Consider the information about literary elements in postmodernism. identify two to three of these elements in the essay “loneliness . . an american malady.” what effect do these elements have on the structure, purpose, and meaning of the text?

The essay experiments with varying points of view, a characteristic of the postmodernist style. Within the analytical essay form, McCullers primarily uses second-person point of view to address the audience directly, but she also blends this style with third- person narrative. This unusual blending of points of view is representative of postmodern exploration of unorthodox forms and styles. In the following excerpt, McCullers first uses third-person narrative to describe Americans, but then switches to second-person narrative in the same sentence.

The loneliness of Americans does not have its source in xenophobia; as a nation we are an outgoing people, reaching always for immediate contacts, further experience. But we tend to seek out things as individuals, alone. The European, secure in his family ties and rigid class loyalties, knows little of the moral loneliness that is native to us Americans.

Postmodern fiction focuses on the inner state of consciousness through self-reflection, which McCullers’s essay also shows. Note how McCullers blends scientific analysis with philosophical thought to achieve this self-reflection. Such blending of styles and forms is characteristic of postmodernist literature:

Consciousness of self is the first abstract problem that the human being solves. Indeed, it is this self-consciousness that removes us from lower animals. This primitive grasp of identity develops with constantly shifting emphasis through all our years. Perhaps maturity is simply the history of those mutations that reveal to the individual the relation between himself and the world in which he finds himself.

explanation:

ward, and charles cooley, felt that social conflict was a process that should be in exploring social processes and social problems. conflict as a functional social process."