The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the social collapse of the post-World War I era. Writers adopted a fragmented, disjointed writing style that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of "stream of consciousness" and writing from multiple points of view. World War I had a more profound effect on society than previous wars. With deadly new weapons, like poison gas, high death tolls, and the first appearance of all-out war, it shocked the world, torn people between the modern and the traditional. Traditional society was destroyed by the destruction of war. As with most literary movements, writers reflect the world through their writing. And even though America was not as affected by the war as Europe, the modernist movement still made its way into American literature through European influences. Modernism made its way to the United States thanks to American writers living in Europe, also known as expatriates. Writers like Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway were considered the “great” modernists. These writers, who lived in Europe due to their military service or other reasons, saw the direct consequences of the war and used different writing techniques to rebel against traditional society, since it had become practically traditional. They began using techniques such as fragmented sentences, symbols, and images instead of long metaphors to present larger ideas. The idea of ​​“black and white” distinctions between ideas like good and evil no longer existed; it all depended on the individual's reasoning for the answer. The style of these expatriates spread to America, where the modernist writer W...... middle of paper ......ting. Faulkner also wrote from multiple points of view. As mentioned earlier, in As I Lay Dying the novel is told from the point of view of fifteen characters. Hemingway, to use it again as a contrast, wrote from one point of view. This gives the reader insight into the psychology of several characters and shows the reader how they all deal with death, like in As I Lay Dying, differently. Although not an expatriate writer, nor even one who served abroad, Faulkner is one of the quintessential modernist writers. It is not his subject matter that makes him a modernist, since he did not write about the war or the 1920s (like Hemingway and Fitzgerald), but it is his writing style that makes him a modernist writer. The fragmented, disjointed stories that span time and space are the style that distinguished him as an American modernist author. .