Self-consciousness and Fragmentation as Major Themes in Modernism

The search for a new manner to encounter a world that denied man’s dissatisfaction, became the new task of modern man.  This search created a sense of lack against man’s hopes of existence of all its values.  Of course, this of anxiety and uncertainty resonates in art and artists, such as poets, playwrights and so on. Consequently, the world became full of changes that sought to explore the proper means for presenting their effects and set man’s position in his new world.  However, these changes in life and thinking needed to be represented by new forms of expression. In fact, the 20th century could be called the age of isms. Therefore, the chaos that was suffered from by the world was reflected by the abundance of “isms” such as Surrealism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Absurdism and Dadaism. All of such movements\schools had one common characteristic of their being anti-realists, or anti-rationalists.  Hence, it can be said that all these movements rejected the old-fashioned conventions. This paper focuses on the themes of modernism that are used by the writers, playwrights, thinkers, as well as theorists. Such figures have employed the shared themes of modernism to reflect their ideas, thoughts and intensions through their writings regardless the respective genre that they have written for. Such themes are self-consciousness, social fragmentation.