Post War Social Changes

2. Post War Social Changes • Unlike European countries, the U.S. had an economic boom after WWI. • Affordable cars and home appliances. • Telephones, radio, and motion pictures bring societies closer together.

3. Questions Why do you think the U.S. economy boomed while European country’s economies sagged?

4. Role of Women • Flapper- Young Women who rebelled against traditional values. • Listened to Jazz, danced, drank, smoke, short skirts, casual sexual values. • U.S. women won the right to vote in 1920. • Labor saving devices in the home allowed some women to get jobs. • Women sports players and artists began to be seen.

5. Question What do you think a labor saving device is?

6. Reaction to Jazz Age • Prohibition, 1919-1933, made illegal the manufacture and sale of alcohol. • Caused an explosion of organized crime and illegal bars called Speakeasies. • Rise in Christian fundamentalism • Believe in the infallibility of the Bible. • Scopes Trial • John Scopes taught evolution in school which was against the law. • The court case began a long legal battle that continues to this day.

7. Erich Remarque “All Quiet on the Western Front” “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.” “We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.” 

8. What themes do you get from the passages?

9. “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway “Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.” “I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.” “Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” 

10. Questions What themes do you get from the passages from Ernest Hemingway’s book? What themes do you think the passages have in common?

11. The Lost Generation • World War I left many writers disillusioned with modern life. • Feelings of loss, wanderings, and lack of deep convictions pervaded the thoughts of the writers and youth from that time. • Writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald left the U.S. and moved to Paris where they drank a lot, smoked a lot, had love affairs, and wrote novels.

12. New Scientific Discoveries • Marie Curie discovered radiation and that atoms can be broken down. • Einstein’s Theory of Relativity • Measurements of space-time is not absolute. • Penicillin • Nontoxic mold that kills bacteria. Led to modern antibiotics.

13. Art • Cubism- 3D objects are painted with angles as if they were fragmented parts. Made famous by Pablo Picasso. • Abstract Art-Only colors, lines, and shapes • Surrealism- Made famous by Salvidor Dali

14. Harlem Renaissance • African American cultural awakening. • Began in Harlem. • African American writers and artists expressed pride in their culture.