Modernism

The Great Gatsby is a fiction novel published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s experiences during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby captures the prosperity and the hedonism of the era through a cast of characters who reside in the fictional Long Island towns of West Egg and East Egg. Despite a cold reaction from critics and audiences upon its release, many modern scholars include The... Read The Great Gatsby Summary

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“The Killers,” by American author Ernest Hemingway, is a short story that tackles the themes Loss of Innocence, Passivity Versus Activity, and Disillusionment With Reality.Originally published in 1927 in Scribner’s magazine, “The Killers” was later included in Hemingway’s short story collections Men Without Women, which came out later the same year, Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Nick Adams Stories. The story has also been adapted into various film and animation versions over the years.“The Killers”... Read The Killers Summary

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Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was conceived in the 1910s, which is when the bulk of the novel takes place; however, it was not completed until 1924, after the cataclysmic events of the first world war. Mann was born in 1875, just four years after the creation of the modern state of Germany and the failed revolutionary Commune of France. During World War II, he was exiled from Germany, where Nazis burned copies of The Magic... Read The Magic Mountain Summary

The narrator muses that it must have been January of the present year when she first detected a small, round, dark mark on the wall. This mark will serve as the impetus for the entire story. She then states that “in order to fix a date”, it “is necessary to remember what one saw” (1). Next, she recalls the fire, a ray of light on her book, and three chrysanthemums in a vase, in order... Read The Mark on the Wall Summary

The Misfits is a young adult novel by bestselling American author James Howe. The first of four in The Misfits series, the novel chronicles a group of unpopular seventh graders’ participation in a contentious student council election. The series inspired No-Name Calling Week, a bullying-prevention initiative that has been held by schools across the country.Plot SummaryThe Misfits is told from the perspective of Bobby Godspeed, a seventh grader living in Paintbrush Falls, New York. Bobby... Read The Misfits Summary

The Rainbow (1915) by D. H. Lawrence follows three generations of the Brangwen family in Nottinghamshire, England, during the Second Industrial Revolution. The novel covers approximately 65 years in the Brangwens’ agricultural dynasty and explores how each generation changes in the face of modernity and industrial progress. The novel’s depiction of sexual desire and its role in the protagonists’ relationships and spiritual lives led to The Rainbow being the center of an obscenity trial a... Read The Rainbow Summary

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D. H. Lawrence published “The Rocking Horse Winner” in 1926, just four years before his death in 1930. He had written a story, “Glad Ghosts,” for inclusion in Lady Cynthia Asquith’s supernatural fiction anthology Ghost Book. She did not like the story, partly because of the celebration of male sexuality and other erotic undertones. Lawrence wrote “The Rocking Horse Winner” for her instead. Lawrence sets the story in a haunted house, appropriate for a “ghost”... Read The Rocking Horse Winner Summary

William Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury relays the trials and decline of a once-prominent Southern family, the Compsons. The novel grapples with the challenges of a changing cultural landscape as modernity encroaches on the values—and deep-seated prejudices—of the Old South. Told through the perspectives of the three Compson brothers, Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, the novel visits and revisits key events in the family’s past and present. Much of the concern swirls around... Read The Sound and the Fury Summary

The Whisper Man, released in August 2019, is a crime thriller by British author Alex North about the potential resurgence of a serial child murderer known as the Whisper Man and how it entangles various characters in a small town. North claims he got the idea for the book after his son mentioned “the boy in the floor.” Through criminal investigation and the lives of a father and son, North explores the nature of intergenerational... Read The Whisper Man Summary

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Virginia Woolf’s Modernist classic To the Lighthouse was published in May 1927 by Hogarth Press, the publishing house founded by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf in 1917. The Modern Library placed To the Lighthouse on its list of the 20th century’s best English-language novels. The three-part novel, which is written entirely in Woolf’s own stream-of-consciousness literary style, marks To the Lighthouse as a seminal work of Modernism. Woolf herself described To the Lighthouse... Read To the Lighthouse Summary

Ulysses is a 1922 novel by Irish author James Joyce. The story is a loose adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, portraying a day in the lives of several characters who live in Dublin, Ireland, in June 1904. Ulysses proved controversial on release due to accusations of obscenity but is now celebrated as one of the most important and influential works in the English language and considered a classic.This guide is written using the... Read Ulysses Summary

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a modernist novel published in 1947. Set in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, in 1938, it follows the Consul, a former British diplomat with an alcohol addiction, on the day of his death. In addition to the Consul, the small cast of characters includes the Consul’s half-brother, Hugh, his ex-wife, Yvonne, and his friend-turned-enemy, Jacques Laruelle. Malcolm Lowry, who spent time in Mexico and was known to have experienced addiction himself... Read Under the Volcano Summary