Final DBQ Regarding the Literary Responses to World War 1 from 1914 to 1928
Historical Context:
World War 1 (1914-1918) was a war that was inevitable, but almost entirely underestimated. As the war dragged on for four years and millions of lives were expended in the name of victory, many were greatly impacted culturally, mainly Europeans and Americans. In what was known as the lost generation, many poets and writers developed new forms of literature in response to the devastating consequences of the war.
DBQ Prompt: Identify and analyze the various European and American literary responses to World War 1 created during the war and in the decade after the end of World War 1.
Document #1
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Source: Paul Valéry, French poet and critic, “The Crisis of the Mind,” evaluation of European mind and civilization (1920).
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The storm has died away, and still we are restless, uneasy, as if the storm were about to break. Almost all the affairs of men remain in a terrible uncertainty. We think of what has disappeared, and we are almost destroyed by what has been destroyed; we do not know what will be born, and we fear the future, not without reason… Doubt and disorder are in us and with us. There is no thinking man, however shrewd or learned he may be, who can hope to dominate this anxiety, to escape from, this impression of darkness.
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Document #2
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Source: Roland Leighton, British soldier serving in France, letter to fiancé Vera Brittain (1915).
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Among this chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men who poured out