Modernism, Frost, Wallace

Modernism brings new ideas, innovations, and literature.  It's out with the old grand myths and grand narratives and into the new and modern culture.  Literature uses fragments and stories can have no resolution and are discordant.  WWI comes and eventually leads into the Great Depression which then leads into WWII and women's rights.  Urbanization is booming along with the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance.  Urbanization brings industrialization and technology such as the automobile and airplanes. 

“Good fences make good neighbors,” is one of the most famous lines from Robert Frost’s Mending Wall.  The poem mentions challenging tradition.  The neighbor is simply “going through the motions” and like an archaic ignorant fool.  The man is sneaky and has an obvious lack of intelligent thought since he is attempting to use a fence to separate their trees.  The author believes that there was a time when people needed them but the man was simply doing it out of tradition and not using his brain.  Frost’s other poem The Road not Taken confused me a little, even after our discussion in class.  I understand that the man was trying to be independent and was reminiscing on the past but also looking to the future.  The paths are the same that he is looking down and that there is not one that is better.  The rest is a little confusing with the whole “nostalgia” and “nostalgia importance.”

Wallace Steven’s poem Sunday Morning especially intrigued me because the first time that I read it I found it interesting that Stevens decided to use both pagan and Christianity in his poem.  The woman’s whole take on paradise is very interesting especially for this time period with modernism.  It was always thought of as the ultimate reward after death—now Stevens challenges this with the idea that beauty is around people while they are alive and death brings that beauty to an end so we must enjoy it while we are alive and not waste it.  The grand myth of Christianity is challenged.