Beyond The Pale, By Joseph Conrad
Twentieth Century Modernism
The twentieth century can be distinguished by the saying, "Beyond the pale". This metaphoric meaning represents modernists standing outside the conformist restrictions of law, behavior, and social class- in a sense, beyond the pale. Modernists wanted to expand their dimensions and represent life in a different way. They were very skeptical of the Victorian age because they did not believe it was possible to have unity in all the world which was what Victorian literature had portrayed. Modernists saw life as a series of non-ordinary actions that were uncontrollable. Victorians wrote their literature with a 1-2-3 story plot which began with an introduction and ended happily ever after. Modernists thought that realistic …show more content…
life was too fragmented to portray it in this form of perfection.
Socially, paradigm shifts were occurring in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and physics. A German Philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that traditional religion was being discredited by advances in the natural and physical sciences. His quote from The Joyful Science states, "God is dead". People began to start believing this and their standards of truth began disappearing. In psychology, a man named Sigmund Freud began a revolution by evolving the theories of influence of the unconscious mind. He said peoples past experiences have a great deal of unconscious influence on their mind. This idea provoked a wide range of responses which were equally adopted and rejected in the world of literature. A few years later, Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity arose. His new ideas about motion and gravity sparked a new understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. His vision was that nothing is relative except humans and that everything in life is absolutely fixed. These new theories in physics, philosophy, and psychology had a profound effect on Modern literature.
Politically, the moral and theoretical turmoil was given additional strength by the shock of World War I. The British fought Germany to preserve their influence in Europe and to aid their weaker allies against German hostility. The advancements in technology, which had improved Victorian standards of living, led to warfare which caused the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. People began to discover that modernity had arrived with retribution. After the war, people began looking at modernism as a structure of compensation. T. S. Elliot described the new literature as "The perpetual task of poetry is to make all things new. Not necessarily to make new things". As a result, the modern writer was faced with an enormous task: "to create new and appropriate values for modern culture, and a style appropriate to those values". Because of this, there is often an inquisitive or nervous quality to modern literature when investigating ultimate questions that people of the time wanted answers to. The modern novel no longer allows readers to watch a character from a safe distance learn through struggles and events in the story. It causes the readers to learn the lessons themselves through maneuverings of the narrative. The stories no longer begin with a "Once upon a time " or end with a "Happily ever after". They typically throw the reader into the middle of the story and cause them to infer the plot themselves. Economically, Britain began to consciously deal with their human rights problems. In the past, women and other minority groups had frequently been excluded from British literary tradition. They were seen as non-useful and with no real important views that anyone would want to read about. However, with the onset of Modernism, women, working-class, ethnic, religious, and sexual perspectives were now being fully introduced into literature. The Women's Property Act of 1882 allowed married women to own property for the first time. Full voting rights for women opened up in 1928 which gradually lead to opportunities for higher education and the professions for women. Sexuality in literature began loosening up the strict gender and sexual roles which had been reinforced throughout British history. Writers were now able to share their views on any topic and people were willing to listen because of the need to better the human rights problems. Minority groups were beginning to increase their presence in literature and the culture was cautiously accepting it. Before World War II, improvements in philosophy, psychology, and physics caused writers to examine concepts of the world in a new light which did not depend on faith to be proven true. These fields were able to prove theories with substantial evidence that was not seen in religion. Literature began showing how values are constructed rather than given, and social identities were merely roles. Writers were being forced to answer difficult questions that were unsettling which caused their literature to have a nervous quality to it. Victorian writers exemplified the idea of ongoing progress towards future perfection in which there were certain goals that everyone struggled towards and certain ways to reach them. Writers of the twentieth century were finding increasing fragmentation in their day-to-day lives which caused them to become suspicious of narratives of historical progress and social unity. There was little or no confidence behind these writers' explorations, nor did there seem to be an existing public who could really understand these discoveries. Writers before WWII and after were very different in their ideas and emotions and as a result, the literature changed also. After World War II was the close of the modernist era and consequently, the literature changed drastically. The war had caused Britain to find itself transformed from a country with great power to an impoverished island which was merely part of the world's history. This feeling of dislocation and loss caused writers to try and create a freer and more open society that would emerge from the wreckage of the aftermath of war. The literature became very incoherent as Britain's independence provided vivid and critical literary subjects. Self-examination became profound because of the failures at home and increased harshness of the class-bound hierarchies. The literature took on a sense of loss, diminishment, and fury and caused people to reflect on the British institutions especially its class structure. Rage and anger became common themes in this new literature because of the divergence between England's celebrated past and appalling present. Now more than ever, people were willing to listen and learn from literature to begin improving their nation. Joseph Conrad was known for the transforming journeys in his fiction novels.
Ironically he was quite the transformer himself. Originally a Polish man known as Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, he did not learn English until his twenties when he transformed himself into Joseph Conrad. Recognized by a distinctive style, Conrad's novels combine realism and drama. Their settings include oceanic backgrounds as well as themes of high society, and international politics. Conrad was a skilled creator of atmosphere, character and symbolism. He also uncovered the conflict between non-western cultures and modern civilization and his characters revealed the potential for seclusion and deterioration in life. One style Conrad uses in his fiction novel, Heart of Darkness, is symbolism. In this novel, the jungle portrays a large element of symbolism. Darkness is very symbolic in the sense that it shows Africa as the unknown. There is a sense of ignorance in Africa because of the uncivilized culture. Darkness could also symbolize the evil within the soul of every man and woman. For example, the character Kurtz is not a perfect man because he portrays greed and selfishness when he searches for the ivory. Kurtz goes to Africa as a leader of positive civilization but deteriorates into something negative because his evilness takes over. Lastly, darkness symbolizes the physical end of the day. The story is told at sunset and by the time the story ends, it is dark. This is symbolic because it …show more content…
represents the end of all things. It means that the empire may fall because darkness is coming to over take them. Their civilization could be destroyed by the collapse of the empire. Another style Conrad uses in his novel is the use of complex descriptive language.
This style is often seen in Modern literature. Heart of Darkness is a very long and wordy novel. An example is " The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance" (2042). It reads very slowly and refuses to get to the main point causing the reader to have to wait for any conclusions. A third style is the use of orality, or how the story is told. The story is being spoken to the readers rather than visually seen. The narrative in this oral tale is unnamed. Marlow tells the story to a group of men on a boat, but we the readers do not hear him. "He paused" (2023) is showing that this is a second hand story or report being told by one of the four men on the boat repeating what he had heard from Marlow. A final style is characterization. There are multiple characters which do not have any names. They are referred to as the director, accountant, or general manager. This style is used to distance the readers from the story. During the modern period, there was an ongoing trend of depersonalization. Also characterization is used by the description of the characters' appearance and behavior. This is best portrayed in the line, "Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms outwards, resembled an idol"
(2021). Conrad's Heart of Darkness contains numerous different themes throughout the novel. An interesting aspect of Conrad's themes is that each of them seem to raise questions rather than answers. The first is the nature of evil through the power of the subconscious mind. When given the right type of situation, evil will show through all people. Characters that are bad will corrupt others by having a bad influence on their good character. The narrator describes Kurtz towards the end as, "I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terrorof intense and hopeless despair" (2068). Kurtz was so caught up in finding the ivory for himself, that he was miserable. Another theme is the theme of wealth. It shows the risks we as people are willing to take in order to have money. In Heart of Darkness, everyone is in search of collecting the ivory and it does not matter if other people die on the way to get it. It shows how important it really is to people to have money and wealth. A third theme that is brought out in the novel is peace. No matter what was going on with the characters and the surrounding struggles, nature always seemed to remain unaffected. A fourth theme Conrad uses is the power of voice. What is spoken to you helps you develop from culture to culture. Individuals who are blind in the sense of culture, are intellectually awakened by learning other cultures through the power of voice. Kurtz says, "A voice! A voice!...It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart" (2067). Lastly, Conrad uses the theme of lack of vision. Around 1890, King Leopold was trying to get wealth from Africa but he was not willing to invest in it and therefore destroyed the wealth. If a person is not willing to invest in something but wants the benefits of doing so, then the wealth of it will be quickly emptied. Kurtz was not willing to invest in getting the Ivory and therefore lost his battle in trying to get it. Virginia Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism. In her works, she typically developed innovative literary techniques in order to reveal women's experiences and to find an alternative to the male-dominated views of reality.
One style Woolf uses in her novel Mrs. Dalloway is the setting. The entire story occurs in one day in June in a city/ urban culture. This was also a historical period because it took place right after the World War I. Another style is her use of characterization. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway develop through the way she remembered them. "He would come back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which " (2387). Readers cannot see for themselves the way characters really act or what they do because Mrs. Dalloway sees them in a different way than they would. A third style Woolf uses is the long, complex sentences. As previously stated, this is a typical style used during this age. One of the sentences in Mrs. Dalloway continues on for eight lines, "How fresh that it?" (2387). A final style used in Mrs. Dalloway is the use of allusions. One is literary allusion when the novel speaks of India. Peter Walsh had left to India when Clarissa Dalloway married a rich man instead of himself. Cultural allusions are also included in the novel in a way of celebrating urban culture by the city of London itself. Mrs. Dalloway describes noises and activities and insinuating that life symbolizes and aristocrat. There are also historical allusions because the story takes place after WWI. Woolf uses themes which closely relate to the current modern culture in which the world was experiencing at the time. The first is the division between people in which Woolf describes at least six issues on. People in the novel are separated by gender, class, skin color, accent, sexuality, and politics. During the modern period, and even some today, people were very one-sidedly opinionated when it came to minority groups. Woolf clearly portrays this in Mrs. Dalloway. Another theme used is the effects of World War I. WWI caused the slaughter of an entire generation which had an enormous effect on society. These effects are seen in Septimus Warren Smith when he can no longer deal with the difficulties in his life and commits suicide. Virginia Woolf also committed suicide due to problems in her life. Following this theme is the theme of love, generosity, and hope. "He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy." Woolf shows that with these qualities, people can at least momentarily heal these effects of war and pain. A final theme in Mrs. Dalloway is impersonality. Mrs. Dalloway described it, "As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be" (2465). Society's whole system was so clean and organized, that it became impersonal. Samuel Beckett's dramatic works do not rely on the traditional elements of drama. He trades in plot, characterization, and final solution, for a series of concrete stage images. Language is useless because he creates a mythical scene containing lonely people who struggle to express the inexpressible. This is clearly seen in Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tape. A style seen in this play is a limitation of action. The entire play takes place at a small table and in Krapp's den and all the action (or lack of) takes place here. A second style is the theme of isolation. Society in Britain commonly dealt with this issue due to the modern age it was experiencing. In Krapp's Last Tape, Krapp was the only character seen throughout the whole play and he was isolated in his den the entire time. Another style used is symbolism. Krapp eats several bananas throughout the play which symbolized a loss of his sexuality. Instead of having the woman on the pier that he used to have, all he has left now is a banana. A final style is vivid description. Krapp is described as "Rusty black narrow trousers too short for him. Rusty black sleeveless waistcoat, four capacious pockets. Heavy silver watch and chain. Grimy white shirt open at the neck, no collar" (2771). This vividness is often seen in modern British literature. Becketts themes also related to the modernism age that was currently in Britain because his works cover much of the same ground and ask similar questions to others' of the time. One is the theme of entrapment or imprisonment. The four walls of Krapp's den seem cut him off from the rest of the world. Also the boxes that contain tapes and the drawers with locks on them depict this imprisonment theme. Another theme is repetition. Several times in this play Krapp opens and closes the drawers, eats bananas, looks at his keys, and gets up and sits down at the table. This repetition is seen continuously throughout Krapp's Last Tape. A third theme has to do with loss. The description given of Krapp is very foul because he has aged so much. The beauty that comes along with youth is lost. Beckett makes the readers wonder how Krapp will continue to live a fulfilling life after he has lost so much. A final theme that is brought out in the play is relationships with family. In Krapp's life and in the modern age in general, there was an absence of love in family's and friends because the age would not allow it. Conrad, Woolf, and Beckett all seem to have individual and unique opinions on how they view their country and the individuals in it. Joseph Conrad was originally born Polish and did not fully learn English until his twenties. Therefore, Conrad had a difficult time deciding which nation he really belonged to. Because of this, he continued on what his father had started by translating across cultures and literatures as well as languages. When he turned 37 he finally decided to write in English, and was re-born. He believed that the British nation tended to throw lone individuals into confrontation with the complexities of the modern world, and this idea showed up several times in his writings. Also in his literature was the thought that must act alone in life with no guarantee that their decisions are right. His beliefs are best described by the major theme of his works that, "we are confronted with the tragic irony that human knowledge always comes too late" (2017). Knowing that her name would signify the greatness of modern literature, Virginia Woolf wrote intricate novels to help steer British society in a positive and less bias way. Being in a minority group herself, she knew the pains of defeat that came along with not being a "normal" person. She wrote on topics such as sexuality, politics, war, society, social class and skin color. She truly believed that the British nation acted in an old-fashioned way, and that openness about minority groups could help shape Britain into a better society. Her writings reflected on the way in which society and human character would have to change in order for such freedom to spread. Because of her persistence, she became the key to transforming the role and perception of women and other minority groups in society. Samuel Beckett related more to society by the theme of isolation. He explored and wrote about a realm of being he called "lessness". In Krapp's Last Tape, he wrote of a man in an isolated room by himself. Much of his writing reflected this isolated feeling which he though society caused individuals. This play uses a tape recorder (which Beckett had never seen at the time of this writing) as a metaphor for the struggle over memory. In his eyes, the British nation forced people into these isolations and he also struggles with the trying to find beauty in himself after he had lost so much including his youth. The British society looked down on people that were not beautiful or had nothing left to offer. Beckett worked hard to try and shine the light on these problems in order to improve society and the nation. Learning about the Twentieth Century Modern period has not only given me the pleasure of reading it, but it has shown me that unity and personalization are important qualities for society to conquer. Many of the authors whose work I have read in this unit seem to have isolated themselves and turned out miserable in the end. My life has generally been busy and full with people but I know what isolation and loneliness feel like, and society needs to get rid of this. Greed, anger, and sadness are all issues addressed in the works of Conrad, Woolf, and Beckett. They are very descriptive on these issues and in this way, Twentieth Century literature relates well to my generation because of its elevated use of vivid imagery. I especially enjoy the literature which uses relatable story lines, such as Mrs. Dalloway, to make the literature easier to understand. These are the ones I can relate to easiest and which I feel I learn more from. Modern literature in general is a wonderful teaching method for not only people of the Modern era, but for people in our current society. The themes of loss, suffering, and fear are themes we can better learn to cope with, which by themselves, could better our society as a whole.
The twentieth century can be distinguished by the saying, "Beyond the pale". This metaphoric meaning represents modernists standing outside the conformist restrictions of law, behavior, and social class- in a sense, beyond the pale. Modernists wanted to expand their dimensions and represent life in a different way. They were very skeptical of the Victorian age because they did not believe it was possible to have unity in all the world which was what Victorian literature had portrayed. Modernists saw life as a series of non-ordinary actions that were uncontrollable. Victorians wrote their literature with a 1-2-3 story plot which began with an introduction and ended happily ever after. Modernists thought that realistic …show more content…
life was too fragmented to portray it in this form of perfection.
Socially, paradigm shifts were occurring in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and physics. A German Philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that traditional religion was being discredited by advances in the natural and physical sciences. His quote from The Joyful Science states, "God is dead". People began to start believing this and their standards of truth began disappearing. In psychology, a man named Sigmund Freud began a revolution by evolving the theories of influence of the unconscious mind. He said peoples past experiences have a great deal of unconscious influence on their mind. This idea provoked a wide range of responses which were equally adopted and rejected in the world of literature. A few years later, Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity arose. His new ideas about motion and gravity sparked a new understanding of the universe and our relationship to it. His vision was that nothing is relative except humans and that everything in life is absolutely fixed. These new theories in physics, philosophy, and psychology had a profound effect on Modern literature.
Politically, the moral and theoretical turmoil was given additional strength by the shock of World War I. The British fought Germany to preserve their influence in Europe and to aid their weaker allies against German hostility. The advancements in technology, which had improved Victorian standards of living, led to warfare which caused the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. People began to discover that modernity had arrived with retribution. After the war, people began looking at modernism as a structure of compensation. T. S. Elliot described the new literature as "The perpetual task of poetry is to make all things new. Not necessarily to make new things". As a result, the modern writer was faced with an enormous task: "to create new and appropriate values for modern culture, and a style appropriate to those values". Because of this, there is often an inquisitive or nervous quality to modern literature when investigating ultimate questions that people of the time wanted answers to. The modern novel no longer allows readers to watch a character from a safe distance learn through struggles and events in the story. It causes the readers to learn the lessons themselves through maneuverings of the narrative. The stories no longer begin with a "Once upon a time " or end with a "Happily ever after". They typically throw the reader into the middle of the story and cause them to infer the plot themselves. Economically, Britain began to consciously deal with their human rights problems. In the past, women and other minority groups had frequently been excluded from British literary tradition. They were seen as non-useful and with no real important views that anyone would want to read about. However, with the onset of Modernism, women, working-class, ethnic, religious, and sexual perspectives were now being fully introduced into literature. The Women's Property Act of 1882 allowed married women to own property for the first time. Full voting rights for women opened up in 1928 which gradually lead to opportunities for higher education and the professions for women. Sexuality in literature began loosening up the strict gender and sexual roles which had been reinforced throughout British history. Writers were now able to share their views on any topic and people were willing to listen because of the need to better the human rights problems. Minority groups were beginning to increase their presence in literature and the culture was cautiously accepting it. Before World War II, improvements in philosophy, psychology, and physics caused writers to examine concepts of the world in a new light which did not depend on faith to be proven true. These fields were able to prove theories with substantial evidence that was not seen in religion. Literature began showing how values are constructed rather than given, and social identities were merely roles. Writers were being forced to answer difficult questions that were unsettling which caused their literature to have a nervous quality to it. Victorian writers exemplified the idea of ongoing progress towards future perfection in which there were certain goals that everyone struggled towards and certain ways to reach them. Writers of the twentieth century were finding increasing fragmentation in their day-to-day lives which caused them to become suspicious of narratives of historical progress and social unity. There was little or no confidence behind these writers' explorations, nor did there seem to be an existing public who could really understand these discoveries. Writers before WWII and after were very different in their ideas and emotions and as a result, the literature changed also. After World War II was the close of the modernist era and consequently, the literature changed drastically. The war had caused Britain to find itself transformed from a country with great power to an impoverished island which was merely part of the world's history. This feeling of dislocation and loss caused writers to try and create a freer and more open society that would emerge from the wreckage of the aftermath of war. The literature became very incoherent as Britain's independence provided vivid and critical literary subjects. Self-examination became profound because of the failures at home and increased harshness of the class-bound hierarchies. The literature took on a sense of loss, diminishment, and fury and caused people to reflect on the British institutions especially its class structure. Rage and anger became common themes in this new literature because of the divergence between England's celebrated past and appalling present. Now more than ever, people were willing to listen and learn from literature to begin improving their nation. Joseph Conrad was known for the transforming journeys in his fiction novels.
Ironically he was quite the transformer himself. Originally a Polish man known as Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, he did not learn English until his twenties when he transformed himself into Joseph Conrad. Recognized by a distinctive style, Conrad's novels combine realism and drama. Their settings include oceanic backgrounds as well as themes of high society, and international politics. Conrad was a skilled creator of atmosphere, character and symbolism. He also uncovered the conflict between non-western cultures and modern civilization and his characters revealed the potential for seclusion and deterioration in life. One style Conrad uses in his fiction novel, Heart of Darkness, is symbolism. In this novel, the jungle portrays a large element of symbolism. Darkness is very symbolic in the sense that it shows Africa as the unknown. There is a sense of ignorance in Africa because of the uncivilized culture. Darkness could also symbolize the evil within the soul of every man and woman. For example, the character Kurtz is not a perfect man because he portrays greed and selfishness when he searches for the ivory. Kurtz goes to Africa as a leader of positive civilization but deteriorates into something negative because his evilness takes over. Lastly, darkness symbolizes the physical end of the day. The story is told at sunset and by the time the story ends, it is dark. This is symbolic because it …show more content…
represents the end of all things. It means that the empire may fall because darkness is coming to over take them. Their civilization could be destroyed by the collapse of the empire. Another style Conrad uses in his novel is the use of complex descriptive language.
This style is often seen in Modern literature. Heart of Darkness is a very long and wordy novel. An example is " The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance" (2042). It reads very slowly and refuses to get to the main point causing the reader to have to wait for any conclusions. A third style is the use of orality, or how the story is told. The story is being spoken to the readers rather than visually seen. The narrative in this oral tale is unnamed. Marlow tells the story to a group of men on a boat, but we the readers do not hear him. "He paused" (2023) is showing that this is a second hand story or report being told by one of the four men on the boat repeating what he had heard from Marlow. A final style is characterization. There are multiple characters which do not have any names. They are referred to as the director, accountant, or general manager. This style is used to distance the readers from the story. During the modern period, there was an ongoing trend of depersonalization. Also characterization is used by the description of the characters' appearance and behavior. This is best portrayed in the line, "Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms outwards, resembled an idol"
(2021). Conrad's Heart of Darkness contains numerous different themes throughout the novel. An interesting aspect of Conrad's themes is that each of them seem to raise questions rather than answers. The first is the nature of evil through the power of the subconscious mind. When given the right type of situation, evil will show through all people. Characters that are bad will corrupt others by having a bad influence on their good character. The narrator describes Kurtz towards the end as, "I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terrorof intense and hopeless despair" (2068). Kurtz was so caught up in finding the ivory for himself, that he was miserable. Another theme is the theme of wealth. It shows the risks we as people are willing to take in order to have money. In Heart of Darkness, everyone is in search of collecting the ivory and it does not matter if other people die on the way to get it. It shows how important it really is to people to have money and wealth. A third theme that is brought out in the novel is peace. No matter what was going on with the characters and the surrounding struggles, nature always seemed to remain unaffected. A fourth theme Conrad uses is the power of voice. What is spoken to you helps you develop from culture to culture. Individuals who are blind in the sense of culture, are intellectually awakened by learning other cultures through the power of voice. Kurtz says, "A voice! A voice!...It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart" (2067). Lastly, Conrad uses the theme of lack of vision. Around 1890, King Leopold was trying to get wealth from Africa but he was not willing to invest in it and therefore destroyed the wealth. If a person is not willing to invest in something but wants the benefits of doing so, then the wealth of it will be quickly emptied. Kurtz was not willing to invest in getting the Ivory and therefore lost his battle in trying to get it. Virginia Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism. In her works, she typically developed innovative literary techniques in order to reveal women's experiences and to find an alternative to the male-dominated views of reality.
One style Woolf uses in her novel Mrs. Dalloway is the setting. The entire story occurs in one day in June in a city/ urban culture. This was also a historical period because it took place right after the World War I. Another style is her use of characterization. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway develop through the way she remembered them. "He would come back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which " (2387). Readers cannot see for themselves the way characters really act or what they do because Mrs. Dalloway sees them in a different way than they would. A third style Woolf uses is the long, complex sentences. As previously stated, this is a typical style used during this age. One of the sentences in Mrs. Dalloway continues on for eight lines, "How fresh that it?" (2387). A final style used in Mrs. Dalloway is the use of allusions. One is literary allusion when the novel speaks of India. Peter Walsh had left to India when Clarissa Dalloway married a rich man instead of himself. Cultural allusions are also included in the novel in a way of celebrating urban culture by the city of London itself. Mrs. Dalloway describes noises and activities and insinuating that life symbolizes and aristocrat. There are also historical allusions because the story takes place after WWI. Woolf uses themes which closely relate to the current modern culture in which the world was experiencing at the time. The first is the division between people in which Woolf describes at least six issues on. People in the novel are separated by gender, class, skin color, accent, sexuality, and politics. During the modern period, and even some today, people were very one-sidedly opinionated when it came to minority groups. Woolf clearly portrays this in Mrs. Dalloway. Another theme used is the effects of World War I. WWI caused the slaughter of an entire generation which had an enormous effect on society. These effects are seen in Septimus Warren Smith when he can no longer deal with the difficulties in his life and commits suicide. Virginia Woolf also committed suicide due to problems in her life. Following this theme is the theme of love, generosity, and hope. "He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy." Woolf shows that with these qualities, people can at least momentarily heal these effects of war and pain. A final theme in Mrs. Dalloway is impersonality. Mrs. Dalloway described it, "As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be" (2465). Society's whole system was so clean and organized, that it became impersonal. Samuel Beckett's dramatic works do not rely on the traditional elements of drama. He trades in plot, characterization, and final solution, for a series of concrete stage images. Language is useless because he creates a mythical scene containing lonely people who struggle to express the inexpressible. This is clearly seen in Beckett's play, Krapp's Last Tape. A style seen in this play is a limitation of action. The entire play takes place at a small table and in Krapp's den and all the action (or lack of) takes place here. A second style is the theme of isolation. Society in Britain commonly dealt with this issue due to the modern age it was experiencing. In Krapp's Last Tape, Krapp was the only character seen throughout the whole play and he was isolated in his den the entire time. Another style used is symbolism. Krapp eats several bananas throughout the play which symbolized a loss of his sexuality. Instead of having the woman on the pier that he used to have, all he has left now is a banana. A final style is vivid description. Krapp is described as "Rusty black narrow trousers too short for him. Rusty black sleeveless waistcoat, four capacious pockets. Heavy silver watch and chain. Grimy white shirt open at the neck, no collar" (2771). This vividness is often seen in modern British literature. Becketts themes also related to the modernism age that was currently in Britain because his works cover much of the same ground and ask similar questions to others' of the time. One is the theme of entrapment or imprisonment. The four walls of Krapp's den seem cut him off from the rest of the world. Also the boxes that contain tapes and the drawers with locks on them depict this imprisonment theme. Another theme is repetition. Several times in this play Krapp opens and closes the drawers, eats bananas, looks at his keys, and gets up and sits down at the table. This repetition is seen continuously throughout Krapp's Last Tape. A third theme has to do with loss. The description given of Krapp is very foul because he has aged so much. The beauty that comes along with youth is lost. Beckett makes the readers wonder how Krapp will continue to live a fulfilling life after he has lost so much. A final theme that is brought out in the play is relationships with family. In Krapp's life and in the modern age in general, there was an absence of love in family's and friends because the age would not allow it. Conrad, Woolf, and Beckett all seem to have individual and unique opinions on how they view their country and the individuals in it. Joseph Conrad was originally born Polish and did not fully learn English until his twenties. Therefore, Conrad had a difficult time deciding which nation he really belonged to. Because of this, he continued on what his father had started by translating across cultures and literatures as well as languages. When he turned 37 he finally decided to write in English, and was re-born. He believed that the British nation tended to throw lone individuals into confrontation with the complexities of the modern world, and this idea showed up several times in his writings. Also in his literature was the thought that must act alone in life with no guarantee that their decisions are right. His beliefs are best described by the major theme of his works that, "we are confronted with the tragic irony that human knowledge always comes too late" (2017). Knowing that her name would signify the greatness of modern literature, Virginia Woolf wrote intricate novels to help steer British society in a positive and less bias way. Being in a minority group herself, she knew the pains of defeat that came along with not being a "normal" person. She wrote on topics such as sexuality, politics, war, society, social class and skin color. She truly believed that the British nation acted in an old-fashioned way, and that openness about minority groups could help shape Britain into a better society. Her writings reflected on the way in which society and human character would have to change in order for such freedom to spread. Because of her persistence, she became the key to transforming the role and perception of women and other minority groups in society. Samuel Beckett related more to society by the theme of isolation. He explored and wrote about a realm of being he called "lessness". In Krapp's Last Tape, he wrote of a man in an isolated room by himself. Much of his writing reflected this isolated feeling which he though society caused individuals. This play uses a tape recorder (which Beckett had never seen at the time of this writing) as a metaphor for the struggle over memory. In his eyes, the British nation forced people into these isolations and he also struggles with the trying to find beauty in himself after he had lost so much including his youth. The British society looked down on people that were not beautiful or had nothing left to offer. Beckett worked hard to try and shine the light on these problems in order to improve society and the nation. Learning about the Twentieth Century Modern period has not only given me the pleasure of reading it, but it has shown me that unity and personalization are important qualities for society to conquer. Many of the authors whose work I have read in this unit seem to have isolated themselves and turned out miserable in the end. My life has generally been busy and full with people but I know what isolation and loneliness feel like, and society needs to get rid of this. Greed, anger, and sadness are all issues addressed in the works of Conrad, Woolf, and Beckett. They are very descriptive on these issues and in this way, Twentieth Century literature relates well to my generation because of its elevated use of vivid imagery. I especially enjoy the literature which uses relatable story lines, such as Mrs. Dalloway, to make the literature easier to understand. These are the ones I can relate to easiest and which I feel I learn more from. Modern literature in general is a wonderful teaching method for not only people of the Modern era, but for people in our current society. The themes of loss, suffering, and fear are themes we can better learn to cope with, which by themselves, could better our society as a whole.