In Cold Blood

The Modernist period of Literature, Literature being the operative word, seems to be a period were all the rules of the past changed. No longer were we praising god and creating legends out of men, or criticizing government with satire. No, Modernist Literature existed as a level of extreme fear and aloofness. “God is dead” a statement with intense fire in Arthur Millers The Crucible may very well define the entire genre of modernist literature. In Modernism the characters are alone, and are principle characters stop being heros and become one step away from being villians themselves. In this godless existance they eternally alone, never making connections forever trapped in the hells they make for themselves.

Modernist tools such as disrupted story lines, unique perspectives, the internal landscape, and the self-imposed isolation, as well as the Anti-hero of pulp fiction, can be found far outside of the realms of fancy: in the every day world of ordinary human beings. In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood a movie adaptation by Richard Brooks of Capotes nonfiction Novel about the Clutter family murders, focusing primarily upon Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, the killers. From the very begining of the movie the timeline is extremely convulated, only showing the crime near the end of the film, allowing the viewers that one shred of hope in there minds that maybe, just maybe, they were innocent. Now that statement is incontrivertibly false, they most definately did kill the family, however Capote’s use of disrupted story line gave readers/viewers an oppurtunity to gain sentimentality with the killers and to grow to actually like them as people, so that there death is all that more of a powerful scene at the end. The work was groundbreaking in that it established a new perspective, it allowed an average person to make a connection with these men, and realise that outside of there crime, and therefore outside any mental illness, there were really good guys who were almost victims of fate. Alvin Dewey said in the movie “In the end we have 6 murders” the four Clutters, Perry, and Dick. Perry’s life especially demonstrates the self-imposed isolation. He had spent his entire life with an abusive father who might as well have killed his mother, and nearly killed him with a (luckily) unloaded shotgun. Perry knew he wasnt ready for parole. It is only after he got the oppurtunity to speak with psychiatrists during his five years on death row that he is able to understand how his own mind was fractured and how he was capable of such terrible acts of violence.

Trumen Capote made excellent use of the tools the modernists before him had created, and with him he took an intrigueing true event and made the world realise that although the killers had massacreed a family they were not animals they were humans, the same as you and me. A perfectly distressing thought that falls right into modernism.

Long days Journey Into a Dark Abyss

In Eugene O’neils Long Days Journey into Night, a dramatic work of fiction that truly is a day in the early life of O’neil, is quite possibly the greatest literary piece of modernism in existance. As a truth about O’neil’s life it demonstrates how his life was disparing mess devoid of communication and nothing but rifts between his family. These seem common to many families, and while many may not be able to say “that’s my life”, they can very well see some facet of there own life reflected in his work. As previously stated O’neils masterpiece contains a solid basis of what we call today modernist perspective, specifically that very same self-imposed isolation. As the drama unfolds the isolation and the hate builds up as the characters become more and more drunken and high, to the point when the entire family seems to break down in the end, only to fall into there isolation and denial, and prepare to face it all over again the next day.

In the first act the family is very well tied together everything seems to be great, Emily has grown past here morphine addiction, and the family is still blissfully ignorant to the fact that edmund’s slight cold could quite possibly be consumption. The family is well tied together, hiding any problems, and only Jamie, the elder brother, has any suspicion of the dark truths that the family hides. This recognition that not all is well in the family proves to be a burden to Jamie as he finds the deciet unbearable and tells his opinion openly to his family and is criticized of imagining things, when reality he is merely criticized for bursting there delusional bubbles. The self- Imposed isolation is most conclusively shown in the first Act with the near constant bickering between James Tyrone Senior and Jamie, both won remaining guarded and apologizing when they dont really mean it remaining contained in there own little prisons.

The Next two acts further demonstrate this isolation through the increase in jaded bickering, eventually culminating with all there fears justified as the truth Jamie shouted so long about in the first act came true. In the beginning of the Fourth act jamie is completely absent having left to get completely hammered. his isolation, unlike his families does not make itself out through guarded llies to the others, but through actual isolation away from the family with a prostitute who was so obese she had no customers. Meanwhile the rest of the family isolate themselves through alcoholism and diluted fantasy of the past. Mary takes heavy dosages of Morphine ot escape from her present world with the husband she “loved” to return to a time when she played the piano and dreamed of being a nun. Her escape to the past is her own isolation, and Edmund and james each hide themselves at the bottom of a bottle.

As the play draws to a close none of the deciet, save for the morphine addiction, and Tuberculosis, is revealed and beaten, and like a normal american family they hide there troubles forever worrying too much about being politically correct and not enough about retaining the truth. In the end the only thing that came out of this whole day was: Edmund has TB, and is drunk out of his mind, James is drunk out of his mind, and vows not to be such a cheap bastard, Emily is as high as a kite, and Jamie is as drunken as the rest, having returned from the prostitute, and warns Edmund not to act like him. A typical american family bound forever in a cycle of Isolation that would eventually destroy them one-by-one.