Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1992

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

McGuirk, Carol

Abstract

The war novels and propaganda of World War I infused Americans with a consciousness of trench warfare through images of degradation, discontinuity, and the irrelevance of human effort. Three modernist novels, The Day of the Locust (1933) by Nathanael West, As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner, and God's Little Acre (1934) by Erskine Caldwell, are infused with this same imagery. Though neither West, Faulkner, nor Caldwell participated in the war, their works symbolically echo the images of trench warfare, a development uniquely central to World War I. Although these novels do not mention war, the world of "The Great War" is their world. There has been much written on the symbolism in these three novels. No critic, however, associates the symbols with trench warfare. This thesis therefore relies on the historical and psychological research of World War I, which is then applied to the works of West, Faulkner, and Caldwell.

Extent

47 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1992.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14854

Format

pdf

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