca. 1920. Underwood & Underwood.
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C Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street in New
York City, photograph 1924. In 1920,
for the first time in the country’s
history, a majority of people lived in
cities instead of in rural areas.

Reading Check
Analyzing Graphic Information 3. What can you infer about the literature in this unit
1. Which nation had the greatest number of military from the images of Harlem and a rural farmhouse in
deaths during World War I? New Hampshire?
2. How much less did a Model T cost in 1920 than Maps in Motion Visit
in 1910? www.glencoe.com for an interactive map.

INT ROD UCTION 639

(tl)Bettmann/CORBIS, (tr)Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS, (b)Bettmann/CORBIS
 BEGINNINGS OF THE
MODERN AGE
1910 –1930s
Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces
World War I set enforcement guidelines for alcohol with the
National Prohibition Act of 1919. The law did little to
Europe exploded into war following the assassination
limit drinking. Instead, it contributed to the rise of
of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in
gangsters such as Al Capone, who secretly trans-
1914. Complex military alliances and national rival-
ported liquor and ran “speakeasies,” nightclubs where
ries quickly divided European countries into two
people could drink illegally.
opposing forces. They became known as the Allies
(Britain, France, Russia, and Italy) and the Central
Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Turkish Women’s Rights
Ottoman Empire). Before the onset of war, Colonel E. The push for women’s right to vote, or suffrage, grew
M. House, chief adviser to President Woodrow stronger in the early twentieth century. The work of
Wilson, said, “The situation is extraordinary. It is mil- reformer Carrie Chapman Catt led to some states in
itarism run stark mad. . . . There is too much hatred, the Midwest and West granting women the right to
too many jealousies.” For three years, massive armies vote. However, the move toward a nationwide amend-
fought each other all over Europe. The United States ment to the Constitution stalled. In 1917, suffragist
joined the war in 1917, in part because a German sub- leaders such as Alice Paul picketed the White House
marine had sunk an unarmed British ship, the and went on hunger strikes when they were jailed for
Lusitania, in the Atlantic in 1915. Of the 1,198 people their protests. Women finally got the vote when
lost in the Lusitania incident, 128 were U.S. citizens. the Nineteenth Amendment became law in 1920.
On November 11, 1918, the Allies emerged victorious. Women also gained a greater place in the workforce
Ten million soldiers died in the war; more lives were and legally enlisted in the military for the first time
lost in World War I than in all wars during the cen- during this period.
tury preceding it. The staggering rate of casualties is
attributed to the introduction of tanks, warplanes,
machine guns, and poison gas. The Great Migration
African Americans left the rural South for northern
cities in huge numbers during the 1910s and 1920s.
The Roaring Twenties A labor shortage caused by men’s leaving to fight in
As the world emerged from war, and U.S. soldiers, World War I and new limits on immigration from
known as doughboys, returned home, people in the Europe opened up many well-paying jobs for African
United States longed for a good time. The result was Americans in cities and industrial areas. Brutal south-
the decade called the Roaring Twenties. The Twenties ern segregation policies and widespread crop failure
were marked by a booming economy, jazz, and late- also drove blacks north. With its affordable housing
night parties where people danced the Charleston. and thriving cultural life, New York City’s Harlem was
Young women, nicknamed flappers, wore short skirts, an especially good place to relocate. This largely
short hair, and lipstick. Some even drove automobiles. African American neighborhood was the center of an
Many authorities were unsettled by what they saw as explosion of creativity in the 1920s, which became a
society’s loosening morals. Congress had attempted to cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.

640 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F THE MODE RN AGE

 1920s, radios became a fixture in U.S. homes, allow-
ing people from across the country to tune in to soap
operas, comedy shows, sports, and music. People in
the United States became fascinated with the exploits
of popular heroes such as baseball star Babe Ruth,
tennis champion Bill Tilden, and aviator Charles
Lindbergh—who electrified the nation in 1927 by fly-
ing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight from
New York to Paris. Even before the release of the first
feature-length “talking” picture in 1927, movies were
already an essential part of U.S. life. Attendance con-
tinued to rise throughout the 1930s, as movies pro-
vided a temporary escape from the hard times of the
Depression.

The Great Depression

The stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known
as “Black Tuesday,” ended the prosperity of the
Suzette Dewey, daughter of Charles Dewey, posed beside Roaring Twenties. Market conditions were ripe for a
roadster, c. 1926. Herbert E. French. Photographic print, collapse, as investors bought stock on credit, and
Library of Congress. banks did not have enough money in reserve to cover
all their customers’ deposits. In 1929, investors became
worried that their stocks were overvalued and began
Popular Culture selling at a frantic pace. Disastrously, no one was buy-
In the 1920s, U.S. popular culture was transformed by ing. By 1933, about a quarter of the population was
the automobile, radio, movies, advertising, and other unemployed, and many families became homeless,
innovations. Henry Ford’s introduction of the assem- depending on soup kitchens and migrant camps for
bly line in 1913 enabled factories to produce cars at food and shelter.
prices the average person could afford. During the

PREVIEW Big Ideas of the Modern Age

The Harlem
1 New Poetics 2 Modern Fiction 3 Renaissance

In the first part of the twenti- World War I created a genera- African Americans who
eth century, American poetry tion of writers who ques- flocked to New York City’s
pushed the boundaries of tioned traditional values. As a Harlem turned it into a center
subject matter, form, and result, many of them focused of creativity. Out of this cul-
style. Poets in this era found on social problems, a loss of tural whirlwind came litera-
inspiration in a wide range of belief in the old truths, and ture that both celebrated
sources and created new human despair. African American culture and
ways to capture individual See pages 644–645. emphasized the struggle
experience. against racial prejudice.
See pages 642–643. See pages 646–647.

INT ROD UCTION 641

Library of Congress
 Big Idea 1
New Poetics

H
ave you ever had a feeling that is both The Imagists
unusually strong and remarkably inex-
The Imagist movement (see pages 650–651), largely
pressible? Shortly before the turn of
founded by Ezra Pound, flourished after 1910. Imagist
the twentieth century, many U.S. poets
poets believed that traditional poetry wasted energy
tried new ways to express their feelings
by describing, generalizing, and rhyming. To reform
and observations. Their new, experimental ways of
poetry, they insisted on direct presentation of images.
writing became known as Modernism. Some people
“An ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual
thought the new poetics, or methods for writing
and emotional complex in an instant of time,”
poetry, were an assault on literature. To others, mod-
Pound wrote. He and other Imagist poets, such as
ern poetry spoke eloquently about the mind and the
Amy Lowell and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), also wrote
heart of the individual, doing so in new ways linked
manifestos, statements explaining their artistic
to the groundbreaking work of earlier poets Walt
philosophy. Imagism strongly influenced William
Whitman and Emily Dickinson (see pages 394–440).
Carlos Williams (see pages 666–670), among others,
to expand the subject matter of poetry to include
New Directions visual impressions that capture the mysterious power
Writers in this period believed that American poetry of ordinary experience.
had become stagnant. As Ezra Pound (see pages 652–
655) said, the modern poets sought to “Make it new!” Eliot’s Perspective
Modern poets found inspiration in a wide range of
Modernism took a different form in the poetry of
sources beyond the traditional lyric and Romantic
T. S. Eliot (see pages 656–665). Wide-ranging allu-
poetry of England. The French Symbolist poets,
sions—references to history, art, and literature—are a
avant-garde, or experimental, painters such as Pablo
fundamental part of his poetic method. Eliot said:
Picasso, traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry, and
“The poet must become more and more comprehen-
everyday life all influenced the new poets.
sive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to
dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.”
Eliot believed that the effects of war and industry had
“A classic is classic not because it shattered the human spirit. His 1922 poem The Waste
Land, which takes a pessimistic view of civilization, is
conforms to certain structural rules, or considered the most influential poem of this period.
fits certain definitions (of which its
author had quite probably never heard). Breaking the Rules
It is classic because of a certain external E. E. Cummings (see pages 694–698) didn’t care for
the literary conventions that govern the arrangement
and irrepressible freshness. of words, punctuation, and capitalization—or the
—Ezra Pound increasing conformity of individuals in U.S. society
from ABC of Reading either. He insisted on an irregular use of capital and
lowercase letters, creating poems that looked ungram-
matical, and celebrating the individual—especially
the artist. Also a painter, Cummings drew inspiration
from the visual arts, using typography and layout in
new ways—both playful and serious.

642 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F THE MODE RN AGE

 from I: Six Nonlectures
by E. E. Cummings
Poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to
follow, even at a distance, the poet’s call-
ing (and here, as always, I speak from my
own totally biased and entirely personal
point of view) you’ve got to come out of
the measurable doing universe into the
immeasurable house of being. I am quite
aware that, wherever our socalled civiliza-
tion has slithered, there’s every reward
and no punishment for unbeing. But if
poetry is your goal, you’ve got to forget all
about punishments and all about rewards
and all about selfstyled obligations and
duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infi-
nitum and remember one thing only: that
it’s you—nobody else—who determine
your destiny and decide your fate.
Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can
you be alive for anybody else. Toms can
Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917. Joseph Stella. Oil on be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but
canvas, 361/4 x 301/4 in. Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra none of them can ever be you. There’s
Foundation for American Art, Chicago.
the artist’s responsibility; and the most
awful responsibility on earth. If you can
Frost’s New England take it, take it—and be.

One major poet of this period, Robert Frost (see

pages 704–724), did not follow Modernist poetics.
He held firm to traditional New England settings for
inspiration, and his lyric poetry is often traditional
in form as well. Frost relied largely on rhyme and
regular meter, and his language is frequently collo-
quial. Several of his poems are written as dialogue
between two people. Frost often wrote of the loneli-
ness and isolation of the individual, a typical theme
in modern poetry.
Reading Check
Summarizing How were the goals of the Modernist poets
different from those of more traditional American poetry?

INT ROD UCTION 643

Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago/Art Resource, NY
 Big Idea 2
Modern Fiction

W
hat is the best way to tell a story? The Jazz Age
How many ways are there to tell
F. Scott Fitzgerald (pages 742–761) gave the label “the
the same story? Modernist fiction
Jazz Age” to the period between the end of World
writers broke from tradition, as
War I and the beginning of the Great Depression. To
they omitted standard beginnings,
him, this time was both exuberant and mournful. In
transitions, and endings in order to tell stories that
his short life, Fitzgerald embodied the frantic pace and
reproduced the complex ways in which people think.
social ambitions typical of the Jazz Age. Yet, beneath
the surface, he believed that the United States was
The Shadow of War fundamentally in disarray. He said there was a new
War often leads to dramatic developments in art and “generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars
literature. World War I prompted many writers to fought, all faiths in man shaken.” In the United
question cultural traditions and the meaning of life, States, desire for consumer goods soared after the war,
turning quite a few youthful optimists into premature and symbols of success, such as cars, were everywhere.
cynics. One of them, John F. Carter, wrote in an issue But many writers were disgusted by what they viewed
of the Atlantic Monthly, “The older generation had as shallow materialism. In his novel The Great Gatsby,
certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing Fitzgerald memorably created glamorous and wealthy
it on to us. They give us this thing, knocked to characters who dash from one party to the next, yet
pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow up; and cannot find happiness.
then they are surprised that we don’t accept it with
the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with
which they received it.” With this shattered world in “It seemed only a question of a few
view, modern fiction writers probed the complex
inner workings of the mind and the breakdown of tra- years before the older people would
ditional values in the modern age. step aside and let the world be run by
those who saw things as they were.”
The Lost Generation
Many writers left the United States during this
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
period and established new lives in Europe. This led from Echoes of the Jazz Age
to a more international perspective that contrasted
with the regionalism that had dominated American
literature after the Civil War. American poet Gertrude
Stein, a longtime resident of Paris, remarked to a new
Hemingway’s Prose
American expatriate, the writer Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway wrote in a concise style influenced
(see pages 732–740), that the young people of the by his background as a newspaper reporter. His spare
time were a “lost generation.” This description became style was markedly different from the elaborate prose
a famous label for those who had lost faith in U.S. that short-story writers and novelists had often used
society and were unsure where to turn. The protago- in the 1800s. Through understatement and irony,
nist, or main character, in Hemingway’s novel The Sun Hemingway’s fiction suggests connections that the
Also Rises comments on this dilemma when he says, reader is left to infer. “I always try to write on the
“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one principle of the iceberg,” he said. “There is seven-
place to another. There’s nothing to that.” In modern eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.”
fiction, themes of change, indecision, and broken Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, is about
attachments often replace those of stability, heroism, members of the lost generation. It is told by Jake
and love. Barnes, an American newspaperman who has been
wounded in World War I.

644 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F THE MODE RN AGE

New York, 1911. George Bellows. Oil on canvas, 42 x 60 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

You paid some way for everything that was any good. I Perhaps that wasn’t true, though. Perhaps as you went
paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had along you did learn something. I did not care what it was
a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it.
experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned
living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing from that what it was all about.
when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The
world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine
philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly
as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.

Reading Check
Analyzing Cause and Effect How did World War I
affect fiction writing?

INT ROD UCTION 645

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.
 Big Idea 3
The Harlem Renaissance

M
usic inspires many of today’s writers The Neighborhood
and artists, just as it did during the
Harlem Renaissance. Artists fed off Harlem became a main destination during the Great
the energy of jazz and their commu- Migration. Word about the vibrant community life
nity and changed American art. and affordable rents in this New York neighborhood
As Countee Cullen stated in his poem “I Have a quickly spread, attracting writers, artists, and musi-
Rendezvous With Life,” it was time to “face the road, cians. It was a haven where African Americans could
the wind and rain, / To heed the calling deep.” The escape the restrictions they faced in the rest of society.
Harlem Renaissance represented the coming-of-age In 1929, when the whole country felt the economic
of African American culture and the flowering of the shock of the stock market crash, there was less money
community’s creative impulses, especially for southern available to spend on the arts—and as a result, the
blacks, who had been exploited for generations in Harlem Renaissance was over. However, writers in the
the United States. 1930s and 1940s such as Richard Wright (see pages
900–908) and Ralph Ellison continued the artistic
coming-of-age that this movement had begun.

Good morning, daddy!

The Deferred Dream
Ain’t you heard W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine of the NAACP, the
The boogie-woogie rumble Crisis, brought racial issues to the forefront of U.S.
culture. He wrote that the “problem of the twentieth
Of a dream deferred? century is the problem of the color-line.” Racial
—Langston Hughes segregation was widespread, and Du Bois said this
from Montage of a Dream Deferred created a veil of perception that forced African
Americans to see themselves through the eyes of
whites. The African American “simply wishes to
make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and
Blues to Jazz an American, . . . without having the doors of
Out of the African American tradition of spirituals Opportunity closed roughly in his face,” Du Bois said.
and work songs came blues music. Influenced by Racial identity became a pivotal issue for writers in
blues, jazz developed later in New Orleans as a type of this period. For example, Countee Cullen (see pages
music that combined West African rhythms, ragtime, 830–833) believed that race was a huge issue, but
and some European instruments, such as the string that a poet’s race should not determine how he or she
bass. Jazz was largely improvisational, or spontaneous, writes or how readers and critics understand him
within a rhythmic framework. Langston Hughes (see or her. Other writers, such as Arna Bontemps (see
pages 809–821) transposed themes and rhythms from pages 826–829), believed that a writer’s work could
blues and jazz into poems that celebrated the every- not be separated from his or her racial identity.
day life of African Americans and their strength in
the face of oppression. Hughes said, “I tried to write
poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street …
[these songs] had the pulse beat of the people who “The thing to do is to grab the broom
keep on going.” Jazz inspired an energetic social life of anger and drive off the beast
and filled clubs. Hughes reported that at one Harlem
party thrown by black socialite A’Lelia Walker, it was
of fear.”
so crowded that even a Scandinavian prince couldn’t —Zora Neale Hurston
get in; he could only have a beverage delivered to his
car idling outside the apartment building.

646 UNIT 5 B EG I N N I N G S O F THE MODE RN AGE

 from “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain” by Langston Hughes
Most of my own poems are racial in theme and
treatment, derived from the life I know. In many
of them I try to grasp and hold some of the
meanings and rhythms of jazz. I am as sincere
as I know how to be in these poems and yet
after every reading I answer questions like these
from my own people: Do you think Negroes
should always write about Negroes? I wish you
wouldn’t read some of your poems to white
folks. How do you find anything interesting in a
place like a cabaret? Why do you write about
black people? You aren’t black. What makes you
do so many jazz poems?
But jazz to me is one of the inherent expres-
sions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-
tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of
revolt against weariness in a white world, a world
The Janitor Who Paints, ca. 1937. Palmer Hayden. Oil on canvas,
391/8 x 327/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum,
of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-
Washington, DC. tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in
a smile. . . .
We younger Negro artists who create now
intend to express our individual dark-skinned
Hurston’s Folklore selves without fear or shame. If white people are
Zora Neale Hurston (see pages 790–798) explored the pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t
folklore of African Americans, and the building of matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.
community in the South during Reconstruction. A The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If
student of anthropology, she applied her training to colored people are pleased we are glad. If they
record her own experiences growing up in southern
are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either.
African American communities in works such as Dust
We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we
Tracks on a Road. Hurston first went to Harlem at six-
know how, and we stand on top of the moun-
teen when she was traveling as a member of a theater
group. Although her work became associated with the tain, free within ourselves.
Harlem Renaissance, she resisted being classified by
any artistic movement. “All clumps of people turn
out to be individuals on close inspection,” she said.
Reading Check
Analyzing Cause and Effect How did the Harlem
Renaissance contribute to the beginnings of the mod-
ern age in literature?

INT ROD UCTION 647

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY
 WRAP–UP
Why It Matters Cultural Links
The writers who created Modernism challenged the The “little magazines” such as Poetry that
traditional values of society and forms of literature. sprouted up during the period championed
They believed their innovations brought literature modern Imagism and other Modernist experi-
closer to capturing human experience. Today, writers mentation. Poetry’s founder, Harriet Monroe,
such as Dave Eggers, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Sherman wrote, “The Open Door will be the policy of
Alexie take on the challenge of portraying reality in this magazine—may the great poet we are look-
the twenty-first century. ing for never find it shut, or half-shut, against
his ample genius!” Today, Poetry receives about
Modern poets’ use of imagery and everyday speech
90,000 submissions per year.
further convinced people that a poem could be about
any subject. The poetry and manifestos of the William Carlos Williams influenced the Beat
Imagist movement provided inspiration for many Generation writers of the 1950s with his accessi-
groundbreaking poems of the 1950s and 1960s, such ble language and experimentation with form.
as those of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath (see pages
The Harlem Renaissance has influenced modern
1220–1225).
African American poets and hip-hop artists who
The Harlem Renaissance was an influential time strive to be leaders for the black community.
in African American and United States history. You might try using this study organizer to keep track of the big
The leading figures in the movement blazed a trail ideas in this unit.
for later African American writers, such as James
Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, and helped to push THREE-TAB BOOK
forward the battle for civil rights in the 1960s.
a a a
Ide Ide Ide
g g g
Big Ideas Link to Web resources to
further explore the Big Ideas at www.glencoe.com.
Bi 1 Bi 2 Bi 3

Connect to Today Use what you have learned about the

period to do one of these activities.

Speaking/Listening Working with several other students, create a brief presentation for your class
about how Modernism’s portrayals of life differ from traditional portrayals of the past. You can use
examples from literature, fine art, music, movies, or other kinds of expression.

Visual Literacy Create an illustrated graphic organizer that shows the various influences of World
War I on American literature and culture. You might show how writers responded to the effects of
war, as well as to the postwar economic boom.

Writing Review the political, social, cultural, and economic aspects of the modern period. How
many of these aspects are still a part of United States culture and literature today? Write a brief essay
exploring this question.

O B J EC TIVES
• Evaluate how a historical event shaped the literature of its time. Study Central Visit
• Read to associate literary experiences with contemporary issues. www.glencoe.com and click on Study Central
• Communicate a specific message by using a variety of media forms. to review the Beginnings of the Modern Age.
• Make informed, insightful, and effective presentations about a literary topic.

648 U N IT 5 BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN AGE