What It Means "to Be" to the Modernist

Many modernist writers of the twentieth century focused their works on the concepts of identity and alienation. These artists focused their attention on the notions of self, and what it meant to be an individual. They pondered over ideas of the individual experience and what consequences our social, political, or historical environment really has on a soul, while trying to determine what the true self really consisted of. The concept of identity was very important to undertake, and these concepts are still contemplated today. Modernist authors force the reader to take a look within themselves and question who they really are, and why. Two authors that undertook these questions with great skill, would be William Faulkner and Richard Wright. These two authors are excellent examples of the modernist movement, because they experimented with identity in different ways. Richard Wright explored the relationship between the self and the historical, social, and political environment, and Faulkner, examined questions of alienation and identity of the self within the individual. Both authors contributed their ideas amazingly, and were viewed as crucial writers of the modernist movement.

William Faulkner, as well as other modernist writers, focused on the main question of how an individual can form any basis for meaningful values and experience when they feel separated from their truest self, cut off from any sense of belonging in the world in a secure way.

The truest self is assumed to be an individuals morals, beliefs, and ideas about what kind of person they really are. If an individual must deny their inner self, how can they gain from any experience they have? This question is very interesting because almost any individual if asked, can relate to a time when they denied their own beliefs, and alienated themselves from themselves in order to fit in with their society. In other words they conformed. None of them would tell you it was a good experience. By denying what the true self believes for an outside force, be it the influences of social, political, or historical nature, the individual causes inner conflict and the loss of true self. Only by controlling the interaction with the pressures of these outside conflicts can one be true to what they believe. We cannot deny that the situations that we are born into do have some effect on our true self, but it is how we deal with them that determine our inner peace.