How Does America Changed In The 2Oth Century

390 Words2 Pages
How does America changed from the beginning to the end of the 20th century by reading the best American short stories edited by John Updike. In the beginning of the 20th century America was a young, undeveloped religious, pious country with high moral values and traditions as it was proved by the short stories. Forty years later after the World War II America became the most highly developed and powerful country in the world, but lost moral values and belief in religion. As it was proved by the stories: “A City of Churches” where everyone but the main hero belongs to one or another church, and in “Death of A Favorite” people already see religion with irony and sarcasm. The storie “Defender of The Faith”shows us the life of the sergent Marx after World War II when he came from Europe to the Us.”The things They Caried”is a story about the war in Vietnam, and soldiers, and their belongings. Before the World War II we didn’t see in the stories “babies-mothers” as it is in the story “Proper Library”, and there was no stories about diseases such as AIDS, HIV, and cancer. In the story “I Want to Live” the main character is dying of cancer, but in “The Way We Live Now” the main hero is dying of AIDS. In the movie “Saturday night fever” we saw that the only thing people carried about was “birth-control pills”, but not diseases what are caused by unprotected sex. In the movie “Forest Gump” we saw the Vietnamese War, the generation of hippies, addiction to drugs, and other not less important things. In the second half of the century people already have money and material things, but have an empty space in their life, heart, and soul, as it was shown in “The Best Girlfriend You Ever Had”. In the story “A City of Churches” by Donald Bathelme, everyone but the main hero, called Cecelia, belongs to one or another church. In the story “Death of a Favorite”
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