Hemingway and Eliot: Modernism in American Literature

Introduction

As the world entered the twentieth century, literature came under the influence of modernism — an emerging ideology that promoted the belief in humanity's capacity to achieve far more than its present state. Modernism held that the future offered numerous opportunities for human society to develop further and become more enlightened. This optimism pervaded even the domain of literature, inspiring writers to grapple with questions of progress, identity, and the direction of civilization.

The optimism of modernist ideology spread throughout Western literature, particularly in the work of the civilization that had driven modernization through the industrial revolution. American literature offers a clear example of a Western tradition in which modernism became the dominant intellectual current of the twentieth century. The promise of modernism is especially apparent in the works of T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway — celebrated writers of the period who expressed markedly different opinions and feelings about modernity in American society. This paper argues that T.S. Eliot expresses dismay at humanity's inability to fulfill modernism's promise, while Hemingway conveys optimism and hope as society moves toward further social, material, and intellectual progress.

Modernism and Twentieth-Century Literature

T.S. Eliot's poetry — particularly "The Waste Land" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" — demonstrates his profound disillusionment with human society and the notion of social progress during the modernist era. In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot channels his dismay through the character of J. Alfred Prufrock, showing how social progress had become a dismal prospect for people who failed to seize the opportunities that could have taken civilization to a higher level. Eliot articulates this feeling in the lines:

"And would it have been worth it, after all, / After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, / Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, / Would it have been worth while … / To have squeezed the universe into a ball …"

T.S. Eliot's Disillusionment with the Modern Age

These lines illustrate, through Eliot's characteristic sarcasm, that despite the claims of modernism, human society had not moved far beyond where it stood centuries before, and had not achieved true enlightenment through self-realization and self-discovery.

A similar argument is advanced in "The Waste Land," where the title itself makes lucid how modern human society had become, in Eliot's view, a barren marketplace of goods, services, and competing ideologies — one that generated confusion rather than clarity about the true purpose of human existence. The line "London Bridge is falling down falling down" serves as another illustration of humanity's decline even in the midst of the remarkable technological advancements it had achieved.

Conclusion

Together, Eliot and Hemingway capture the dual spirit of the modernist era. Eliot mourns humanity's failure to reach its potential, finding in the modern world little more than a waste land of unfulfilled promise. Hemingway, by contrast, affirms through Krebs' journey that the capacity for renewal endures, even in the aftermath of devastating war. Read side by side, their works offer a richly layered portrait of a society confronting — with both despair and resilience — the possibilities and burdens that modernism placed upon it.