Search for Innocence in American Modernism Essay -- Literature Essays

Search for Innocence in American Modernism American Literature from its very beginning has been centered around a theme of innocence. The Puritans wrote ab fall out abandoning the corruption of Europe to find innocence in a new world. The Romantics saw innocence and power in nature and oft wrote of escaping from civilization to return to nature. After the Civil War, however, the innocence of the nation is challenged. The Realists focused on the loss of innocence and in Naturalist works innocence is largely gone. During these periods of American Literature it seems almost as if a great deal was being dug, a sort of emptying of innocence, and after World War I the Modernists called this hole the wasteland Many Modernist works focus on society lost in the wasteland, but they hint at a way out. The path out of the wasteland is through a return to innocence. This is evident in the Modernist works of The wasteland by T. S. Eliot, Directive by Robert Frost, Babylon Revisited by F. Scot t Fitzgerald, and Hills Like White Elephants by Earnest Hemingway as will be shown in an analysis of the inhabitants of the wasteland and their search for innocence, the role of children and pregnancy in the wasteland, and the symbolism of water and rebirth. But in the beginning I go on, I believe that I should first clarify what I spurious by a return to innocence. First, there is some bewilderment between innocence and ignorance. They are often used interchangeably. Because a person is innocent, it does not mean that he or she is unaware of reality. Innocence is almost equivalent a different type of view. A child and an adult may interpret a single thing entirely differently, but this does not mean that the adult knows more about that thing. Innocence is open ... ...ed society and only through the return of innocence can there be hope of anything better. work Cited Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA D.C. Heath and Company, 1991 1447-1463. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA D.C. Heath and Company, 1991 1471-1485. Frost, Robert. Directive. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA D.C. Heath and Company, 1991 1208-1209. Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA D.C. Heath and Company, 1991 1471-1485.