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How did World War I contribute to the rise of American literary modernism?

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John Smith: Map of Virginia — American literature Map of Virginia from John Smith's *The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles*, 1624.

World War I was a pivotal catalyst for the rise of American literary modernism, as the unprecedented scale of destruction and slaughter during the conflict fundamentally undermined faith in the foundations of Western society and culture. This profound sense of disillusionment and fragmentation became a defining characteristic of the postwar era.12

Many American writers who came of age during the war, later known as the Lost Generation, had their worldviews shaped by the horrors of the conflict. This perspective permeated their work, leading them to reject traditional narrative structures in favor of radical experimentation—such as stream of consciousness and nonlinear storytelling—to capture a reality they perceived as broken.34

Key impacts included:
* Disillusionment: Writers like Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos articulated the cynicism and loss felt by a generation that had witnessed the war's carnage.234
* New Modes of Expression: Modernists sought to unify the past with the present or reflect a changed reality through experimental forms, as seen in seminal works like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.14
* Cultural Shift: The war accelerated a move toward modernism that explored alienation, consumerism, and the questioning of the American Dream.4