Assignment # 2 Modernist Literature


01-Which 2 readings did you choose?

I choose these ones for me:

 Eliot, T.S. The Wasteland and Greene, G. The Third Man

02. Compare (3) and contrast (3) the reading you completed with the ppts. on Modernist culture and literature.


The Third Man has meditation on disappointment and betrayal in friendship and in international politics, an intertwining of personal and historical experience.

The chapter explores the role of law in society and its relation to ethical conflicts as reflected through the prism of the film The Third Man. Third Man presents, in our eyes, the vitality of that channel, due to its rich aesthetical language and its unique representation of the ethical tensions in the modern era.


"The Waste Land” embodies other common themes the modernist literary tradition, including the disjointed nature of time, the role of culture versus nationality, and the desire to find universality in a period of political unrest.

The poem also has a number of reoccurring themes, most of which are pairs of binary oppositions. Some of the most common themes are Sight/Blindness, Resurrection/Death, Water / Drowning, Fertility/Impotency, Civilization/Decline, Love/Sex, and Voice/Silence.

While the structure, themes, and language choice in “The Waste Land” are not atypical for literature written in this time period, the poem is uniquely complex. With a careful and critical look, the poem provides the modern reader with both a glimpse of the collective psyche following World War I and an aesthetic experience exemplar of the modernist literary tradition.


The poem also has a number of reoccurring themes, most of which are pairs of binary oppositions. Some of the most common themes are Sight/Blindness, Resurrection/Death, Water / Drowning, Fertility/Impotency, Civilization/Decline, Love/Sex, and Voice/Silence.

While the structure, themes, and language choice in “The Waste Land” are not atypical for literature written in this time period, the poem is uniquely complex. With a careful and critical look, the poem provides the modern reader with both a glimpse of the collective psyche following World War I and an aesthetic experience exemplar of the modernist literary tradition


03. In your opinion, do you feel the readings you completed are very good or excellent examples of Modernist literature?
I think there are good representations, because The Third Man focuses on the complexities of life in post-war Vienna, the book exposes dilemmas that prevail in ordinary times and in functioning democracies as well and “The Waste Land”, a poem published some thirty years before, still spoke for “the time” depended on a sense that one inhabited an elastic historical period that had begun before the First World War and stretched out into some indefinite future. One's time was the culturally barren “modern” era. Even today, one finds the poem spoken of loosely as a work of “our time” or of “modern times,” usually with the implication that The Waste Land continues to give “the time's most accurate data.

04. Would you recommend these readings to your friends and family? Why/Why not?

Of course I would recommend these readings to my sister because the stories catch you, and you cannot leave them until you do not read the last line. One of the best things is that in these stories, nothing is what seems and everyone has something to hide. Moreover, these are interesting books and it is easy to read them.