Literature after the Second World War

Monika Bartkowiak
Oliwia Kościółek
Paweł Klimczak
Jakub Appolt
The Second World War has drastically changed the course of life.
After it ended, it took people years to fully comprehend what has
happened and how this event has shaped their future. Obviously, the
world of literature could not remain unaffected. The themes and
motifs dwelt upon in books after the Second World War have
changed a lot, no matter the country in question. Thus, American
literature has changed as well.
 The Naked and The Dead
The Naked and the Dead  is a novel written
by  Norman Mailer. Published by  Rinehart &
Company  in 1948, when he was 25, it was
his debut novel.
Of course, after the war, many writers decided
to describe what was happening at the front.
One such writer is Norman Mailer and his
novel The Naked and The Dead. Based on
Mailer's own experience of military service in
the Philippines during World War Two, The
Naked and the Dead' is a graphically truthful
and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in
battle. First published in 1949, as America was
still basking in the glories of the Allied victory,
it altered forever the popular perception of
warfare.
Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man
platoon stationed on a Japanese-held island in
the South Pacific during World War II it tells
the moving story of the soldiers' struggle to
retain a sense of dignity amidst the horror of
warfare, and to find a source of meaning in
their lives.
 The Young Lions

● Christian Diestl is at first a

● The three have very different wars:
The Young Lions (1948) is a novel
by Irwin Shaw about three soldiers
in World War II.
sympathetic Austrian drawn to Nazism
by despair for his future but willing to
sacrifice Jews if necessary. Noah
Ackerman is an American Jew facing
discrimination. Michael Whitacre is
an American White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants who struggles with his
lack of direction.
Diestl becomes less sympathetic as he
willingly sacrifices more and more
merely to survive; Ackerman finally
overcomes the discrimination of his
fellows in the army only to be nearly
undone by the horror of the camps;
Whitacre, still without meaning in his
life, survives them both.
Postwar Jewish-American Literature
Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a  Polish-born 

American Jewish writer who wrote and
published first in  Yiddish  and later translated
his own works into English with the help of
editors and collaborators. He was awarded the 
Nobel Prize for Literature  in 1978.A leading
figure in the  Yiddish literary movement, he
was awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, 
one in Children's Literature  for his memoir  A
Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up
in Warsaw  (1970) and  one in Fiction  for his
collection  A Crown of Feathers and Other
Stories  (1974).
A Day of Pleasure  by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw is an

autobiographical account of a childhood in
Warsaw, Poland, written by Isaac Bashevis
Singer. Published in 1969, it is a series of 19
short stories written by Singer depicting his
childhood growing up in the Jewish area of
Warsaw. In each chapter, a different story is
detailed, with a focus on specific people Singer
encountered in his neighborhood during this
period.
From his school days when his parents
struggled with poverty in the ghetto through the
divide between traditionalists and those
determined to modernize their lives to the wars
and fascist regimes that made them flee their
home.
● The Second World War, and the postwar spread of Jewish prosperity, accelerated Jewish writers’
immersion into the American literary conversation. The melting-pot ideal, in which immigrants–
and writers–had transformed themselves into deracinated Americans, was replaced by the salad
bowl, in which immigrants maintained their identity while simultaneously forming part of the rich
tapestry of American life. The changing ideal was reflected in American literature, which
embraced a diversity of approach and subject matter as never before.

● The 1950s saw Jews surging into the middle class, leaving the squalid tenements of the urban
ghettos behind and fleeing, with so many other Americans, for the suburbs. Jews were now
comfortably ensconced in American life, and the emerging writers of the postwar era–Philip Roth,
Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Allen Ginsberg, and others–were devoted to
simultaneously embracing, and rebelling against, that newfound prosperity. In so doing, they
made Jewish characters, Jewish themes, and Jewish history part and parcel of the American story.

● Postwar Jewish writers were often reflecting on their own immigrant or second-generation-
immigrant parents, casting a scathing eye on the small hypocrisies and stifling consensus of the
previous generation. Writers like Philip Roth were the eternal sons, their artistic work devoted, in
large part, to slaying the father, again and again. Roth’s most famous novel, Portnoy’s Complaint
(1969), was, among other things, a purposeful reveling in sexual chaos by a formerly polite
Jewish boy, all of which was directed at his prudish parents.
Realism and metafiction

Realistic novels have become a thing after the

Second World War because of the events the
authors of these books got to witness. As a
result, writing about what’s actually happening
instead of imagining the plot of the book has
become very common. Detailed description of
the atrocities of war in Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-
22’.
Yet, the author also manages to incorporate
some black comedy elements to make the story
a bit satirical.
Catch 22 – Realistic Novel

● Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author

Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953. The novel
was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the
most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses
a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient
narration, describing events from the points of view of
different characters. The separate storylines are out of
sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.

● The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to

1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain
John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25
bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while
the 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the island
of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy,
although it also covers episodes from basic training at
Lowry Field in Colorado and Air Corps training at
Santa Ana Army Air Base in California. The novel
examines the absurdity of war and military life through
the experiences of Yossarian and his cohorts, who
attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their
service requirements so that they may return home.
METAFICTION

● Another vital aspect to mention is the

mockery of military mentality. The
reason for that is quite obvious –
everyone got very tired of war and the
people who represent it. Another great
example of the transformation of
American literature after World War II is
‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt
Vonnegut. The plot of this book focuses
on the bombing of Dresden using a
mixture of numb humor and dark
fantasy. What is vital to mention is that
combining absurd fantasies and dark
humor has become a feature of many
American writers after the Second
World War and after the bombing of
Hiroshima.
 African American Literature

After World War II, the depiction of anger and social protest became a defining feature of African-
American literature. Richard Wright gained fame and many new writers tried to follow in his
footsteps. The essays talked about the importance of representation as well as the complexities of
Black life. The idea was to write papers that talk about black people and their problems. For
example, Ralph Ellison used realism in his works to show the full scale of the sacrifice and
complexity of being an African American in the United States at the time. In his novels, he
focused on issues such as school segregation, the impact of World War II on the lives of African
Americans as well as their role in that war, the hustle and bustle of the ghetto, the ideology of
nationalism, and the tenancy of the countryside. His novel The Invisible Man is considered one of
the best and one of the most important in post-war world literature.
Invisible Man

● Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison's first novel,

published by Random House in 1952. It
addresses many of the social and
intellectual issues faced by African
Americans in the early 20th century,
including black nationalism, the
relationship between black identity and
Marxism, and the reformist racial policies ,
as well as issues of individuality and
personal identity.

● Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book

Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison
the first African-American writer to win
the award. In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the
100 best English-language novels of the
20th century.
The End