Failure in Modernist Literature

[Quark]

Is failure a common theme in Modernism? In many works from the early twentieth century characters fail to accomplish basic human goals like find love, make sense of the universe, or obtain justice. In Kafka's The Trial, K's goal is either to prove his innocence or at least understand the legal system that's charging him. Failing this, he's killed senselessly at the end of the novel. In T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", the main character fails with the hyacinth girl and the world turns into a bleak and barren place. In Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, Kurtz fails to live up to the high moral standard that he set for himself. He builds a reputation for his high-mindedness, but ends his impressive tract on the humane treatment of natives with "Extermine the brutes!". This failure usually leads the characters to madness, dehumanization, or a extremely pessimistic world view. Kafka's K dies as he puts it "like a dog", and Kurtz loses his mind. The world turns into a wasteland for Eliot after the failure in the garden.

What do people think? Does this tendency exist? And, if so, what does it mean?

[Geoffrey]

I mean, grimmer, less... embellished with goodness. Maybe like complete understanding and completely not understanding. They'd be the same.

But really, alot of Beckett's later novels and plays always make me feel kinda down, or strange. They're really not happy I mean.

Kafka has always made me laugh out loud though, in the greatest way.

[ashley3554]

That is so true.. Modernism rueind literature

I truly understand that Modernism came in a time where it was needed but now it just seems I don’t know .. Modernism makes no sense.. :bawling:

Did anyone read Beckett's play Endgame??

What is that about!!!


I really appreciate the theatre of the absurd but that was baloney..

And don’t let me get started on T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland all that fragmentation / foreign language / borrowing from other voices ..


What is that about!!

[Quark]

I mean, grimmer, less... embellished with goodness. Maybe like complete understanding and completely not understanding. They'd be the same.

But really, alot of Beckett's later novels and plays always make me feel kinda down, or strange. They're really not happy I mean.

Kafka has always made me laugh out loud though, in the greatest way.

what?

[Geoffrey]

Well, what I meant is that with any extreme, we find in that extreme, the extreme opposite. Perhaps modernist literature as you put it is claiming what it obviously states; that there is no goodness, no meaning to life, no justice in the universe. Or perhaps by stating that these things don't exists they're all calling for some one to create a society in which they do. A better place have you.
It can all be twisted any way you like it.

Oh wait... I think I know... what it means it means... "to name is to reveal: it is the inevitable clue. Our only hope is in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us."

Sorry if I'm not serious enough for you, but well, failure to please is my occupation. Anyways, it all makes sense to me.

[jane-charlotte]

Also consider "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner. It deals cheifly with failure and the "modernist ache" for wholeness and success.

[Morrisonhotel]

It's not so much failure per se but a response to the breaking down of civilisation and culture - e.g. The Waste Land.

[Nick Rubashov]

Modernism came around after World War 1, which brought with it a new outlook on human civilization. Before the war, during the Victorian era and beyond, humans generally believed that mankind was getting better; the innovations in technology and society were leading mankind to a sincerely brighter future.

But when war broke out in Europe, the entire western world caught a glimpse of what horrors technology and industrialization can bring. WWI was a senseless slaughter of millions, and with the armistice in 1918, and new cynicism arose among the "lost generation" of young fighting men. Disillusionment and a new realism swept in, creating a pessimism about the state and one's individual relation to society. The poets and authors of this lost generation simply put on paper what many believed to be a new truth, one where man is capable of unspeakable horrors, and the world is harsh and unforgiving.

The tendency of failure is certainly a common theme in modernism, but it far from ruined literature. New styles of writing like stream of consciousness and the fragmented words of poets like T.S. Eliot help portray the disarray and helplessness that they all felt. I enjoy modern literature for what it is, and feel like if given a chance it can really change the way you think.

[blackowl]

Well, what I meant is that with any extreme, we find in that extreme, the extreme opposite. Perhaps modernist literature as you put it is claiming what it obviously states; that there is no goodness, no meaning to life, no justice in the universe. Or perhaps by stating that these things don't exists they're all calling for some one to create a society in which they do. A better place have you.
It can all be twisted any way you like it.

Oh wait... I think I know... what it means it means... "to name is to reveal: it is the inevitable clue. Our only hope is in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us."

Sorry if I'm not serious enough for you, but well, failure to please is my occupation. Anyways, it all makes sense to me.

I am not agree. do you know this people who are feeling under starvation themself.

[blackowl]

Modernism came around after World War 1, which brought with it a new outlook on human civilization. Before the war, during the Victorian era and beyond, humans generally believed that mankind was getting better; the innovations in technology and society were leading mankind to a sincerely brighter future.

But when war broke out in Europe, the entire western world caught a glimpse of what horrors technology and industrialization can bring. WWI was a senseless slaughter of millions, and with the armistice in 1918, and new cynicism arose among the "lost generation" of young fighting men. Disillusionment and a new realism swept in, creating a pessimism about the state and one's individual relation to society. The poets and authors of this lost generation simply put on paper what many believed to be a new truth, one where man is capable of unspeakable horrors, and the world is harsh and unforgiving.

The tendency of failure is certainly a common theme in modernism, but it far from ruined literature. New styles of writing like stream of consciousness and the fragmented words of poets like T.S. Eliot help portray the disarray and helplessness that they all felt. I enjoy modern literature for what it is, and feel like if given a chance it can really change the way you think.

no!!! modern society and their literature creating it's culture and it's people who are thinking as same as they want. in MODERN life there is no place to free thinker. So I am not modern and never accept their rules, constitions land life. if you thinking that you have chance to change thinking way/methods you must be happy!!! to change thinking way is up to your physolophy. in modern literature there is no way to materalism. they feed with methaphysic. With this you can only create non-materialist product and of course your literature not will be societies or people's literature, only will be selfishness literature

[Morrisonhotel]

no!!! modern society and their literature creating it's culture and it's people who are thinking as same as they want. in MODERN life there is no place to free thinker. So I am not modern and never accept their rules, constitions land life. if you thinking that you have chance to change thinking way/methods you must be happy!!! to change thinking way is up to your physolophy. in modern literature there is no way to materalism. they feed with methaphysic. With this you can only create non-materialist product and of course your literature not will be societies or people's literature, only will be selfishness literature

Pardon? That doesn't make any sense in relation to what Nick wrote. What does that have to do with Modernism?

I think what also must be put in to this discussion is the early modernists. Whilst Nick is correct in drawing out the links between WW1 and the artistic response, he hasn't really mentioned the effects of the pre-modernists (some scholars would actually place them fully in the modernist school): e.g. Rimbaud, etc.

The stylistic qualities of modernism is usually that the work is disjointed and based around an image. Rimbaud and the early modernists obviously had similar stylistic concerns - a lot of very good, very distinctively modernist pieces were published in the fin-de-siecle (some over two decades before WW1).

[kandaurov]

Of course failure is part of modernist literature. Its literature is throughoutly pessimistic concerning human nature because it was spawned after the First World War. Makes a great deal of sense, if you ask me. I can relate to it a lot, when I can understand it ;)

[Prometheus'Wake]

Modernism came around after World War 1, which brought with it a new outlook on human civilization. Before the war, during the Victorian era and beyond, humans generally believed that mankind was getting better; the innovations in technology and society were leading mankind to a sincerely brighter future.

But when war broke out in Europe, the entire western world caught a glimpse of what horrors technology and industrialization can bring. WWI was a senseless slaughter of millions, and with the armistice in 1918, and new cynicism arose among the "lost generation" of young fighting men. Disillusionment and a new realism swept in, creating a pessimism about the state and one's individual relation to society. The poets and authors of this lost generation simply put on paper what many believed to be a new truth, one where man is capable of unspeakable horrors, and the world is harsh and unforgiving.


The tendency of failure is certainly a common theme in modernism, but it far from ruined literature. New styles of writing like stream of consciousness and the fragmented words of poets like T.S. Eliot help portray the disarray and helplessness that they all felt. I enjoy modern literature for what it is, and feel like if given a chance it can really change the way you think.

We might also consider the death of God as proposed by Nietzsche, as a contributing factor to the tone of hopelessness evinced in much of Modernist Lit. I would add to this my own opinion that themes of isolation and despair are inevitable given the decrease in localization experienced by societies in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. Globalization is a term we are all familiar with now, however when industry was born people were still strongly connected to their communities. As distance became less and less of an obstacle to interaction personal mythologies were devastated by this newfound sense of scale. You were not just part of your village anymore; you were not just part of your city. You were a member of a Nation, which was just one of many in the global community. This notion is perhaps best expressed by the First World War, which made evident both the growing interdependence of disparate geographical locations and the seemingly insignificant value of a human life.

[Nick Rubashov]

Thank you Morrisonhotel and Prometheus'Wake for adding those viewpoints on modernism, I've never really considered either of them until now. I would like to add that I think the rise of psychology as a true field of science also greatly affected modernist literature. The words and studies done by men like Freud and Pavlov changed how many looked at both the human mind and human nature.

[Ryan_002]

Modernism is often decried as elitist but for many reasons, I prefer this mode of literature to realism and post modernism. I disagree that failure in the sense of "hopelessness" is a neccessary modernist element. The neccessary "failure" in modernism is the failure of language and the failure of any artist to dissolve the distance between the image and the subject. A general pessimism is not a required part of the formula, and I would argue that outright nihilism is a post modernist trait moreso than a modernist one.

This was a point in time when artists in every field were in intense competition to make their work more "real". The novel was faltering in the face of the other art forms, because unlike painting or music, there was a greater "distance" in literature from image and subject. At least a painting can be made to look like what it represents, but words are ink blots on a page that bear no resemblance to the subject at all. The word "tree" looks nothing like a real tree. Modernist "stream of consciousness" techniques were designed to mirror the way the mind thinks; not in coherent straightforward sentences but in a "flow" of sometimes unrelated topics. Since the arrangement of words is an almost purely mental activity, writers of the time did their best to match their counterparts in other fields.

If you look at a novel like Ulysses, James Joyce is actually taking a totally ordinary day in Stephen's life and paralleling it with the Odyssey. We will never get a chance to face down the cyclops or sail monster populated oceans in "real" life, but Joyce suggests that our lives are no less than those of these epic characters. Our ups and downs and seemingly minor triumphs and troubles are equally vast obstacles and sources of joy, and everyday life has the same magic found in such myths. It is only that we must learn to see it as such, for we see with the mind (with language) more than with the eye. Woolfe is even more optimistic, and Woolfe's "lighthouse" is hard to reach, but eventually visited. The trip to the Lighthouse is postponed for 10 years, but in the end, they do get there. The suggestion here is that language may have failed in many respects (as compared to say, music or dance) and it can be hard to get an accurate idea when words bias and twist them. But it *is* possible, a way can be found, much like Satori in Zen. And at the moment when you suddenly feel, not simply know but deeply *feel* what the writer is feeling at the moment the words are written, that, to the modernist, is the highest attainment of literary art, when you and the absent (sometime long dead) writer are joined in a single moment. These are all positive themes in modernism.

One would speculate whether realism is truly any more cheerful (The Mayor of Casterbridge anyone? Brave New World perhaps?) than modernism. The theme of modernism is more akin to difficulty than depression.

[Slangalang18ca]

I think failure isn't so much a theme unique to Modernism as it is a recurring theme in great literature in general. Hardly any of the literature I've read is light and fluff; actually, in most cases, important characters die at the end or fail in their goals. Take, for instance: The Birthmark, Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, and A Separate Peace. I don't want the list to get too extensive, so I'll stop at that, but I do think that failure is a theme that can be found in all sorts of literature.

[Quark]

Modernism came around after World War 1, which brought with it a new outlook on human civilization. Before the war, during the Victorian era and beyond, humans generally believed that mankind was getting better; the innovations in technology and society were leading mankind to a sincerely brighter future.

But when war broke out in Europe, the entire western world caught a glimpse of what horrors technology and industrialization can bring. WWI was a senseless slaughter of millions, and with the armistice in 1918, and new cynicism arose among the "lost generation" of young fighting men. Disillusionment and a new realism swept in, creating a pessimism about the state and one's individual relation to society. The poets and authors of this lost generation simply put on paper what many believed to be a new truth, one where man is capable of unspeakable horrors, and the world is harsh and unforgiving.


This is a common argument--almost a consensus--that WW I was responsible for the pessimism of the modernist. I would certainly agree that WW I had a profound impact on the "lost generation" who thought that civilization was crumbling. Yet, two of the three books that I talked about in my post earlier were written before WW I. The Trial was written in 1914 and The Heart of Darkness in 1899. While these works may be classed as pre-modernist or proto-modernist, they have a similar pessimism. It seems unlikely that WW I somehow retroactively affected these works.

[Quark]

We might also consider the death of God as proposed by Nietzsche, as a contributing factor to the tone of hopelessness evinced in much of Modernist Lit. I would add to this my own opinion that themes of isolation and despair are inevitable given the decrease in localization experienced by societies in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth.

The decline of faith in Europe did have an effect on literature. But, the largest effects can be seen in the Victorian period when physical science was usurping the place of Christianity. In Tennyson's In Memoriam, for example, we see people having to confront the reality of a godless universe. Discoveries like fossils in the earth's crust or the evolution of species worried many Victorian thinkers. They could no longer believe that God had a plan, and that history was truly progressive. It also made people feel insignificant. How important could the human species be when thousands before it rose out of nothing and then became extinct? Tennyson writes, "But what am I?/ An infant crying in the night;/ An infant crying for the light,/ And with no language but a cry."

I also agree that isolation was another cause of misery in England; but, once again, I think this is a largely Victorian tendency. Mathew Arnold's poetry and Thomas Hardy's novel consistently hit on this theme.

The failure that I was referring to in modernist literature isn't really some kind of personal failure. It's more of an intellectual failure which prevents the characters from interacting with the world in a meaningful way. It isn't that the characters are pessimistic and nihilistic, but that the characters believe in something and they fail to make that ideal prevail. The problem is that the world seems antithetical to their ideal.


I disagree that failure in the sense of "hopelessness" is a neccessary modernist element. The neccessary "failure" in modernism is the failure of language and the failure of any artist to dissolve the distance between the image and the subject. A general pessimism is not a required part of the formula, and I would argue that outright nihilism is a post modernist trait moreso than a modernist one.

One would speculate whether realism is truly any more cheerful (The Mayor of Casterbridge anyone? Brave New World perhaps?) than modernism. The theme of modernism is more akin to difficulty than depression.

This is more what I'm referring to--a failure to connect meaningfully with the world.