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Modernists and Imagists

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Modernists and Imagists: How do the poems of the modernists and imagists represent public opinion and sentiment during and after WWI? What "emotions" or "attitude" do these poems convey? What commentary do they make on the quality or meaning of life at that time? What unified message do these writers convey to their readers?

Modernists and imagists tried to represent the loss of the sense of optimism that the people had before the World War I. The people of that time started to doubt the ideas and values they had that brought them into the war, they started to look for more modern ideas. Modernists and imagists both tried to show the harsh realities of everyday life to their readers. In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Prufrock personifies the feelings that people of that time had. Prufrock expresses the chaos and hopelessness that the people felt after the war. He is a pessimistic and unconfident man who lives in fear.
Modernists sought to reflect the modern world and culture, while imagists tried to give readers a clear image of what they were trying to express in their writings. Imagists used clear and sharp language to produce images in readers’ minds. They were strongly against sentimentality, and they did not follow the traditional forms of poetry. Imagism was also strongly influenced by traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry. “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams is an example of imagist poetry. In this poem, Williams manages to convey a sharp image of a red wheelbarrow that is glazed with rain, next to the white chickens. He uses this simple image to say that life depends on agriculture.

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