Introduction

Before the Postmodern era, it was believed that the world would keep progressing until it became perfect. Condorcet, a French philosopher from the Enlightenment era, claimed that through science the minds of humans would continue to expand and eventually allow humans to live long, painless lives (Condorcet). The Scientific Revolution brought the idea that the laws and truths of the universe existed independently of humans, meaning the laws of the universe were objective. Up until World War I, society found these beliefs to be true. However, everything changed after the war. After suffering the devastation and loss of World War I, people began to reject the previous ideas of how the universe operated. People began to believe there was no possible way a world that was supposed to be perfect could produce something as awful as World War I. All previous beliefs were shattered. World War I was the catalyst of the Postmodern era, a new era in which all previously known ways of life were rejected. Later, Postmodern beliefs were heightened after World War II. Catch-22 and The Wounded Soldier reveal the ways in which society rejected war. Fight Club shows the consequences of this; a world where we are defined by our material items, and struggle to place meaning in our lives. World War I is the center of the modern, and eventually Postmodern, era. It caused people to believe war was unheroic and stupid. People began to live their whole lives as a rejection of war, which left the people of that era numb.