4. His ideas of “American Dream”
It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich.
5. Style
Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, and completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its simplicity and gracefulness, its skill in manipulating the relation between the general and the specific reveal his consummate artistry.
6. The Great Gatsby
Narrative point of view – Nick
He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detected observer who is never quick to make judgements.
Selected omniscient point of view
II. Ernest Hemingway
1. life
2. point of view (influenced by experience in war)
(1) He felt that WWI had broken America’s culture and traditions, and separated from its roots. He wrote about men and women who were isolated from tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous, trying to find their own way.
(2) He condemned war as purposeless slaughter, but the attitude changed when he took part in Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was a cause worth fighting for.
(3) He wrote about courage and cowardice in battlefield. He defined courage as “an instinctive movement towards or away from the centre of violence with self-preservation and self-respect, the mixed motive”. He also talked about the courage with which to face tragedies of life that can never be remedied.
(4) Hemingway is essentially a negative writer. It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. He holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.
3. works
(1) In Our Time
(2) Men Without Women
(3) Winner Take Nothing
(4) The Torrents of Spring
(5) The Sun Also Rises
(6) A Farewell to Arms
(7) Death in the Afternoon
(8) To Have and Have Not
(9) Green Hills of Africa
(10) The Fifth Column
(11) For Whom the Bell Tolls
(12) Across the River and into the Trees
(13) The Old Man and the Sea
4. themes – “grace under pressure”
(1) war and influence of war on people, with scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting which demand stamina and courage, and with the question “how to live with pain”, “how human being live gracefully under pressure”.
(2) “code hero”
The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.
5. style
(1) simple and natural
(2) direct, clear and fresh
(3) lean and economical
(4) simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words
(5) simple sentences
(6) Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things
(7) Symbolism
III. Sinclair Lewis – “the worst important writer in American literature”
1. life
2. works
(1) Main Street
(2) Babbitt
(3) Arrowsmith
(4) Dodsworth
(5) Elmer Gantry
3. point of view – satirical critic of American middle class
(1) Lewis showed the villagers to be narrow-minded, greedy, pretentious and corrupt.
(2) He attacked middle class for its indifference to art and culture, and its assumption that economic success made it superior.
4. style
(1) photographic, verisimilitude
(2) colloquialism
(3) characterization: he often created a type of character rather than an individual
(4) old fashioned in theme
(5) lack in psychological exploration
IV. Willa Cather
1. life
2. works
(1) Alexander’s Bridge
(2) O Pioneers
(3) The Song of the Lark
(4) My Antonia
3. features of her works
(1) She was one of the few “uneasy survivors of the nineteenth century”. Hanging onto the traditional values, she was never able to come to terms with modernity.
(2) Old west becomes in most of her novels the centre of moral reference against which modern existence is measured.
(3) She withdraws in her later fiction into the historical past.
(4) She often uses women protagonists in her novels.
Southern Literature
I. Heritage
American southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.
II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty
1. Chevalier heritage
2. Agrarian virtue
3. Plantation aristocracy
4. Lost cause
5. White supremacy
6. Purity of womanhood
Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted
Gothic novel: Poe
III. William Faulkner
1. life
2. literary career: three stages
(1) 1924~1929: training as a writer
The Marble Faun 
Soldier’s  Pay
Mosquitoes 
(2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific period
Sartoris 
The Sound and the Fury 
As I Lay Dying 
Light in  August
Absalom, Absalom 
(3) 1940~end: won recognition in America
 Go Down, Moses
3. point of view
He generally shows a grim picture of human society where violence and cruelty are frequently included, but his later works showed more optimism. His intention was to show the evil, harsh events in contrast to such eternal virtues as love, honour, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and thereby expose the faults of society. He felt that it was a writer’s duty to remind his readers constantly of true values and virtues.
4. themes
(1) history and race
He explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed race of black and white, unacceptable to both races.
(2) Deterioration
(3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment
(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal
5. style/features of his works
(1) complex plot
(2) stream of consciousness
(3) multiple point of view, circular form
(4) violation of chronology
(5) courtroom rhetoric: formal language
(6) characterization: he was able to probe into the psychology of characters
(7) “anti-hero”: weak, fable, vulnerable (true people in modern society)
He has a group of women writers following him, including O’Connor and Eudora Welty

Section 2 The 1930s
Radical 1930s
I. Background
Great Depression (1929 “Black Thursday”)
II. Literature
1. Writers of the 1920s were still writing, but they didn’t produce good works.
2. The main stream is left-oriented.
III. Writers of 1930s
1. social concern and social involvement
2. revival of naturalistic tradition of Dreiser and Norris
IV. John Steinbeck
1. life
2. works
(1) Cup of Gold
(2) Tortilla Flat
(3) In Dubious Battle
(4) Of Mice and Men
(5) The Grapes of Wrath
(6) Travels with Charley
(7) Short stories: The Red Pony, The Pearl
3. point of view
(1) His best writing was produced out of outrage at the injustices of the societies, and by the admirations for the strong spirit of the poor.
(2) His theme was usually simple human virtues, such as kindness and fair treatment, which were far superior to the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters.