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Dittmer, Jeff

English

MA

Thomas Wolfe stands as a lone figure in 20th century American literature. His novels, both broad in scope and massive in length, approach a vast array of topics concerning American life during his epoch. The language ofhis prose has been heralded as Whitmanesque in style while also being attacked as overindulgent and bathetic. Yet beyond these differing opinions, as well as Wolfe's gargantuan desire to describe all that he experienced, there is something more to his work that has often been neglected. In Thomas Wolfe we find a Modernist writer who has a deep influence of Romanticism streaked across his pages.
It is this tension, that of Modernist alienation and realism against Romantic idealism and beauty, that acts as a central conflict running throughout all ofhis works. For Wolfe such a conflict ignites what I call the "American Restive Sensibility," that is, a discontent and estrangement with societal constructs, a craving for experience and self identity, and ultimately a profound sense of restlessness. Mobility then becomes the reaction seen in his two main protagonists, Eugene Gant and George Webber, as well as a number of secondary characters.
In this essay I set out to examine how and why America as place provokes this restive sensibility. The effects ofnatural landscapes, rural towns and urban areas, as well as the regional differences separating them, are observed in respect to these restive characters throughout Wolfe's fiction. Their essential objective is to find their ideal America which, I believe, is a harmony between Nature and Society. Furthermore, I argue that this harmony does exist only through the act of mobility. The problem therein is that one cannot forever be in motion and the end result is that personal idealism is found only in the act ofpursuing it; and that eventually, once the pursuit ceases, it must give way to reality.