Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" writing styles; James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" compare to my own life.

Modernism vs. postmodernism

Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, American literature began to turn inward. Instead of looking to outer manifestations of the human character, American authors began to use interior monologues as a way of creating a narrative arc. Stories such as "The Yellow Wallpaper," "Winter Dreams," and "Sonny's Blues" manifest the characteristics of both realism and modernism in the ways that they address relatively mundane subject matter, such as failed familial and romantic relationships. They also begin to show signs of the fragmented, postmodern narrative style which is more fully realized in Baldwin's "Winter Dreams." But their main, characteristic feature is the degree to which they use mundane details in the style of realism and the psychological state of the...
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