From the nineteenth century to the twentieth century a movement changed the course of literary history, this movement was modernism. Industrialization and the first World War sparked modernism and pushed for new ways of creative expression. Breaking standardized conventions allowed writers to express themselves and break away from the conventional rules of storytelling. Breaking standardized conventions functions in modernism with the use of mental illness, race, and non linearity.
One way in which modernism is portrayed is the depiction of mental illness. Mental illness was hardly spoken about or even recognized, it was more so just pushed away. Until modernism came about and gave rise to it. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays mental illness’s role in modernist texts when it writes “...but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad”(17). This text
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Race during the modernist period gave a voice to the colored and the struggles they faced; such as their feelings and sense of invisibility. “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison was one of many modernist texts that portrayed races part in society. The text starts off by saying, “I am an invisible man”(1). Plain and simple, the narrator who is also the invisible man, is searching for meaning and identity in a racist American society, he feels so far from his identity it causes him to feel invisible. The author also writes “One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name”(3). This quote shares an in-depth look at a colored man’s struggles, which simply came from his race. Modernist texts such as this one did not sugarcoat, they wanted the racism to be known. Race functioned as an issue in modernism, the struggles for colored men and women were brought to the