The Theme of Alienation in Modernist Literature: A Comparative Study of T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka
Keywords:
Modernism, Alienation, T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, Existentialism, Absurdity, Modern Society, Fragmentation, Spiritual CrisisAbstract
Modernist literature, shaped by the disillusionment of the early twentieth century, frequently portrays alienation as the defining human condition. This paper compares the representation of alienation in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. It analyzes how both authors use fragmentation, symbolism and existential imagery to depict the loss of faith, meaning and identity in the modern world. By contrasting Eliot’s spiritual desolation with Kafka’s psychological absurdity, the paper highlights how modernism articulates a crisis of self in an era of mechanization and moral decay (Spurr 25;).
References
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Vintage International, 1991.
Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Edited by Frank Kermode, Penguin Classics, 2003.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Viking Press, 1993.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Translated by Stanley Corngold, Bantam Books, 1972.
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. MIT Press, 1971.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, 1974.
Spurr, David. “The Rhetoric of Fragmentation in Modernist Poetry.” Modernism/Modernity, vol. 5, no. 2, 1998, pp. 23–41.
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