Modernist American Society,Symbolism and Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The span between the two world wars is characterized as the traumatic "coming of age for United States of America," despite of the fact that America’s direct involvement was relatively pithy (1917-1918). Values, Ethics and Feelings were replaced by Wealth, Machines and Power. Hence, the nation tried to look to itself, focused on business, economic expansion, advancement in technology and very well spread commercialism as a march to grow as a superpower. In the American Literature of 1920s, the images of sterility were prevailing. Ezra pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and also in the “Valley of Ashes” in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and other novels. Hence, this book attempts to scrutinize the impact of the societal happenings on the Modernist American Fiction during the world war era and also the reflection of the society found in the fiction with the help of variety of symbolic tools. It also probes in to the nature of Modernist Fiction as a rejoinder to 19th century fiction and questions the reliability and effect of the use of symbols for the depiction of the vices prevailing in the American Society.