Historical ContextWWI (1914) blasted old-world ideals, leaving America trapped between industrial alienation and the Great Depression. Einstein shattered time, Freud mapped desire, Nietzsche’s “God is dead” echoed through Jazz Age decadence. The Harlem Renaissance defied racism; the “Lost Generation” scribbled existential voids in Parisian cafés—an era of collapsed beliefs, yet fertile ground for literary revolution.Literary Rebellion1. Psyche AutopsiesFaulkner’s The Sound and the Fury twisted time through a madman’s stream of consciousness; Eliot’s The Wasteland stitched civilization’s debris into apocalyptic verse. Writers abandoned heroes to dissect humanity’s fractures with psychological realism.2. Grammar AnarchyHemingway’s “iceberg theory” made silence deafening—telegraphic prose mirroring postwar trauma. Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy collaged newsreels and poetry into an industrial-age montage.3. MythicidesFitzgerald’s Gatsby burned Jazz Age glitter with a green light’s lie; Steinbeck buried frontier myths in The Grapes of Wrath’s dust storms; Hurston resurrected erased cultures through Black vernacular in Their Eyes Were Watching GodLegacyAs skyscrapers cast shadows on modernity, these words still haunt: How do we find truth in a materialist wasteland?* Faulkner’s decree endures: “Man will not merely endure—he will prevail.