Honor, Glory, and Individualism: Placing the American Literature of the First World War in a Cultural Context

Abstract

This study compares the thematic differences between the popular, pro-war literature written during the First World War with the less popular, anti-war literature written during the 1920s. This study focuses popular pro-war authors Arthur Guy Empey and Edward Streeter and modernist, anti-war authors Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. Bestseller lists reveal that the anti-war books of Hemingway and Dos Passos in the 1920s never rivaled the popularity of Empey and Streeter, yet Hemingway's and Dos Passos's books preoccupy cultural history. These authors regarded concepts of honor, glory, and individualism differently. The different cultural atmospheres between the First World War and the 1920s explain the conflicting themes and the failure of anti-war literature to garner the popularity of its predecessors. Hemingway's and Dos Passos's subsequent popularity in American culture caused scholars to overemphasize the importance of Hemingway and Dos Passos in the 1920s and ignore the preceding war literature.