Perkins is a professor of American and English literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines Benét's mix of modernist and realist elements in the story.

Modernism, one of the most fruitful periods in American letters, emerged in the decade that followed World War I (1914—1918). Modernist authors such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald became part of what Gertrude Stein called, the "lost generation"—the generation who saw, often firsthand, the horrors of war and who struggled to survive despite a sense of lost values and ideals.

The 1920s became an age of confusion, redefinition, and experimentation. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age as Fitzgerald called this period, was reflected in modernist themes. On the surface, the characters in many of the literary works of this decade live in the rarified atmosphere of the upper class. They drink, party...