“The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
— Albert Camus
What happens when God goes silent, meaning and values collapse, and man is left alone to confront the terrifying freedom of existence?
These were the questions 20th-century writers grappled with, which eventually led to novels riddled with existential angst and a scathing sense of the absurd.
20th-century literature is best understood as a collision between 19th-century ideals and the cold actualities of the new post-war reality. The great promises of scientific and material progress to remake the world into some utopian paradise evolved instead into two catastrophic world wars and the creation of the most destructive weapon ever to be conceived by the human race.
The same civilization that had produced extraordinary scientific and technological achievements had also developed the capacity for industrialized slaughter. The ruins of two world wars did not single-handedly create “existentialism” (which had its roots in Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche a century earlier), but they intensified a crisis already developing.
The prevailing feeling was that everything lost its meaning.
A new grim reality set in, and there was an eerie sense that society no longer adhered to a solid moral foundation. The principles that once sustained the world had been dismantled, and disillusionment, alienation, and crisis of meaning swept over the century and made their way into the arts.
You can see this especially in the literature of the time, where a new kind of protagonist emerged: a man who finds himself “thrown into existence,” surrounded by a world he cannot understand, searching for meaning in a universe that offers no definitive answers.
These characters found themselves scurrying around in a world where “God is dead,” and the “collapse of all values” had led to a complete desacralization of existence. This dread and disorientation gave rise to the “Underground Man.”
“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.” — Samuel Beckett
One of the biggest mistakes, though, is to equate existentialism and absurdism with philosophies of despair, nihilism, and resignation. Some of the most significant 20th-century writers associated with these traditions did not necessarily advocate abandoning meaning. Instead, they were simply asking whether we moderns possess the vitality and courage to live fully when no ultimate meaning is guaranteed.
As Samuel Beckett once wrote: “Let us do something, while we have the chance! ... Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!”
Sherwood Anderson, in his brilliant Winesburg, Ohio, echoed this sentiment when he wrote: “One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life, yet loves life so intensely that tears come into his eyes.”
These writers were caught between their old idealistic nature and the hard-bitten decadence of the modern era. Perhaps the great paradox was that the literature of meaninglessness and dread ultimately became a search for meaning. And it could be argued that this opened the possibility for rebellion, solidarity, and an uncompromising affirmation of life we saw manifest in the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
Below, I want to share some books and some profound passages from a few prominent 20th-century writers that captured the era's existential mood—a mood that seems to be repeating itself today. I hope you enjoy them.