The Modern period covers a large amount of time, spanning from the late eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds. From the beginning of the modern era till the end, there have been many changes in society. When one looks at the roaring twenties, it is hard to imagine what America was like twenty or thirty years earlier. These drastic differences can be seen when one looks at one of the first Modern American Novels, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, and compares it to a later Modern American Novel, The Sun Also Rises. Not only are the societies depicted in the two novels utterly dissimilar, the way in which the works are written shows major changes in the field of literature. What is it that connects the beginning of the Modern era to the end?

In their novels, James and Hemingway say similar things about...