20th Century Literature and Despair

A Look at Early 20th Century Literature

Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the 20th century we see an overwhelming shift from the early America’s writings of possibility and optimism to writings of despair and depravity. There is a loss of the sort of innocence that dominated the pre-modern era. You no longer find the inspiring and inspirational writings that came from the likes of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and others. Instead we find authors such as T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Allen Ginsberg dominating the writing world and projecting their worldview onto the American nation, and it is a dismal one. Blackness, decline, lack of meaning, and overall depression and despair seem to be the favorite themes of the modern era writer. Happiness and meaning in life seem to be distant unattainable objects to many of the modern writers. Just as the teenager who is struggling to find himself or herself and understand life and discover its truer meanings, the 20th century of America marks the painful process of self-discovery for a nation.