How WW1 Changed British Literature Essay -- essays research papers

World War One began on July 28, 1914 and ended with the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918. The war cost a total of one hundred eighty-six billion dollars. The total casualties of the war were thirty-seven million, with another eleven million civilian casualties. The British Empire alone lost over three million people in the war. (English) World War One effected the whole world- the heartache and bloodshed changed politics, economics, and public opinion. This war changed people's lives, but it also changes their way of thinking and their way of writing. After World War One British literature was changed from simple stories to a more realistic and meaningful approach to life. Nineteenth century England is what most historians call the Victorian age, which is how British literature got started. It was during the Victorian age that people began to learn how to read and write. â€Å"In 1837 about half of the adult male population could read and write; by the end of the century, literacy was almost universal.† (Abrams) The novel became the most popular form of literature during this time period in England. â€Å"Victorian novels seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, with the variety of classes and social settings that constitute a community.† (Abrams) The authors of these novels tried to make the reader feel like the characters and the events that take place in the novel seem so realistic that they could see it happening in real life. The novels were written about concerns, or issues, that the everyday person went through. The novels usually dealt with experiences with the relationship in the middle-class or inter-class relationships. Life during the Victorian age is explained in The Norton Anthology as, â€Å"a society where the material conditions of life indicate social position, where money defines opportunity, where social class enforces a powerful sense of stratification, yet where chances for class mobility exist.† (Abrams) Victorian novels usually were focused on a persons struggle to find his or herself in the cruel world of social classes. These types of novels were often written during the Victorian age, in fact Charles Dickens wrote a novel called Great Expectations in 1861, which dealt with a boy named Pip and how he finds his place in the world.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There were many good writers during that time period. Charles Dickens, Thomas H... ...uesome poetry came from Owen and Sassoon, who were actually, interestingly enough, bedmates at a hospital during the war. The reason their poetry was so unbelievably moving was the fact that both of them were in the war and they saw the mayhem firsthand. (Wilfred) â€Å"An officer in World War One, he [Sassoon] expressed his conviction of the brutality and waste of war in grim, forceful, realistic verse.† (Siegfred) These two poets alone changed British literature, but they couldn’t have done that without World War One and the pain and suffering, which all people felt. A world war and a depression can put any one down, but what the writer of the twentieth century did was turn that anger, that hate around into realistic, hard-hitting writing. No one likes to remember World War One and the killing that went on, however people always want to talk about the writings of Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and H. G. Wells. These writers were so successful at what they did because they wrote down on paper what everyone was feeling in the world, whether it was anger or sorrow. Even though World War One was a gruesome event it caused people to question their opinions and made for great literature.