D.H. Lawrence's later novels, such as
Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent, which are often defined as“leadership novels, ”have something in common with Modernism.
Kangaroo, above all, shows a specific tendency as a Modernist text in terms of its fragmentary narrative, collage-like technique, and the protagonist's unstable state of consciousness. The first aim of this paper is to demonstrate that these characteristics of Modernism result not from the author's intention to quest for Modernist aesthetics, but from the mental conflict which the protagonist undergoes both in his political participation and in his marriage life. More importantly it will help us to find that this type of complicated mentality has a structurally profound relation with the historical sentiments and perceptions of the Modernist writers obsessed with a crisis of culture, and a sense of disorientation and nightmare.
A second aim is to point out that
Kangaroo is considerably successful in describing, by means of the protagonist's political alternative, the destiny of the Modernists and avant-gardes who were compelled to polarize into two different political camps, communism and fascism under the pressure of the Great War. What I finally suggest here is that
Kangaroo should be appreciated in a wider historical context and that further emphasis should be put on its particularity and universality as a Modernist text.
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