THE VICTORIAN AGE

The Victorian Age (1837-1901) took its name from Queen Victoria, who came to the
throne during the period of industrialization and when manufacturing industry and
international trade took over from the old agricultural economy. Britain had become
the most powerful nation in the world thanks to its growing number of colonies,
however, with the industrial revolution, urban poor were perceived as a potential
danger and Britain did a series of reforms and progressive policies to incorporate
working classes into society. While the middle class made large profits from the
industry, poor people lived in terrible conditions and the unsanitary caused by
ignoring many problems such as waterproofing, insulation and plumbing, led to the
spread of deadly diseases. With the First Reform Bill, which excluded the working
classes and gave only limited representation to the mercantilist middle classes, the
Chartist Movement published a petition called People Charter with the purpose to
gain political rights for the working classes, but unfortunately was rejected. Also the
Anti-Corn League fought against the Corn Law which maintained the price of corn in
Britain at a high level by taxing imported corn, leading to the deaths of a million
people. The most unjust law passed during the Victorian Age was the Poor Law with
the idea that poverty was a moral problem and children were hired to work in
factories or mines.
The late Victorian Period was instead positive. Gladstone and Disraeli gradually
extended the vote to members of the working classes, supported the Elementary
Education Act, which gave all children the right to a basic education and the Trade
Union Act which made unions legal. Furthermore, to have women rights, the
Women’s Social and Political Union was born known as the “Suffragettes”. We can
find the spirit of women's rights inside the novels of Emily Bronte, where she
explored extremes of passion and violence that cannot be integrated into the
dominant order of society.
Despite the problems of classes, Britain continued the expansion of his empire:
Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India and Britain annexed South Africa,
Egypt, Burma, Malaysia and Afghanistan. However control of these territories led to
Crimean War and Boer War.

CHARLES DICKENS
In literature, the Victorian Age is considered the golden age of the novel, with
Charles Dickens as the most representative figure. Most of his novels are set in
London and he captures the vitality of life in the city, as well as its squallor. The two
most famous publications are Oliver Twist and Hard Times.

OLIVER TWIST
Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan: his childhood in a workhouse, his
subsequent apprenticeship with an undertaker, his escape to London, his
acquaintance with a gang of thieves and finally his adoption by Mr Brownlow.
In this novel Dickens criticized the Poor Law describing the dreadful conditions in the
workhouse and the greed, laziness, and arrogance of charitable workers.
With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was in
vogue as a philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most
smoothly if individuals looked out for their own interests.
All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities, on
the other hand countries have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some
of the vices that develop in the city. Dickens’s portrait of rural life in Oliver Twist is
more approving yet far less realistic than his portrait of urban life. While other
authors of this period would use the method to further their plot in their simple
picturesque stories, Dickens took the approach that good will triumph over evil,
sometimes even in very unexpected ways and he used the method of incredible
circumstances to show his outlook.

HARD TIMES
The novel is set in the town of Coketown(‘coke’, which is a type of coal + ‘town’),
which Dickens modelled on the industrial town of Preston in the north of England.
The protagonist is Thomas Gradgrind, a citizen of Coketown who believes only in
facts and figures. Consequently, he brings up his two older children,Louisa and Tom,
in a severe way, crushing any imaginative impulses they might have, just as he
suppresses the imaginations of the children in his school. In accordance with her
father’s wishes, Louisa marries JosiahBounderby, a factory owner thirty years older
than her, though her motives are not entirely cynical, since her brother Tom, the only
person she really cares about, is employed by Bounderby’s firm. Unhappy in her
marriage, Louisa is distracted by a politician who comes to Coketown, James
Harthouse. When Harthouse tries to seduce Louisa, she goes to her father for
protection and Gradgrind finally understands that his rational, perfectly ordered world
of facts and figures is very limited. Louisa eventually separates from Bounderby.
Tom, meanwhile, unwisely robs his employer and then tries to divert suspicion onto
an innocent craftsman, StephenBlackpool. But he is soon discovered and has to
leave the country.
Written in 1854, Hard Times is a powerful critique of the effects of industrial society, a
society characterised by its drive for material gain and efficiency at the expense of
cultivating more human qualities. Dickens’s sense of humour is one of the most
radically modern aspects of his writing, an aspect which has influenced many
modern writers. Although reality is frequently the starting point for the settings of
Dickens’s novels, his writing transforms the environment into a vivid symbol of the
type of life it represents. Coketown, for example, describes the industrial towns in
northern England, but at the same time it is a symbolic portrait of the poverty, both
economic and spiritual, that oppresses the working classes. Many scenes of Hard
Times are conceived in a vivid, theatrical way.Dickens’s descriptions of landscapes
and environments are not simply illustrative, but provide a social and psychological
map of the situation they depict. In such descriptions Dickens traces the connections
between the different social classes which lie beneath their apparent separation.

STEVENSON
Another famous writer during this period was Robert Louis Stevenson who describes
in his works the hypocrisy of Victorian society through the theme of the double
emerging with the publication of the man’s primordial animal side by Darwin. Robert
Louis Stevenson explored the late Victorian crisis in moral values in his iconic work
The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a narrative
about the complexities of science and the duplicity of human nature. Dr Jekyll is a
kind, well-respected and intelligent scientist who meddles with the darker side of
science, as he wants to bring out his “second” nature.
He does this, through transforming himself into Mr Hyde: his evil alter ego who
doesn't repent or accept responsibility for his evil crimes and ways. Jekyll tries to
control Hyde, and for a while, Jekyll has the power. However, towards the end of the
novel, Hyde takes over and this results in their deaths.
PRE-RAPHAELITE
About poetry and art in the Victorian Age, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were a
group who reacted against modern life by returning to the old values of the 13th and
14th centuries. The main protagonist of this group is Dante Gabriel Rossetti: a
famous painter noted for using religious symbols and an atmosphere of beauty and
sensuality in his paintings. His main theme is female beauty that we can see in Lady
Lilith, who was Adam’s first wife before the creation of Eve. She represents the
independent woman who fights for women’s rights and the famme fatale. Lilith
seems strangely passive and distant, creating a sense of mystery.
the main characteristics of the group’s work include fidelity to nature, an excessive
sensuality, a re-evaluation of medieval religion and legend, as well as an enthusiasm
for mysticism. . The Pre-Raphaelites’ revolutionary aims, therefore, often became
inextricably mingled with nostalgia for an older world. One of the most remarkable
works of Aestheticism was Oscar Wilde’s.Poetry in AmericaThe need to find a new
language specific to the American character and experience was most strongly felt in
its poetry, which as a result, was more radical and innovative than anything produced
in England.The other great poetic voice of the age was Emily Dickinson.

OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde was born and grew up in Dublin, the son of an Anglo-Irish family. His
father was a famous doctor and his mother was a translator and poet. He was a
popular and eccentric dandy, and was famous for his witticisms (clever and
humorous observations) and aphorisms (short phrases which express a general
truth).
In 1881, Wilde published his first volume of poems. These were followed by the
essay The Soul of Man under Socialism and his famous novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray. The climax of Wilde’s success, however, were his witty comedies, which were
staged such as LadyWindermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal
Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. Also Wilde wrote the poem The
Ballad of Reading Gaol and his prose confession De Profundis(1905) which
describes the extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to his imprisonment for
indecency.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a manifesto of the Aesthetic movement,
and it expresses Wilde’s ideas on art in general. For him the artist is a creator of
beautiful things, the art's aim is to reveal art and conceal the artist.•The critic can
translate his impression of beautiful things into another matter or a new
material,There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, Books are well
written or badly written. That is all.•No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical
sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.•No artist is ever
morbid. The artist can express everything.•Vice and virtue are to the artist materials
for art.•It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.•Diversity of opinion
about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital

SUMMARY
Basil Hallward is an artist, fascinated by the youth and beauty of Dorian Gray, whose
portrait he decides to paint. When it is finished, Dorian sees his own beauty, and he
understands that the beauty of the portrait will last while he himself will grow old and
horrible. Alarmed by Dorian’s reaction to his painting, Hallward tries to destroy it, but
Dorian stops him and takes the picture home with him. Dorian begins to frequent the
theatre, where he meets a brilliant actress called Sybil Vane, who falls in love with
him. But Dorian cruelly rejects her when she gives upacting to be with him, saying
that it was only on stage that she fascinated him. Dorian then notices that an
expression of cruelty has appeared on the face of the portrait, and he resolves to
return to Sybil, but it is too late. Sybil has killed herself. Dorian embarks on a life of
vice and sensual gratification, lettinghis portrait assume the consequences of his
corrupt and corrupting soul. Years later, Dorian, by now totally corrupt and evil, but
still as youthful as ever, kills Hallard and other people. He decides to destroy the
portrait and begin a new life. But in doing so, he kills himself. The portrait is
magically restored to its original image of Dorian’s youthful perfection, while the real
Dorian’s features in death become those of a hideous, disgusting old man.

When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published it was decried as immoral. In
revising the text the following year, Wilde included a preface, which serves as a
useful explanation of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art is to have no purpose.
The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social education and
moral enlightenment. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major
proponent, sought to free art from this responsibility. The aestheticists were
motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality.

After the death of Victoria in 1901, Edward VII became king and when he died in
1910, was succeeded by George V. The Liberal government continued on social
reform which had begun during the Victorian Age. It introduced the Old Age
Pensions Act and the National Insurance Act. The Labour party, representing the
working class interests, became strongly allied with trade union movements.
Another important political issue was the ‘Irish Question’: most of the Irish
population was Catholic and they supported an independent Parliament in Dublin,
but the Protestant population of Ulster. On Easter Monday in 1916, a group of
Republicans staged a rebellion in Dublin and it was suppressed by the British Army.
Many people were killed and injured and the Easter Rising became a symbol for Irish
resistance to British rule.
The British Empire economy was being surpassed by the United States and
Germany. However, Germany's ambitions, combined with the unstable position of
the central European Austro-Hungarian Empire, had begun to generate tension.
World War I started with the assassination of the Austrian Ferdinand in Sarajevo in
1914 by Serbian nationalists. The war was between the German Empire and the
Austro-Hungarian Empire on one side, and Britain and France on the other.
However, other countries were involved because of alliances. The USA entered the
conflict in 1917, and was decisive in finally exhausting Germany.
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles prevented Germany from building up its military
machine again.
Imperial Russia was also involved against the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance. In
1917 after The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,
forced Tsar Nicholas II’s regime to abdicate, and established a communist
government. In the following decades, Stalin established a reign of terror.

MODERNISM NOVELS
In terms of the novel’s development, World War I marks a break between the old
world and the new. The experience of the war, in which millions had been killed,
broke the people's faith about the society and its institutions. The Modernists,
horrified by the effects of war, were interested in recovering the experience of the
individuals and their innerworld. The Modernist novel overturned most of the
conventions which had typified Victorian fiction. The values of the Victorian age
collapsed and were replaced by a sense of emptiness. Inside all the Modernist
novels the omniscient narrator as moral and spiritual guide disappeared and was
replaced by the direct or indirect presentation of characters’ thoughts, feelings and
memories. The novels no longer followed a linear plot or a chronological sequence of
events. The idea of progress which lay behind the novel’s linear plot structure gave
way to the idea of duration, of freezing and examining what Virginia Woolf called
‘moments of being’. The theories of Freud, Bergson and W. James led to the
development of new techniques of writing, such as stream-of-consciousness fiction.
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the greatest authors of
stream-of-consciousness fiction. Stream-of-consciousness fiction makes use of
many techniques, but the most significant are:
Direct interior monologue, which refers to the stream of consciousness without the
guiding presence of an author or narrator. The most famous example is Molly
Bloom’s monologue in Joyce’s Ulysses, where it seems we enter directly into Molly’s
thoughts without any external point of view.
Indirect interior monologue, which refers to the indirect presentation of a character’s
thoughts filtered through the voice of an anonymous narrator. This type of
monologue is often easier to read as it often includes more descriptive passages or
explanations. It is sometimes used in combination with direct interior monologue. An
example of indirect interior monologue can be found in Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs
Dalloway or To the Lighthouse

JAMES JOYCE AND WOOLF

James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are among the greatest practitioners of
stream-of-consciousness fiction, although they differ in their approaches to the
question of how to represent stream of consciousness. James Joyceis concerned
with the possibilities and limitations of language both graphic and sonic, whereas
Virginia Woolf is more interested in the identity and the relationships between people
and things. This is demonstrated by the fact that Joyce’s characters in Ulysses all
have different styles of consciousness (this difference is the result of factors such as
class, sex and educational background), while Woolf’s writing often implies a unique
stream of consciousness which is the impersonal force of life passing through and
between her characters.

James Joyce
James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. After graduating he went to Paris and he
started writing poems and prose. After he married he moved to Trieste he met the
italian novelist Italo Svevo. The most important literature productions are: the
collection of poetry Chamber Music, the short stories Dubliners, the first novel A
portrait of the artist as a young man, the masterpiece Ulysses and his novel
Finnegans Wake.

INTERIOR MONOLOG AND EPIPHANY

The writings of Joyce make frequent use of interior monologue. Through this
technique, the writer almost disappears and the readers find themselves directly
inside a character’s mind. Another characteristic of Joyce’s writings is the peaks of
intensity in the narration that the writer calls ‘epiphanies’. An epiphany is a sudden
revelation, a moment in which a spiritual awakening is experienced, when thoughts
and feelings come together to produce a new awareness. This instant of intensity
can be compared to Woolf’s idea of ‘vision’. ‘Dubliners’Joyce’s first short stories were
published in 1914 in a collection called Dubliners. Collectively, they form a realistic
and evocative portrait of the lives of ordinary people in Dublin and the city itself is a
real protagonist of the novel. The stories are divided in four groups that correspond
to four ‘phases’ of life:
1 childhood (The Sisters, An Encounter andAraby)
2 adolescence (Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants and The Boarding House)
3 maturity (A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay and A Painful Case)
4 public life (Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace and The Dead)

The principal theme in all the stories is the feeling of paralysis that many of the
characters experience as a result of being tied to narrow cultural, social and political
traditions. This is also reflected in their relationships, which are conditioned by
repressive religious and moral codes. Joyce himself once defined Dublin as ‘the
centre of paralysis’.

THE DEAD
The story centres on Gabriel Conroy, and explores the relationships he has with his
family and friends. Gabriel and his wife, Gretta, went to an annual Christmas party
hosted by his aunts.
During the way back to the hotel he remembered the best moments of his married
life, but after Gretta had an epiphany about her past: she realized that her only true
love was Michel Furey, a man who had died for her. After this revelation Gabriel
realized the insignificance of his own life.

THEMES THE DEAD

The Dead is the last story in Dubliners and can be considered the culmination of the
feeling of stagnation which characterises the spiritual life of the city. It combines all
the categories of the other stories (childhood, adolescence, mature life, public life,
married life) and unifies them in their spiritual paralysis. The Dead is also highly
symbolic. Gabriel, for example, is also the name of the archangel who sounds the
trumpet at the Last Judgement. Gabriel’s final thoughts are one of Joyce’s first uses
of indirect interior monologue. During the story, through our access to his thoughts,
we are constantly made to feel Gabriel’s apartness from the other dinner. The central
‘event’ of the story is Gretta’s epiphany, which leads to Gabriel’s own epiphany at the
end. Gretta stops for a moment on the stairs when she hears a song from her past,
but in stopping, it is as though time itself has stopped. This epiphany is reflected
through Gabriel’s own gaze as he watches her from the bottom of the stairs and he
realized that he married a woman he never really knew. The epiphany of Gretta
coincides with Gabriel’s visual epiphany. But Joyce goes even further. In the final
scene, after Gretta tells the story of Michael Furey, Gabriel looks out the window at
the falling snow and reflects on the ultimate insignificance of even the most intense
moments of existence, which fade like all the rest into oblivion.
 Jealousy and Male Pride

Throughout “The Dead,” the protagonist Gabriel is strongly influenced by his

interactions with women, which often make him jealousy and injure his pride. His
pride is also nurtured by his role as a man and his desire to “master” his wife.

Gabriel seems to take a lot of pride in his masculinity, but when he seeks validation
from female characters, he is often let down. What he does not realize is that these
interactions often leave the female characters just as wounded.

Nostalgia and the Past vs. the Present

As with many of the other characters in Dubliners, both Gabriel and Gretta often find

themselves paralyzed and unable to take control over their lives. In this case, much of

their resulting inaction is due to distraction from the present by their overpowering

nostalgic feelings about the past.

Death

“The Dead” deals with both literal and metaphorical death. Additionally, these perceptions

of those who have died are often tainted by nostalgia, making it hard for the characters to

forget about their glorified memories of the past and begin living in the present. Much of

“The Dead” quite fittingly revolves around dead people and the legacies they leave

behind. For both Gabriel and Gretta, the dead have a power greater than those living.

Ireland, Anti-Nationalism, and the Foreign

Gabriel is not happy to be in Dublin, and is taken with the rest of the UK and continental

Europe in every way – from the fashion trends to the literature to the vacation

destinations. It seems as though Gabriel would seek an escape, like many of the other

characters in Dubliners, but he also seems to be in denial about his own dissatisfaction

with his life.

Women and Society

While this story is written from a male perspective, women play a large role in

highlighting the injustices of Dublin society as well as Gabriel’s reliance on the gender
roles imposed by society. The most obvious way that Joyce critiques the role of women

in 19th-century Dublin is in his critique of the Catholic Church.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Virginia Woolf was born in London in an intellectual family environment which had a
great influence on her approach to writing. The death of her mother, and of her
step-sister Stella, caused a nervous breakdown which caused a mental instability,
manifested in migraine attacks and phantom voices in her head.After the death of
her father, she moved to London where, she founded a circle of intellectuals the
Bloomsbury Group. Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex.
Virginia Woolf published her first novel, The Voyage Out.In 1917, she and her
husband founded The Hogarth Press, which published most of Virginia Woolf’s
books, as well as other innovative writers, such as Eliot and Forster. The publication
of Night and Day was followed by Mrs Dalloway , To the Lighthouse , Orlando, The
Waves and Between the Acts. Woolf was also an essayist and critic. Her most critical
work is collected in The Common Reader and A Room of One’s Own

WOOLF STYLE
Virginia Woolf is interested in the impressions of the characters who experience their
events, in their subjectivity. Especially in female subjectivity, in fact she's a heroine
for feminists. Reading Woolf’s novels, we enter her characters’ inner world. Time is
dilated and a single moment can last for a very long time through indirect interior
monologue, which Woolf uses to represent the point of view of characters
themselves, showing their thoughts and feelings. In Virginia Woolf’s indirect
monologues there is still the occasional presence of a narrator who, however
invisible, gives some order to the character’s thoughts by arranging them in logical
and grammatical sequence.
In Woolf’s literature we can also find the ‘moments of being’, namely the moments of
intensity, perception or ‘vision’ which illuminate our lives.
MRS DALLOWAY
The novel’s narration is third-person omniscient. The narrative begins and ends with
Clarissa as it details a day in her life. Clarissa is a seemingly disillusioned socialite
whose mood fluctuates: at some moments she seems delighted, at others she
seems depressed. Her overall effect suggests suppressed symptoms of depression.
It opens on a June morning as Clarissa Dalloway, the 51-year-old wife of a politician,
leaves home to buy flowers and during the day, Clarissa is captured in her many
changing moods and memories. We also see her through the eyes and thoughts of
other characters: the man she once loved, Peter Walsh, who returns unexpectedly
after a period in India, her old friend Sally Seton, her daughter Elizabeth and Lady
Bruton. Her day is also contrasted with Septimus Smith, a disturbed, shell-shocked
war veteran. Septimus has been treated for his nervous disorders and commits
suicide by jumping out of the window of his room. News of his death intrudes upon
Clarissa’s party and Clarissa reflects on how necessary it is for her that Septimus
dies because as he embraces death, she at last can fully embrace life: ‘She felt
somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he
had done it; thrown it away while they went on living’. The novel ends at the party
with Clarissa going to Peter, who had been looking for her, in all her enigmatic
vitality.

WOOLF THEMES
The beginning of the book is a brilliant example of the way Virginia Woolf portrays
interior time in contrast with chronological time. Walking around London, Clarissa’s
physical impressions of the city are interwoven with her mental associations and
reveries, while the dilated quality of herinterior time is interrupted by the real time
chimes of Big Ben. Another interesting aspect of the novel is the way the characters
of Clarissa and Septimus become mutually dependent. Like Clarissa, Septimus also
moves around London, the brilliant chaos of his mind merging with the physical act
of walking. But unlike Clarissa, Septimus is unable to hold together all the threads of
experience and sensation that invade his mind, and make them into a meaningful
pattern. His choice to die is inseparable from her acceptance of life, and his death
becomes the halo that illuminates her life.

ELIOT
Eliot is one of the great american innovators of 20th-century poetry.
In 1927 Eliot became a British citizen and in 1948 won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Some of his famous literary works are : The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The
Waste Land. After his conversion to the Anglican Church he published The Hollow
Men , Four Quartets and his verse dramas "Murder in the Cathedral" and The
Family Reunion.
Also we can find children's poems in the book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,
which was later transformed into the musical Cats. Eliot’s criticism is very important
for his approach to writing poetry.

POETIC THEMES
Eliot poems represent the complexities of modern civilisation results from the
fragmentation of the western cultural tradition, due the processes of industrialisation,
mass production and consumerism.
He look at the alienated as and individual morally and spiritually empty. Eliot's
poetic mission, is
to make a world without fragmentations by creating a new symbolic system fusing
western traditions with other cultures. In his poetry, Eliot evoked emotions by using
indirect statment (what he calls ‘objective correlative’).

THE WASTE LAND

The Waste Land was dedicated to Eliot’s American writer friend Ezra Pound. When it
came out, it was recognized as a new type of poetry thanks to his expression of the
post-war sense of depression and collapse of values. The Waste Land is divided in
5 sections:
1) The Burial of the DeadII
2) A Game of Chess
3) The Fire Sermon
4) Death by Water
5) What the Thunder Said.
The common theme is the decay and fragmentation of western culture. Eliot’s major
sources are: Joyce’s in Ulysses, The Bible, Dante’s Divina Commedia,
Shakespeareand the Symbolists such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. He
focuses on the opposition between fertility and sterility, life and death.
Eliot compares the cultural fragmentation to a many broken images and he contrasts
this with mythical past: he alludes to the opposition between the sterility of the
modern world and the fertility of the past. ( Holy Grail) He believes that modern
culture has been made banal and no longer teaches us anything and demonstrates
this idea by ironically inserting these fragments into scenes of ordinary modern life.
For example, in The Burial of the Dead, Eliot takes an image from Dante’s Inferno
and Baudelaire’s Parisian scenes to describes his vision of a stream of anonymous
city workers crossing London Bridge on their way to the office. The crowd alarmed
Eliot because of the indifference of the workers' life: the church bells don't mean a
call to prayer, but a call to work. Very innovative the use of language using
juxtapositions between different registers of speech. As in Joyce’s Ulysses, there are
words from different languages: German, French, Latin, Sanskrit.

PAUL NASH
Paul Nash was a British surrealist painter and war artist in the First and Second
World Wars, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. Nash was
the most important landscape artist of the first half of the twentieth century. He
played an important role in Modernism English art.
One of his paintings in Dead Sea (1941). It depicts a moonlit landscape populated
by a graveyard of crashed aircraft of the German Luftwaffe.

The work was based on sketches and photographs of both German and British
crashed aircraft. Under moonlight, the sea of wreckage could be perceived to move
and twist, but in reality it was of course dead, and the only movement was the flight
of a white owl very typical in his painting which represents the escape of God from a
wasteland, a land of war and death.

Nash initially called the work Iron Sea, but he hoped that the work could be
reproduced on postcards to be sent to Germany as propaganda and decided on a
German title instead (Totes Meer)

We are making a new world

Both his drawing and painting that followed depict the war-torn Western Front, where
the trees have been burned or beaten away and the earth has become scarred and
undulated by shell holes. There are no people, but the tree stumps have an eerie
human presence. Indeed, the trees are either personified or they stand as
gravestones for the men no longer standing there themselves.

Despite a tone of pessimism , the sun continues to illuminate this land. This light
works on two levels; it shows a glimmer of hope that Nash cannot let go of, but also
introduces a tone of mockery with regards the purpose and intent of war.

This work is generally considered to be one of the most memorable images of the
First World War and has been compared to Picasso's Guernica.

The Menin Road (1919)

It shows a flooded trench, ground split apart by shells, stumps of trees, and other
broken debris including wire, metal, and concrete. In the background, smoke
suggests that the destruction is ongoing.

This is Ypres in Belgium, an area that was entirely destroyed during the Battle of the
Menin Road Ridge. The extent of the devastation is further emphasised by two
soldiers at the centre of the picture who attempt to follow the road that no longer
exists. The resulting impression is that there is no escape from this horror. Even the
beams of sunlight that pierce through the scene have some resemblance to the
barrels of guns. Man has utterly betrayed nature in this scene.

The mule track (1918)

Paul Nash's desolate landscapes are amongst the most iconic images of the
Western Front. In The Mule Track Nash presents the viewer with a terrifying scene.
Amidst the chaos of a heavy bombardment the small figures of a mule train are
trying to cross the battlefield. They are reduced to defenceless puppets at the mercy
of forces seemingly no longer man made. The animals rear and panic at nearby
explosions, as the water in the flooded trenches wells up like geysers and rubble is
thrown high into a sky obscured by large clouds of yellow and grey smoke.

Vorticism
The moon is a symbol used to say that the moon will always be there to see what
you are doing.

POP ART

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United
States during the mid- to late-1950s.[1][2] The movement presented a challenge to
traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as
advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects. One of its aims is to
use images of popular (as opposed to elitist) culture in art, emphasizing the banal or
kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony.[3] It is also
associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering
techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known
context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.