The 1920s are often called the Roaring Twenties. It is usually described as the Golden Age, a noisy and wild time (Meredith 51). Contrary to this popular belief, authors TS Eliot, Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald described this period differently. Eliot's poem The Waste Land vividly describes the very state the world was in after the First World War. Eliot examines the way the land is left desolate and the way people act and live. The novels The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises illustrate the ideas and concepts described by Eliot. The characters in these works represent solipsism, boredom, lack of values, and conditions found in The Waste Land. Ezra Pound wrote: "Pound's greatest service to Hemingway may well be to direct him to Eliot's poetry just as The Waste Land established Eliot as the dominant poet of literary modernism" (Flora 2012) . Eliot's writings greatly influenced many writers of his time and afterward. The beginning of The Waste Land begins by describing a landscape, “April is the cruelest month” (Eliot 5), this illustrates the change of season and how it lays bare all the imperfections that the snow hid. Dead trees and unpleasant views are exposed. This is true not only for the physical environment, but also spiritually. People buried their thoughts and feelings much like snow buried an unpleasant landscape. People were unaware of the state of their atmosphere and revealed no emotion or effort to change it. People can become so removed from their surroundings, making them indifferent to what is happening around them. Rather than working to piece together the broken remains, they instead withdrew from society and their emotions. They carry no feelings, thoughts or p...... middle of paper...... but change is possible. The most important element of the poem is that even in the darkest moments, you can emerge and move forward. At the end of The Sun Also Rises, Brett states that she and Jake would have had a great time together, to which Jake responds, "Isn't it lovely to think so?" (Hemingway 251). This meant that Jake was able to grow and begin to embrace the values. Jake demonstrated that people can grow and that there is hope for everyone. At the end of The Great Gatsby, a similar situation occurs. Nick comes to the conclusion that he can choose his destiny and that he doesn't have to be like the carefree people around him. The novel ends with: “So we continued, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past. » (Fitzgerald). Each work tells a journey that leads to a shared consensus that there is still hope..