Modernism as a literary genre began sometime before the First World War. However, it was in the fires of this great conflict that the genre was forged and adopted its characteristics of disorientation and disconnection. The development of modernism can be traced in poetry written during the Great War and in the short story "The Prussian Officer" written sometime afterwards. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay England entered World War I on August 4, 1914, with a sense of optimism and pride (Worldwar-1.net). With “altruistic notions of bravery and fair play,” an entire generation of men took to the battlefields of Europe in what they thought would be a war lasting only a few weeks (Damrosch 1996). “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae is a traditional poem that reflects that pomp and optimism felt at the start of the First World War. Despite morbid images of graves and an invocation of the voices of the dead, the speaker encourages living soldiers who survive him to carry the torch of war and never “betray trust” in soldiers who died in combat. Although the poem falls into the "modernist" era, McCrae uses a more traditional poetic form and has little in common with the First World War authors who succeeded him. “In Flanders Fields” uses a common rhyme scheme and is organized in a traditional manner without much experimentation with form or style. Likewise, primary aspects of modernist writing such as disorientation and disconnection are not present in the poem. As the war drags on and the horrors of modern warfare are realized, we begin to find these characteristics reflected in contemporary writing. Just as soldiers fighting in the trenches became witnesses to the awesome destruction of modern warfare, so too did their poetry lose the optimism and enthusiasm of pre-war society. This is best illustrated in “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, which instills in the reader a sense of horror and disorientation. The first stanza describes the miserable conditions of the soldiers marching through a nightmarish landscape. They are sleeping witches, without boots, lame and blind. In the second stanza, Owen creates a scene reminiscent of Conrad's Heart of Darkness in which the speaker describes being lost "under a green sea," watching in terror as one of his comrades drowns in the poisonous gas. After a couplet describing the nightmares the speaker has because of the vision in the second stanza, Owen uses the last stanza of the poem to prove the falsehood “The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est / Pro patria mori”. He says that if you, the reader, were to see and hear the grieving soldier as he died, you would never speak of the glory of war. It is easier to classify this poem in the genre of modernism than “In Flanders”. Fields. As previously mentioned, Owen describing the soldiers lost in the gas cloud is reminiscent of Marlow in The Heart of Darkness lost in the river mist. This image of confusion and disorientation is a major claim of modernist writing. Similarly, the poem itself is divided into stanzas of varying lengths – the first being eight lines, the second six lines, the third two lines, and the fourth 12 lines – although it follows a rhyme scheme more traditional (abab cdcd, etc.). Just as disorientation and slight formal experimentation began to appear in poetry, another aspect of modernist writing – disconnection– was used by other poets of the time. Like Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg was a poet who possessed nothing but contempt for the "patriotic feelings" felt by most people before and during the early stages of the war (Damrosch 2192). Although his poem "Dawn in the Trenches" does not directly address this feeling like Owen's, it in no way describes the war as a glorious or heroic affair. The poem begins with an allusion to pagan religion while emphasizing the repetitive nature of time, invoking images of sacrifice, godlessness, and the repetition of history and war. He then goes on to describe a rat that the speaker is watching while he sits in the trenches. He contemplates the rat's ability to move between the German and British trenches and imagines that the rat is mocking the soldiers participating in the battle. The author then presents the image of poppy roots falling on the battlefield and correlates this image with the flow of a soldier's blood on the battlefield. The poem ends with the speaking soldier commenting on how safe, albeit dusty, the little poppy behind his ear is. The author's decision to end the poem with this strange feeling - after describing the chaotic battlefield of France, "the screaming iron and the flames" being shot into the sky and alluding to all the blood spilled on the battlefield - creates a very eerie feeling for the reader and a sense of detachment for the speaker This aspect is another characteristic of modernist literature. Despite all the chaos and death that surrounds the soldier in the poem, it does not. only worries about the little poppy in his ear and the rat he sees in the trenches, coming out of himself wondering what the rat is thinking at that moment The form of this poem is also different from both. others presented so far "Break of Day in the Trenches" does not adhere to a certain rhyme scheme nor is it organized into different stanzas; it is simply a long block of varied lines with little to say; organization. Modernist writers are known for experimenting with traditional modes of storytelling and writing. Although it is difficult to see this characteristic in the poetry of World War I, as the century progressed, authors like DH Lawrence began to implement this concept in their writings. DH Lawrence's 1929 short story, "The Prussian Officer," is an excellent example of a modernist writer experimenting with telling stories by altering time and space. The story begins with a young soldier marching with his unit while feeling the pain caused by his injuries, although the reader does not know how he suffered these injuries. The story then leaves the soldier on the march as she describes his relationship with his master, the Prussian officer. Ultimately, the reader finds himself witnessing the abusive interactions between the two characters. The officer brutally beats his young orderly (the soldier) one night, then the story shifts to the next morning as the soldier has to leave his bed in immense pain to start his day. This begins the second chapter of the story, but as the chapter progresses it becomes clear that time has returned to the march described at the beginning of the story; At one point during the first chapter, the story returned to an event that took place before the opening scene. This confusing distortion in the story's timeline is a great example of a modernist author experimenting with storytelling, while simultaneously adding to the feeling of disorientation. Throughout the story, the Prussian officer continually struggles with the emotions he feels toward the nurse. After beating the soldier,>.