Modern American Fiction

The Roaring Twenties came to an end with the resounding stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression that followed. Writers began to focus their writing more and more on social commentary in an age of duress.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck accomplished such social commentary in drastically different ways. Fitzgerald was master of writing about the beguiling, shiny aspects of the material world by which upper and middle class Americans had been deceived. Steinbeck wrote of the plight of the common folk of America.

Compare and contrast how “Babylon Revisited” and from The Grapes of Wrath explore the modern world with the context described above. Give examples from the works to prove each of your points. How do the stories differ in tone and style? How are they similar? How do these differences or similarities add to the authors’ messages?