The first half of the 20th century was a time that will never be forgotten. War, violence, and death touched the whole world. Numerous totalitarian leaders came into power. Millions and millions of lives were taken from soldiers and civilians. Two great World Wars occurred. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia's labor camps killed tens of millions of people alone, almost all due to genocide. Then of course, the end of World War II marked the introduction of the nuclear bomb to war. There was The Russian Revolution, The Chinese Revolution, The Spanish Civil War and democracy's arch rival, communism.
             Whether it was rooted from one's own government, or from another nation, war affected just about everybody on the planet, directly or indirectly. It was a time of misery and despair. As you probably would have guessed, the arts of the first half of the 20th century were greatly influenced by the massive death and destruction. Many writers and photographers documented the horrors to share with the world. Some used their own stories to give readers an idea of what life surrounded by death was like. Then others tried to find meaning in a world of death, despair, and suffering that did not seem to have any meaning. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Tadeusz Borowski used realistic fiction to try to find meaning while T.S. Eliot and Anna Akhmatova used poetry to do the same. Pablo Picasso took a different approach by painting to find meaning, in the process creating one of the most famous works of anti-war art ever. No matter what the method, in a time where absolute freedom and meaning did not seem to exist, all of these skilled people were searching for spiritual freedom and meaning
             Alexander Solzhenitsyn takes a fictional approach to write Matryona's Home. Although the narrator is loosely based on the author himself, Solzhenitsyn uses realistic stories to represent larger issues. In this case, the town of Tolnovo represents a materialistic, immor...