Literature
A.) Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” has integrated the period of Modernism in this short story. The author used modernism to depict women as trivial and castrating (Armstrong 42). However, this issue is often questioned by the fact that it is the cultural construction of women that is at risk. The story talks about Modernism since the values and beliefs of women who wanted to stay alive as opposed to the principle of man who believes that he is destined to die on the mountain. The modern view of the protagonist Harry, who decided to live a life of aimless pleasure in the mountain with no specific objective shows that man is still searching for his purpose in life (Bloom 71). When he was accidentally punctured himself from a thorn that was killing him slowly, he decided to allow his soul to rot when he neglected his talent for writing. He blamed his wife Helen for not loving him; but in the end it was revealed that it was the man himself who destroyed his own talent when he lacked the will to survive and to exert all efforts to save himself from dying in the mountain. Modernism was established by the author when he illustrated Helen, the woman to be the one who decided to hunt in the woods in order for them to survive, yet Harry did not do anything to save himself and accepted his inevitable death. This only shows that modern women are capable of protecting themselves during life and death situation without any help from men.
B.) Fitzgerald’s life was depicted in the story of “Babylon Revisited” since it became a personal and a national story at the same time. The author recalled his past life when he engaged himself in endless partying and drinking. However, he was later confronted with a dilemma on whether he will leave his old habits or choose to continue his aimless lifestyle. “Babylon Revisited” is a story about a man who wants to change himself for the better by breaking his past lifestyle. The theme of the story is atonement and redemption. Here, the character of Charlie Wales showed that confronted the mistakes he committed in the past and started to become a responsible person by living the good life. It is considered as a national story because it symbolizes self-preservation when man chose to free himself from the life of mistakes and make an atonement to become better. He realized that his life is wasted if he continued to survive for the moment and having no purpose to live. His life completely turned by realizing that every minute in life should be spent in improving himself for his own good and taking full responsibility for his actions. His past hobbies consisted of drinking, socialization and other merry-making activities without realizing that he will be economically unstable if he continued with his extravagant lifestyle. The story is meant to teach Americans not to engage in wasteful behavior and try to live a simple life having a goal in mind. The man in the story named Charlie Wales was able to change himself by correcting his previous mistakes in life before it was too late to turn back.
C. In the book of The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck, it was revealed that it was written during the time when America suffered a severe economic depression (Cusick 3). The chapter of the book has represented the important themes of the story since it was shown how people lost their homes and means of livelihood. The worst-hit victims were the farmers from the Midwest since the soil became incapable to support the needs of their families as the prices of the crops declined caused by the severe drought and erosion. With this economic depression, the people sought for greener pasture by heading to California. This became the start of their miserable life when they discovered that work opportunities were scarce with very minimal wages. The main theme of the book is social injustice and how the poor suffered from oppression from the hands of wealthy land owners. The purpose of the author in writing this book is to call for social redress and to bring justice to the victims of oppression. The story has talked about Communism, which was a condition that was being feared by many Americans during that period (Cusick 3).
Works Cited:
Cusick, Lee. John Steinback’s The Grapes of Wrath. New Jersey: Maxnotes, 1994. Print.
Armstrong, Tim. Modernism: A Cultural History. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005.
Print.
Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Infobase Publishing, 1999. Print.
