Unit 6: Contemporary Literature

Unit 6: Contemporary Literature began about World War II and hard it affected the country. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombers attacked the American naval base as Pearl Harbor. That moment was life changing moment, such as the Holocaust, Vietnam War, and September 11, 2001, the attack of the Twin Towers. All these horrific events were documented by writers who experienced them. Elie Wiesel a Holocaust survivor writes a memoir of his tragic experience at 15 years old boy to a Nazi concentration camp.  Other writers like Elie Wiesel used modernist style which is giving detailed, realistic, and somewhat detached accounts of the war. Writers such as John Hersey’s and John Steinbeck writes about their responses to war in their books. Literature began to be modernized, writers like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams served as models of the liberated playwright experimenting with stagecraft and drama. At this time of the period, civil rights movement was still continuing. Dr. Martin Luther King lead this movement, in 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed outlawing segregation in public places and legal equality to black citizens. Protest literature helped moved this act.