Yeah, my Modern American Fiction professor wants us to define and conceptualize Modernism in FIVE pages. When this guy says 5 pages, by the way, he means if you write more than five, he will LITERALLY TEAR THE EXCESS PAGES OFF and grade you only on what's left.

He himself admits the impossibility of defining Modernism, I mean, even if it were possible, it would take years of research and at least an entire book, if not several, yet he gives us under 2000 words in which to do it. I've had to keep my thesis to a gross over-simplification to keep it from reaching a page and eating into precious space:

Modern American Fiction, at its most definitive, utilizes complex themes of stasis, isolation, and alienation to address social issues of race, religion, morality, and self-identity or free thought. Inextricably tied to those issues, these themes explore Modern American societal concerns through the literary arts. William Faulkner’s A Light in August and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, in a reflection of the Modernist modality, confront issues of alienation, or “othering,” in terms both of race and religion, while themes of isolation address problems of self-awareness, memory, and individuality; stasis accompanies and defines itself through literally motive concepts, obsession with the past, and ideas of excess. Through these smaller motifs, Modern American Fiction attempts to explain progress, individuality, and the outcast as they affect the contemporary American society.