Honor, glory, and individualism: Placing the American literature of the First World War in a cultural context

Scope and method of study. The purpose of this study is to compare 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 on the literature of popular pro-war authors Arthur Guy Empey and Edward Streeter and the literature of 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 secondary sources concerned with literature and the First World War.;Findings and conclusions. While agreeing on many of the details of combat during the war, the authors regarded concepts of honor, glory, and individualism very differently. The different cultural atmospheres in America between the First World War and the 1920s explain the conflicting themes in pro-war and anti-war literature 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.