文档介绍：American literature after World War II
Background
World War II ended two decades of vigorous literary activity in the .. It caused a gap, a long pause in literary production. Young writers were in the army and everyone expected them to return and write a new kind of literature, as had happened after the First World War. But the war novels, when they appeared , were mostly disappointing, except “The Naked and The Dead” written by Norman Mailer.
1. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan caused great fear in America and Europe. It made the destruction of Western civilization a possibility and it led to serious questioning by intellectuals of science’s role in human progress. Added to this uneasiness was the Cold War, a mutual fear and hostility between capitalist munist nations, led by America and Russia.
2. In the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy began an official persecution munists, and all Popular Front left-wingers, which included almost all intellectuals who had been active in the 1930’s. Writers, playwrights, film-makers, movie stars, teachers, were called to Washington, investigated, questioned and branded as “Red” of “Pink”. Some went to prison; many lost their jobs or went into exile. In such an intellectual climate, the only safety was to be found in the universities and in non-political writing. Senator McCarthy met his downfall in 1952, but the climate of caution, dullness and fear continued for several years .
3. The average citizens enjoyed a time of prosperity during the 1950’s. The returned soldiers settled down to get married, have large families, forts, a car and a TV. People wanted to behave, look and think like their neighbors, and avoid trouble. It was, in general, a self-satisfied, dull decade, but under the surface, movements were forming which would explode in the 1960’s.
4. The Beat Generation
In the middle of the 1950’s, a group of writers in San Francisco put on a concerted and well-publicized rebellion against “official