In this article, I’ll share my journey and guide you through practical ways to start journaling effectively.

Why Start Journaling?

Journaling is one of the most powerful tools for personal growth and reflection. At first, I thought it was just about writing random thoughts or keeping a record of my days, but it became so much more. Through journaling, I found clarity when I was confused, peace when I felt anxious, and solutions when I felt stuck. Using journal prompts for self-growth like “What am I grateful for today?” or “What limiting beliefs am I ready to let go of?” allowed me to explore parts of myself I hadn’t noticed before.

Journaling is also a powerful stress reliever. Writing down worries and fears can lighten the load and help you feel less overwhelmed. It creates a space to process emotions and understand patterns in your thoughts. Whether you’re reflecting on past experiences, setting goals, or dreaming about the future, there are so many things to journal about that can inspire growth and healing.

How to Start Journaling: Practical Steps

Starting a journal doesn’t have to feel daunting. When I began, I kept it simple and focused on consistency rather than perfection. Here are some steps that worked for me:

1. Choose Your Journal: Whether it’s a beautifully bound notebook, a plain notepad, or a digital app, pick something that excites you. The right journal can make the process feel more personal.
2. Set a Routine: I found that journaling first thing in the morning or before bed helped me stay consistent. Even 5-10 minutes a day can make a difference.
3. Start Small with Prompts: If you don’t know what to journal about, use writing prompts for journaling to guide you. Questions like “What is one thing that made me happy today?” or “What do I want to improve in my life?” can get you started.
4. Write Freely: Forget grammar, punctuation, or making your journal ‘perfect.’ The goal is to express yourself. Some days, I write a paragraph; other days, I fill pages.
5. Reflect on Progress: After a few weeks, go back and read your entries. I often discovered how much I had grown or gained perspective on issues that once seemed overwhelming.

If you’re still unsure how to start, consider using journal prompts for adults or exploring creative journaling ideas like freewriting, lists, or gratitude journals. I promise it gets easier with time.

Journal Prompts to Inspire Self-Growth and Reflection

One of the challenges I faced was knowing where to begin. That’s when I started exploring journaling prompts that helped me reflect, grow, and dream bigger. To make things easier for you, I’ve compiled some of my favorite journal prompts for self growth and other categories that can get you writing today.

Daily Reflection Prompts:

• “What made me smile today?”
• “What lesson did I learn this week?”
• “How did I step out of my comfort zone today?”

Future Goals Prompts:

• “Where do I see myself in one year? Five years?”
• “What are three habits I want to build?”
• “What small steps can I take today to move toward my goals?”

Personal Growth Prompts:

• “What do I love most about myself, and why?”
• “What limiting beliefs am I ready to release?”
• “How can I show myself more kindness and compassion?”

For women looking to connect more deeply with their thoughts, I’ve also found journal prompts for women to be incredibly helpful. Prompts like “What empowers me the most?” or “How do I define success for myself?” are great starting points. If you’re ever stuck, try any of these personal journal prompts—they’re designed to guide your reflections in a meaningful way.

Journaling Ideas to Keep Things Interesting

One of the things I learned early on is that journaling doesn’t have to be monotonous. There are so many creative journaling ideas to keep your practice fresh and exciting. Here are a few techniques I’ve used:

1. Gratitude Journaling: Take a few minutes daily to write down three things you’re grateful for. This simple habit shifts your focus toward positivity.
2. Daily Affirmations: Start your entries with empowering statements like “I am strong,” “I am capable,” or “I attract opportunities.”
3. Stream-of-Consciousness Writing: Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and write whatever comes to mind. This form of freewriting helps clear mental clutter.
4. Reflections on Quotes: Find an inspiring quote and write about what it means to you. For example, one of my favorite quotes is, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Writing about it gave me clarity on my purpose.
5. Visual Journaling: Add sketches, doodles, or photos to your journal. Sometimes, visuals can say more than words.

When you’re looking for new things to journal about, mix it up! I often use prompts, gratitude lists, or simply reflect on moments that brought me joy. The beauty of journaling is that it evolves with you.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Journaling

If you’ve ever felt stuck or unsure of what to journal about, you’re not alone. Many people face journaling challenges, whether it’s writer’s block, fear of judgment, or lack of time. I’ve been there too. But here’s what worked for me:

• Use Prompts: When I don’t know where to start, I lean on journalling prompts or writing prompts for journaling. Questions like “What am I most proud of today?” help kickstart my entries.
• Forget Perfection: Your journal is for you, and no one else. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar—just write what feels right.
• Start Small: You don’t need to write pages every day. Some days, a single sentence is enough. The key is consistency.

For anyone who feels overwhelmed, I recommend exploring journal prompts for adults or browsing ideas online. You’ll find so many tools to help you move forward. And if you’re balancing academic or professional demands, you might find this list of the best dissertation writing services helpful for managing workload stress.

My Personal Journey with Journaling

I can honestly say that journaling has changed my life. It has helped me process emotions, set clear goals, and gain confidence in myself. One of the most profound moments came when I used the prompt, “What’s holding me back from achieving my dreams?” Through writing, I realized I was limiting myself with self-doubt. That realization was a turning point.

Journaling isn’t always easy, and some days the words flow better than others. But over time, the pages become a reflection of who you are, who you’ve been, and who you want to become. Whether it’s through structured journal prompts for self growth or creative journal ideas, the process is always worth it.

Conclusion

If you’ve been looking for a way to connect with yourself, grow personally, or simply process the ups and downs of life, journaling is an incredible tool to try. Start small, be consistent, and don’t worry about being perfect. Use writing prompts for journaling, explore creative journaling topics, or experiment with different journal ideas. The key is to make it your own.

Journaling has helped me grow in ways I never imagined, and I know it can do the same for you. So grab a journal, pick one of the journalling prompts above, and just start writing. You’ll be amazed at what you discover about yourself along the way.

The post How to Start Journaling for Personal Growth and Reflection appeared first on Sheridan House.

The topic of Talking About Literature and Thesis Writing is often a daunting prospect for many students. Not only does it involve engaging critically with academic texts, but it also requires an ability to effectively communicate complex themes and arguments in a concise and succinct manner. Writing a thesis or dissertation on a literary topic requires a great deal of research and analysis in order to devise a valid and relevant argument, and the challenge of summarizing a wide range of sources in a single, unified statement can be a difficult one. However, with the right approach and a keen understanding of the literature, building a successful thesis can be an invaluable experience. Through the thoughtful discussion of existing works and the creation of a unique and well-crafted thesis, students can demonstrate their understanding of a particular topic or genre of literature and make an impact on the scholarly community.

Talking About Literature and Thesis Writing: How to Successfully Express Your Opinion and Research on a Literary Topic.

Writing a successful thesis requires careful research into the chosen topic, and expressing your opinion on the matter in a thoughtful and meaningful way. It is also important to be well-versed in the literary topic you are discussing and to demonstrate a thorough understanding of it – which means researching, reading around the topic, and engaging in conversations about it. By combining the topics of literature and thesis writing, it is possible to achieve a successful thesis that not only displays your depth of knowledge but also your ability to communicate your own opinion in a clear and concise way.

List of Ideas for Talking About Literature and Thesis Writing

1. Exploring Themes in Literature and Crafting Thesis Statements

2. Comparing Basic Structures in Writing Assignments and Research Papers

3. Crafting Solid Characterization in Literary Works and Analyzing Sources for Thesis Writing

4. Crafting an Argument Through Evidence-Based Literary Analysis and Thesis Writing

5. Using Creative Styles to Enhance Literary Analysis and Thesis Writing

6. Understanding Figurative Language in Literary Works and Analyzing Evidence for Thesis Writing

7. Exploring Setting, Symbolism, and Metaphor in Literary Works and Drafting a Thesis Statement

8. Writing a Compelling Close Reading of a Literary Text and Developing a Scholarly Thesis

9. Understanding Different Contexts of Literary Works and Assembling Evidence for a Thesis

Evaluating the Impact of Literary Works on Cultural Trends and Defending a Thesis

Writing a thesis on literature can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! With the right knowledge and resources, anyone can create an engaging and informative paper on any literary work. To get started, it’s important to first understand the basics of literary analysis and the importance of talking about literature. Understanding the literary elements, literary analysis tools, and the overall structure of a good thesis can help make the task more manageable. After understanding the fundamentals, the next step is selecting an appropriate topic and exploring various sources to create an informed thesis. By having an informed and well-researched thesis, it can be easier to make a compelling argument and create an engaging and informative paper. With the right knowledge and resources, anyone can write a great thesis on literature and make their own mark in the academic world.

In conclusion, talking about literature and writing a thesis create a meaningful relationship between the two topics, by allowing one to explore the text more deeply and create a compelling argument that can be articulated through the thesis. Furthermore, through this process, one can gain a greater understanding of the literature studied and the themes discussed throughout.

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Anti-utopia is a type of society with ideals perfect in conception, but fallen and destroyed in fact. Anti-utopia shows a nightmarish picture of the near future. Typical themes of dystopia usually involve rebellion, social pressure, revolutions, wars, overpopulation, and catastrophe. Many consider this genre relatively new in literature, but the reality is that it has a very long and fascinating history. You will find evidence of this in this brief excursion into the history of the dystopia genre.

Functions of the dystopia

Through the novel of the dystopia, the author demonstrates his own conviction concerning the problems of humanity and society, and warns people of their weakness. Writers usually resort to the genre of dystopia to discuss reality and portray problems that are very likely in the future. Although the role of the dystopia in literature is limited to educating and warning the audience, do not underestimate its influence in highlighting problems of pressing social, political, and governmental concern.

The structure of dystopias

Background

A dystopia is usually part of a fictional universe that tells the story of how this world was formed or how it has evolved (or degenerated) in relation to our society. Prehistory vividly demonstrates the process of shifting levers of control over society, changing social norms, or the emergence of government power, run by individual corporations, totalitarian dictators, or bureaucrats.

The main character

There are several types of protagonist that may appear in a dystopia book. One of these is the character who intuitively senses society’s problems and tries to fix them, openly believing that throwing the dictator off the Olympus of power is indeed possible. Often the worldview of such a character is shaped by his environment, which also is not indifferent to confrontation with the holder of power.

The other type of protagonist is an integral part of a society that perceives itself as nothing less than utopian, but at a certain point he realizes how wrong this very society is, and attempts to change or destroy it.

Plot

Often the protagonist meets a character endowed with dystopian traits, perhaps the leader of the whole society. A conflict occurs in which the protagonist also meets, or is supported by, a group of people driven by the idea of destroying the dystopia. Sometimes these people were previously part of this dystopia, but they have managed to come to their senses and shed this burden.

The climax

In a dystopia novel, the problem is often left unresolved; in most cases, attempts to destroy the dystopia are in vain. Sometimes the hero manages to break the vicious circle and break free, but in the overwhelming majority of cases the protagonist (or the group of people we discussed above) is defeated and the dystopia continues.

Examples of Anti-utopias

Texts of Revolutionary Significance

Perhaps nowadays the development of the dystopian genre in art has received a second wind, but its activity can be traced back to the times of the 18th century. Perhaps at that time such work was a reflection of not so fantastic utopian beliefs, but rather a response to threatening ideals and political attitudes. Thus, the novel dystopia uses its denunciatory form of imposing a worldview as a way of criticizing the ideology in the abyss of which these truly courageous texts were created.

However, repugnant views of totalitarian regimes and scenarios of post-apocalyptic destruction are closely intertwined within this genre, and in addition they have strong links with other literary movements, such as travel novels, satire and science fiction. Therefore, it would be a mistake to completely identify all these directions.

The primary impetus for the dystopian movement comes from Jonathan Swift, who published Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Many might associate his story of the Lilliputians with nothing more than a good old Disney fairy tale, but Gulliver’s story is much darker than one might think. The writer publishes a sharp critique of contemporary society, wrapping his considerations in thick layers of metaphors. In one land, for example, Gulliver encounters a nation for whom science and rationalism are paramount, their pointless experiments draining natural and human resources. In contrast to them, the author presents other settlements, bloodthirsty and savage in nature, which cannot fail to amaze the traveler.

Upon his return to London, Gulliver comes to a stunning conclusion: being able to compare inherently polar ideologies, he realizes that he is no different from the peoples he has visited, and even more, his entire society is permeated with sinfulness.

The Dawn of Thinking Machines

A little later came the publication of Samuel Butler’s no less iconic anti-utopia novel called Yedgin (the title hides nothing less than an anagram of the word nowhere, which already unambiguously hints at the narrative message of the work), published in 1872 for the first time on behalf of an unknown author. In his novel Butler plays with all sorts of satirical devices against Victorian society. His book Yedgin can rather be categorized as utopian literature, although it also has the general traits of dystopia.

During the writer’s lifetime, technological advances were not yet as widespread as they were in the 20th century, but his speculations about how a machine could penetrate the mind are truly fascinating. Since then, the idea of the unmitigated danger that technological development brings with it has become an integral part of dystopian literature.

The Origins of Doublethink

Already in the first half of the 20th century two foundational texts for dystopian literature were published. We are talking about Aldous Huxley’s O marvelous new world (1932) and George Orwell’s novel 1984 (written in 1949). The thought police, Big Brother, doublethink, and the New Age: all these concepts are firmly rooted in our consciousness, but the ways in which they originated have been somewhat forgotten.

In Huxley’s work, the reader is plunged into a perfectly engineered world in which human beings are artificially grown like a vegetable and then seated at a predetermined place in the structure of society, with no one to complain about their situation until the system fails. Orwell’s novel features a character named Winston, who, under the pressure of propaganda, begins to ask irrelevant questions, but the social machine leaves him no room for willfulness.

Paradoxically, both books are not devoid of quite ordinary and familiar details that everyone has heard or seen: technology, television, drugs, etc., all of which combine to produce a deafening effect of approximation to the real world and detailing the danger that, in theory, may await us all.

In fact, the list of dystopian books could go on for a very long time, and it is easy to find notes of dystopia in every single work, which is why all literature is intertextual, each new genre inextricably linked to the other.

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1. Nikolai Gogol

It is this writer who is in the first row, because only a baby does not know about the tragic fate of the second part of Dead Souls. The great Russian writer all his life was surrounded by a halo of mystery and devilish mysticism, but Gogol himself was hardly ready to give fire to his creation. But only until one fanatical priest convinced Gogol of the sinfulness of his work, which leads its creator to a complete loss of propriety. In a fit of inexplicable passion, Nikolai Gogol destroyed the rough record that contained the second part of Dead Souls. It can hardly be explained other than by demonic conduction. Unfortunately, two weeks after this event, the writer himself was also gone.

2. Gerard Manley Hopkins

The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was another creative individual whose religious views contrasted sharply with his literary experience. It all began when he stopped writing poetry for Lent, but later, as a Jesuit priest, in a fit of religious confusion, he not only renounced poetry but also burned a large number of his earlier works. Unfortunately, the reader never saw most of his writings, but as Umberto Eco said, a great poet should burn his early poems rather than try to publish them.

3. James Joyce

While many authors are subject to religious experiences that push them to destroy their works, there are a number of writers who are willing to take such a step solely because of their aesthetic convictions. James Joyce, for example, became so disillusioned with his autobiographical novel, The Hero Stephen, after 20 rejections that the only sensible use for him was to put it on fire. But at that moment, as if at the command of an invisible supreme power, the writer’s wife, Nora, appeared on the scene and, risking her health, extracted her husband’s manuscript from the flames. Later this draft was substantially revised, and the final version of the novel was called Portrait of the Artist in Youth.

4. Robert Lewis Stevenson

If James Joyce’s wife helped him save his work in the literal sense, Robert Lewis Stevenson’s wife helped her husband in the spiritual sense. In the early stages of creating a new work, Stevenson often enlisted the help of his wife, and she, in turn, believed that the draft of the short story The Strange Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written in the “wrong” style, that is, took an overly literal approach to an allegorical story in form and content.

Being sick and bedridden, Stevenson was horrified when his own hand threw the draft directly into the fire. He called his wife and asked her to bring him the ashes, all that survived the story. But while in Joyce’s case his idea partially survived on paper, Stevenson saved it completely in his head. Thanks in part to the stimulating effects of his medication, he recovered the manuscript in less than a week.

5. Otessa Moshfegh

We’ve already discussed the religious and aesthetic reasons for destroying written works, but have many writers burned their works for survival? There is at least one example. Otessa Moshfegh, having temporarily abandoned her life in Manhattan for solitude in an old cabin in Maine, was left without wood for her stove one cold night. To keep from dying of cold, she had to burn some of her work. Perhaps this is just an exaggeration, and it is unlikely the writer would have said goodbye to life, but it is certainly a rare case of an author burning manuscripts out of a sense of physical necessity. Fortunately, Otessa had enough time and inspiration to recreate the draft from which A Dark and Winding Road was born.

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Thus, magical realism is a literary movement characterized by the breaking of standard realist forms through the interweaving of fantastic events into the narrative. Angel Flores was the first to think of calling Latin America’s rich literary style magical realism. In the late sixties the term spread to the work of writers from other continents. In a deeper sense, magical realism began to occupy an increasingly strong position in the minds of South American artists and writers, prompting critics to identify the most powerful avant-garde movement with the term. Magical realism succeeded in extinguishing cross-cultural differences by combining elements of everyday life and global problems; it managed to harmoniously combine seemingly polar characteristics: at times exaggerations of reality alien to realism are mixed with typical and commonplace categories of thought and behavior.

Any reader familiar with the work of the writers of this movement will confirm that magical realism is capable of surprising anyone, without ignoring the culture, tradition, and memory inherited from the ancestors. Magical realism has succeeded in accomplishing what the reader has not been able to observe for two whole millennia, namely, crushing the walls of the familiar, even traditional, form of organization of novels and narratives. Thus, the monotonous and painfully sterile path trampled by postmodernism managed to turn to an unprecedented plane.

Many writers belong to this movement: Miguel Angel Asturias, Aljejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, Lisa Aubin de Teran, Louis de Bernier, Günther Grass, Laura Esquivel. Among others, Carpentier calls “real singularity” the attempt to find magical properties in the midst of realism: “everything is extraordinary only when there is an unexpected reversal of reality. This is how he spoke of magical realism in his work The King of This World.

Among such properties that creators have tried to find in everyday life are the following: clairvoyance, levitation, a very long life in a biblical manner, miracles, fictionalized, even hyperbolized, diseases; but as Carpentier states in the work already mentioned, all this requires real faith.

All these features are responsible for the magical part of the work, while realism occupies the more significant, so to speak, main part of the narrative. In a sense, one could say that realism is given the first role in the work, with the magical parts acting only as an adjunct, and less important than the main part. Thus, magical realism invites the reader to step away from everyday reality for the sake of plunging into the maelstrom of the miraculous and not following meticulous rules.

The Reasons for Magical Realism

In this part of our story we will try to find the reasons for the emergence of such a movement as magical realism.

• The Crisis of Religion. One way or another, but in the era of the most important scientific and technical discoveries mankind had to face the fact that the ancient beliefs of the ancestors could no longer fully satisfy the need to know the world around us. Man began to search for new horizons, to discover new latitudes and planes of the scientific field, which gradually filled the gaps in knowledge about the creation of the world.
• The Western reader was bored with the techniques of introspection and the internal psychological struggle of book characters, so subconsciously the reading masses were already prepared to perceive a radically new literary form. The postmodernism of the early 20th century finally exhausted the minds of readers who mentally longed for familiar stories, only told in a new way, which magical realism was finally able to provide them with. A rare reader could oppose the tendency to describe social realities through hypnotizing metaphorical language.
• The source that fed the body of postmodernism dried up completely, for it no longer had the resources to invent new structures of expression, or at least to reform them, and the forms of presentation clearly lacked something magical and truly alive: thus the threshold was reached after which postmodernism was nothing more than a collection of obsolete metaphors and nonconformist ideas. Instead, magical realism succeeded in smoothing the edges between real life and the result of literary creation with a simple technique that consisted in sharpening the reader’s anticipation of something wonderful, of some unexpected event, while using sometimes primitive but painfully captivating language.
• Magical realism is a kind of emotional flow, a current of experimental reason, the origins of which go deep into the human subconscious, thus taking on a certain ideological role, which previously belonged entirely to the faithful side of the subconscious.
• The paradox of the equation of all the masses and the eerie loneliness in a world that is becoming more crowded by the day was bound to have its reflection in literature. Postmodernism was the “cold” current that provoked the mass equation, while magical realism puts into ordinary things all the ideas and experiences of the postmodern period, without giving a clear explanation and solution to these problems.
• Magical realism shifts the literary stratum toward more ancient forms, gives complete freedom of choice and provides a wide front for the imagination, thus giving the impression that even the author is surprised at the direction in which his narrative unfolds.
• Magical realism emerged shortly after a period when many avant-gardists were actively experimenting with various forms of narrative, thereby finding themselves in an advantageous position, a new literary movement could smelt a monolithic form from those methods considered most suitable for the novel.
• Magical Realism emerged in parallel with the Beatnik movement, but the two cultures took different paths in their development.
• Reality had become too burdensome to bear, and already the reader demanded something different from reality; the World War had produced so many deaths that the only way to resist it was mockery; this factor caused the need to read about the hyperbolic exploits of the most ordinary people, or conversely, to read about hyperbolized heroes in the conditions of ordinary life. The reader needed something invisible to fill the environment, for everyone craves miracles.
• Everything is cyclical, so people recreate history to remember their heroes. Ancient nations and empires created entire epics during their periods of greatest glory and prosperity, and now it is the turn of every other nation to create epic stories, in which magical realism has been a good helper.

External influences

If we now try to outline in more detail the general face of magical realism and determine on which texts it is based, it will be necessary to mention the outside currents that have influenced it: they are Barroco, the Rascal Novel, the Gothic, tragedy, fables, myths, legends, indigenous superstitions, social realism, and of course postmodernism.

The Influence of Realism

From realism, magical realism has adopted the transparency of language and the pseudo-objectivism of 20th-century convictions. If realism refers to the identification of the literary work and the world around it, then yes – magical realism is indeed real; in every “magically real” novel there are ordinary things, familiar feelings and experiences, real dates and events, but the main epithet of everything familiar becomes metaphor with the effect of profound hyperbole.

Magical realism in its ideas can hardly be called more democratic than any other literary movement. But magical realism is possible: it creates such imaginary worlds from which it becomes extremely difficult for a person to re-adapt to the reality around him.

Barroco’s influence

Magical realism has followed a dual developmental path, and now we can observe two main directions: the Latin American and the Asian. Writers of other nationalities also belong to this literary style, but, examining the problem in more detail, we can conclude that the short stories of South American writers bear the imprint of one current, while the works written in English are influenced somewhat differently, but both sources of inspiration have common roots: Barroco. Thus, the works of Salman Rushdie have distinct characteristics of Spanish Gongorism: metaphors, poetic language, the antithesis of ideas and concepts, hyperbole, mythical plots; while the narration of Gabriel García Márquez is more similar to Spanish Concepcetism: naivety, humor, morality, knowledge, metaphors.

The main distinguishing feature of Barroco was a constant change of perception of reality and unreality. Representatives of this literary style constantly sought to emphasize the disgusting, exaggerated, extravagant, funny, shocking and touching details, while mixing them together in the most hypnotic way for the reader.

The influence of the Rascal novels

But Barroco is not the only source of inspiration for magical realism, certainly one of its directions was borrowed from the Rascal novels. The knave is a kind of trickster, a cunning and insolent pest. The rascal is constantly changing places of his activity, embroiled in risky and deceptive adventures; he is capable of deceiving everyone to fulfill his own goals. The clearest example is Lasarillo of Tormesa (a knave tale written back in the 16th century). In many ways, the protagonists of magical realism fight for their own lives on the principle of rogue novels. Adam Asis (Salman Rushdie’s Children of Midnight) is just such a character. The rascal is characterized by the ambivalence of his character: he exhibits the traits of a hero and an anti-hero. His behavior follows a cyclical pattern: today he is a vagabond, tomorrow he serves two masters, while realizing his aspirations through all kinds of traps and deceptions and never retreating from his cynical view of the world; the narrative is always in the first person with a tangible touch of satire.

The Influence of Postmodernism

Within postmodernism, every conceivable boundary of the literary genre has been broken to give place to a general grotesque comedy: fiction offers us heterogeneous characters, they seem to be subjected to the analysis of other characters by means of the author’s words. The reader is literally invited to appreciate the writer’s narrative abilities, to act as a witness to the monologue, or rather the author’s confession to the reader.

When this technique of writing was new – for example, in the era of Cervantes – the reader was astonished, but later he needed something more, something capable of embracing the unexplored corners of their spirituality, something appealing to moral foundations, because it was already known that man is capable of living without faith, but there is always a group of people who constantly need certain moral pillars that help them live and exist in their social environment.

When postmodernism went out of fashion, magical realism took its place, and writers rediscovered worlds full of fantastic creatures, relegated to mythology of incest and violence, as well as strange things and unseen weapons, all became instruments of mockery of reality. We can see all this in the works of Günther Grass’s The Tin Drum, García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Angela Carter’s Nights in the Circus, etc.

The influence of Gothic novels

Gothicism in magical realism is reflected in its tragicism: a kind of attempt to mock death and fate. The elements of tragedy have a very powerful representation within magical realism because in their structure they are very similar to ancient tragedies. Among the homogeneous elements are the following:

• The crime follows one after another, predominantly provoked by a thirst for revenge;
• There is a chorus that comments on what is happening in the work;
• The writer resorts to irony to emphasize the significance of death;
• The ending is almost always disastrous.

Major Themes

One of the frequently mentioned themes in magical realism is that of unprecedented diseases that appear for no reason and just as easily disappear. The Moor in “The Moor’s Farewell Sigh” Salman Rushdie ages twice as fast as the others, and the inhabitants of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude suffer from forgetfulness.

The theme of loneliness is intertwined with themes of vindictiveness and depravity. These ideas were borrowed from Barroco, but have been modified somewhat with irony, sometimes even wicked satire.
These themes inextricably carry with them other subtexts, such as revenge, the uncertainty of motherhood, and others, but the narrative themes themselves do not make the style. It takes immense writing talent in conjunction with reader intuition to create an aura of magical realism, one of the most mysterious and hypnotic literary styles. At first glance, it’s a fairly simple formula with few variables, but is it that simple to solve the equation!

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When the stock market crashed in October 1929 and the precarious material prosperity of the twenties triggered mass unemployment, the crisis spurred many American writers into action. After a decade of literary experimentation from such modernists as Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Eliot, a new wave of writers began to draw inspiration from the political and economic spheres.

At a time when the Communist Party seemed a powerful engine of progress, these writers saw capitalist America as only a dying society in dire need of revolutionary change. Never before, much less now, have so many of America’s greatest writers paid such close attention to the working class.

In 2008, the United States suffered its worst economic crisis since 1929. The new crisis has caused deep economic recession, unemployment, financial instability, and political gridlock: all these effects seem to echo back to the Great Depression, which devastated the country, albeit in a less violent way.

Narrative Techniques

Journalist George Packer of The New Yorker has observed that recent times of crisis have not managed to have such an important impact on the literary current, unlike at the beginning of the last century. In his book, The Unwinding, the journalist uses the techniques of the 1930s to describe our times, and it is perhaps the only one of the few works that comes even close to the masterpieces of the Great Depression.

So what was so special about the writers of those times? What knowledge about poverty and politics, literature and society can the writers of the 1930s share with us? In this series, we will look at the following Depression-era classics-John Dos Passos, Big Money, and John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath-and try to figure out what these works have in common with today’s realities.

It is much easier to spot a financial bubble after it bursts than while it is inflating. Ever since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, it has been commonplace for many experts to emphasize the warning signs that had spread over the previous decade: the steady rise in home prices, reckless mortgages, the manipulation of rates for quick profits – all becoming easy prey for post-crisis moralists.

Then came the collapse of Wall Street in 1929. It was no secret that in the 1920s the stock market achieved unprecedented influence on life in America as a whole. The ever-increasing standard of living made millions of Americans into real investors, which led to the “tumultuous 20s. The glittering parties of Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby were made possible by easy money, which seemed to be available anywhere. But once the crisis hit, the ’20s didn’t feel like an era of prosperity, but rather a prolonged drinking spree that necessarily ended with a heavy hangover. So there is hardly a more successful work than John Dos Passos’s Big Money, which clearly delineates the silhouette of pre-crisis America. This book was published in 1936, when the Depression was in its seventh year.

“Big Money” is the third work included in John Dos Passos’s “USA” trilogy, which is essentially the epitome of American society in the early 20th century. Although characters from previous volumes appear in “Big Money,” the work also reads well as a stand-alone book. The title vividly conveys the cold irony of the entire book. Big Money is what everyone was looking for in the 1920s and many seemed to manage to find, thereby elevating wealth to a kind of golden fleece on whose altar all the values of American society have been sacrificed.

A crude juxtaposition

Obviously, Dos Passos wanted to be something more to his readers than a mere fiction maker. “Big Money” is on a certain plane, alternating between straightforward fictional narrative and several kinds of documentary prose, and the writing techniques were borrowed from the cinematic art of the time. The section of the book entitled “News of the Day” resembles typical newspaper headlines, song excerpts, and press announcements. Using crude juxtapositions, Dos Passos resorts to introducing this kind of chronicle to describe a world losing control: murder and gossip, the anxieties and unrest of workers pile on the reader in an endless stream.

In a section entitled “Camera Obscura,” Dos Passos uses prose devoid of punctuation, thereby attempting to recreate the characteristic scenes of the period. One such scene is the political execution of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, with this accompanying text: “They have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch all right we are two nations America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws…”

Perhaps one of Dos Passos’ most striking textual embellishments is his peculiar way of presenting celebrity biographies. In particular, he resorts to two polar categories. Creators and intellectuals such as the dancer Isadora Duncan and the sociologist Thorsten Veblen are depicted as exiles in America, having lost the respect of their countrymen, having to struggle with the poverty and alienation of others.

In contrast, they are portrayed as the great tycoons Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst. While Dos Passos admires their energy and accomplishments, he does not shy away from portraying them as imperfect men whose personal fears and neuroses have a detrimental effect on society. Ford is also a tragic figure. He starts out as a decent inventor and craftsman, but fate has prepared for him the role of a paranoid billionaire surrounded by guards and private detectives hired to protect him from the anger of his own employees.

Through these examples, Dos Passos tries to convey the idea that big money is a terrible curse: once you make big money, you can never enjoy it.

American Addiction

The three fictional characters who form the basis of the work “Big Money” certainly have their real-life protégés. The first of them, Charlie Anderson, a pilot who has been to the fronts of World War I, we first meet on a ship arriving home from France. Charlie is also an inventor, hatching the idea of an improved engine for airplanes. He teams up with a few acquaintances to pursue it, and, after a brief period of poverty, one fine morning he wakes up as a real rich man. This is a vivid example of how the principle of capitalism should function.

Dos Passos makes it clear that good intentions and hard work alone are not enough to succeed in modern America. You have to have your own capital, and money is Wall Street, which was the beginning of Charlie’s downfall. After a series of shenanigans, he realizes that he has sold out his partners in preference to larger businesses, from which he too was eventually driven out. Abandoning his only passion, true handiwork, he concludes that his entire existence is a vacuum that can only be filled with lust and booze.

Stock trading becomes a real addiction, not just for Charlie, but for the whole country.

One of the many women Charlie met along the way was Margo Dowling, a young beautiful actress whose life credo was simply to find rich men. If Charlie’s story tells of the power of money in the representation of ’20s America, Margot’s story embodies another idolatry: the need to be famous. Despite significant obstacles — her father was a drunkard and her stepfather tried to rape her — she eventually becomes a Hollywood star. But inside, she remains self-serving and soulless. Not only is she not one of the best people, she is also a mediocre actress. As Dos Passos argues, the lust for fame goes along with merit and achievement. It is a typical lottery in which the winners are no better than the losers, and often the opposite.

The only character in the work that commands the reader’s respect is Mary French. She was the daughter of a Colorado doctor who devoted herself to the care of the poor. Dos Passos paints her life in grim colors: she falls in love and loses a man, works hard and is tempted by alcohol. Deeply convinced of the tenets of the class struggle, she clings to her raison d’être unlike the other characters in the book. Her suffering, unlike Charlie and Margot, is the result of self-sacrifice, not selfishness.

Dos Passos also observes a repetition of the situation of the twenties in the next decade. Even in those frivolous years there were violent worker resistance, and Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. America’s entire capitalist system in Big Money is rooted in the unstable soil of greed, speculation, celebrity worship, and political oppression. And then comes the moment when the system begins to work. In the wake of the collapse, the writers of the Great Depression emerge, destined to lead readers through the ruins and demand radical change.

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Such sentiments flooded many cultural aspects of life in the 1920s, including literature. Many writers realized that the old norms were no longer appropriate, and that the old criteria for writing had outlived themselves completely. They criticized the country and the government, having lost the remnants of hope in the war among other values, and ended up feeling lost themselves. Finding meaning in anything became an unsolvable problem for them.

The term lost generation

The term “lost generation” is by Gertrude Stein, an American modernist who lived in Paris. It is believed that a certain auto mechanic was extremely unhappy with his young assistant who was repairing Gertrude Stein’s car. In a moment of censure, he said the following: “You are all a lost generation,” thus explaining his assistant’s inability to do his job properly.

Ernest Hemingway, a close friend of Gertrude Stein, adopted this expression and included it in the epigraph of his novel Fiesta. In fact, the term lost generation refers to those young people who matured during World War I and were subsequently disillusioned with a postwar world that was so alien.

In terms of literature, the lost generation is a group of American writers, most of whom emigrated to Europe and worked there between the end of World War I and the Great Depression. As a result, America nurtured a generation of cynical people who could hardly imagine their future in this country. But what ultimately motivated them to move across the ocean? The answer is quite simple: many of these writers realized that their home and lives were unlikely to be restored, and that the United States they had known before had disappeared without a trace.

The bohemian way of life among intellectuals was much closer and more pleasant than a miserable existence in a society devoid of faith, and the existence of morality was highly questionable. Emigrant writers living in Europe thus wrote about the trials and tribulations of this most lost generation, being, most interestingly, an integral part of that generation.

Prominent figures of the lost generation

Among the most famous members of the lost generation are Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein and Thomas Eliot. These names are not limited to the whole list, we can also mention Sherwood Anderson and others who belong to the lost generation, but to a lesser extent than their comrades. To get a closer look at this phenomenon, let’s take a closer look at some of these writers.

Gertrude Stein was born and raised in the United States but moved to Paris in 1903. She was a great connoisseur and lover of painting and literature, considered by many (and herself personally) to be a true expert on the art. She began holding meetings at her home in Paris, mentoring young writers and critiquing their work. Contrary to her well-established authority among modernist figures, she was not one of the most influential writers of her time. At the same time, many writers considered it a great privilege to be part of her club.

Ernest Hemingway served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front during World War I, where he was wounded. He married and moved to Paris, where he soon became part of the expatriate community. For the most part, however, he is known for his unusual way of writing, being the first to depart from the standard norms of storytelling. Stingy with eloquence but adept at using dialogue, Hemingway made a deliberate choice to abandon the colors of speech that had dominated literature before him. Of course, his mentor was Gertrude Stein.

Scott Fitzgerald was a junior lieutenant; but strange as it may sound, he never served in a foreign country. On the contrary, he married a wealthy Alabama girl he had met during his service. As a writer, Fitzgerald was struck by America’s post-war culture, eventually becoming the foundation of his work that so attracted a new younger generation. Having achieved fame, he is constantly on the road between Europe and America and becomes an important part of the literary community led by Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. In many ways, Fitzgerald repeated the fate of the people described in his works: his life was filled with money, partying, aimlessness, and alcohol, which ruined the great writer. Hemingway, in his memoirs The Feast that is Always with You, speaks with incredible warmth of Fitzgerald’s writings, although it is known that at a certain period their friendship took on a tinge of hostility.

The figure of Erich Maria Remarque somewhat stands out against the background of the above figures. His story is distinguished by the fact that, as a German, he suffered the consequences of World War I, personally experiencing all the gravity and meaninglessness of the terrible events of those times. Remarque’s wartime experience is incomparable to any of the writers already mentioned, and his novels will forever remain the best illustration of anti-fascist literature. Persecuted in his homeland for his political views, Remarque was forced to emigrate, but this did not force him to abandon his language in a foreign land, where he continued to create.

Themes of the Lost Generation

The literary style of the writers of the lost generation is actually very individual, although commonalities can be seen in both content and form of expression. The hopeful and loving stories of the Victorian era are gone without a trace. The tone and mood of the writing has changed dramatically.

Now the reader can feel the cynicism of life through the text and the feelings that fill an unstructured world devoid of faith and purpose. The past, on the other hand, is painted in bright and happy colors, creating an almost perfect world. While the present looks like a kind of gray environment, devoid of tradition and faith, and everyone is trying to find their individuality in this new world.

Many writers, like Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, have illuminated the superficial aspects of life along with the underlying dark feelings of the younger generation. They are characterized by an often spoiled style of behavior, a materialistic outlook on life, and a complete lack of restraint and self-control. In Fitzgerald’s works, one can see how the writer criticizes the nature of this way of life, how excess and irresponsibility lead to destruction (an example of the novel The Night is Tender).

As a result, a sense of dissatisfaction with the traditional narrative model took hold of the entire literary community. Hemingway, for example, denied the need for descriptive prose to convey emotions and concepts. In support of this, he chose to write in a more complex and dry manner, placing great emphasis on dialogue and silence as meaningful techniques. Other writers, such as John Dos Passos, experimented with the introduction of stream-of-consciousness style paragraphs. Such writing techniques were used for the first time, largely as a reflection of the impact of World War I on the younger generation.

The themes of the First World War often find application in the works of writers of the lost generation who have been directly on the battlefields. Sometimes the work literally reflects the character of the war participant (e.g., Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers or Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms), or it conveys an abstract picture of what America and its citizens have become after the war (Thomas Eliot’s Barren Land or Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio). The action is often fraught with despair and inner doubts, with occasional sparks of hope from the main characters.

To summarize, the term lost generation refers to those young writers who matured during World War I, which thereby, directly or indirectly, influenced the formation of their creative ideals. Realizing that the United States could no longer be a reliable home as before, many of them moved to Europe, forming a literary community of expatriate writers led, albeit somewhat controversially, by Gertrude Stein. As something of a pinch from the past, their work is filled with heavy losses, and their main idea has become a critique of the materialism and immorality that flooded postwar America.

The innovation of the community formed was a break with traditional literary forms: many writers experimented with the structure of sentences, dialogues, and narrative in general. The fact that the writers of the lost generation were themselves part of the changes they were experiencing and the search for the meaning of life in their new world sets them apart qualitatively from many other literary movements. Having lost the meaning of life after the war and in a constant search for it, these writers gave the world unique masterpieces of the art of words, and we, in turn, can turn to their legacy and not repeat the mistakes of the past, because history is cyclical, and in such a volatile and changeable world we need to try to avoid becoming another lost generation.

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