Ambiguity In Literature

The 20th century was changing the world, slaves were no longer legal, the country was being quickly industrialized, and the idea of moral ambiguity was making its way into literature as seen in the works of Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber, and Flannery O’ Connor.

Jack Smurch, a character from the short story “The Greatest Man In The World, by James Thurber, is the first man to try, and succeed to fly around the world without stopping. When he accomplishes this feat, the media rushes to get interviews. They discover, however, that their hero is actually an egotistical, arrogant drunk who could care less about anybody else. Reporters hold Jack in a room against his will. When the reporters tried to get a decent interview with Jack, his statements were harsh and crude, "Ah, the hell with that," said Smurch. "I did it, see? I did it, an' I'm talkin' about it." Although the media had other views on ‘Jacky’, "My achievement has been, I …show more content…
When he arrives home, he wants to talk to other people about what had happened during the war, but nobody wants to hear his stories. So, he keeps these feelings inside and bottles them up. When he finally decides to talk about the war, he tells other men’s stories instead of his own. Doing this causes him great distress because he knows it is wrong, “All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.” Even though he knows lying is wrong, he continues anyway and this stress turns him into a desensitized, mean spirited person. He becomes exactly what was eating him up inside, and he goes from feeling wrong about what he was doing, to becoming numb to it and becoming