Social Topics In American Literature
Throughout American literature writers have always written on social topics. Writers wrote about what was around them, and this was anything from war to love. Pieces of literature that confront social topics include Walt Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drums!", Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". From the Civil War through the Modern Age the changing views of social topics is evident through literature. With the brake out of the Civil War came views of society's sorrow for lost boys dying in farmers' fields. Many American's believed the war would end quickly, with one decisive battle perhaps. Instead Americans had to struggle through four long years of death and destruction. In "Beat! Beat! Drums!", by Walt Whitman, the bugles give society shrills. In this piece Whitman writes, "Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums-so shrill you bugles blow." This passage tells of a farmer having no peace now that the war is happening on his fields. Some writers however tried to keep their literature free of war, and they wrote about the westward movement. The civil war authors told of the
In the beginning of the Modern Age Realism became popular. Realists wrote about real life. Writers were coming strait out and talking about the problems they saw with people in society. Every realization that these authors had was written down. In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle the industrialized city is shown as corrupt. Where imigrants hoped to live the American dream the poor were dying while the rich were getting richer. The sanitary. Sinclair came to the realization that the meat packing industry was corrupt and he took a stand. Naturalist writers took the realist views to the extreme. Realist authors changed the social topics to write about the truthful treatment of material. difference. Modern poetry, by experimenting with new forms of poetic expression, created a new way of writing about social topics. These poets combined ways of writing about society, and used symbolism often. Modern poetry incripts all views of writing. In modern poetry one can find transcendentalist views entangled with realist perspectives. Many modern poets used symbolism to get their views of society across. For instance, in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" the two roads symbolize to paths one can take in life. Frost writes, "I took the one less traveled And that has made all the difference." S
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Approximate Word count = 885
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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