The human desire to “fit in” – to belong somewhere, to feel like one is a part of something special and accepted by one’s peers – is present in the media of countless cultures across time. Almost always present as well is the inverse of that desire, creating a tension between culture and counterculture, between conformity and dissent, within that conversation space. The nature of that tension as it exists in American literature is undeniably shaped by several historical factors, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, such as the popularization and then breakdown of traditional domestic family units, an increase in consumerism and materialism post World War II, and a push towards American individualism. And due to factors like these, a significant shift in the common commentary occurs between the 1950s and the 1980s. While some authors in the 1950s express disillusionment with the status quo and push against assimilation into hegemonic societal norms, authors in the 1980s then explore the downsides of the cultural movement away from collectivity. All at once, a new, complicated truth is brought to light: it might be a desirable thing now to not “fit in”, but it still is, and always has been, lonely. Even though many Americans have now been allowed significantly more personal freedom of expression in multiple aspects of life, this particular undercurrent in the narrative that existed from the beginning of the 1950s counterculture movement begins to rear its head more visibly in writing from the 1980s. While authors like Plath and Baldwin subtextualize their and other Americans’ still-present desire for acceptance and human connection despite their need to break the mold, later authors like Janowitz, Carver and Sontag openly explore that notion, reflecting in their work the anxiety, discomfort and chaos that can be found living the new disjointed American life. 

To explore the roots of this shift, we must start with war. Wars are massive shapers of society, and World War II was a particularly monumental influence on the popular American way of life and way of thinking. As John W. Jeffries explains throughout his book Wartime America, a blooming hope in the American people for peace and prosperity after the horrors of the war brought along the “baby boom”; the resulting population explosion, paired with an expansion of the middle class, as well as rapid technological advancements, facilitated the sprawl of new suburbs across the country. That expansion of the middle class came about as a result of a booming economy and the growth of certain white collar sectors of the American workforce, both of which can be attributed back to industrial and technological strides made during the war. Amidst these developments arose a strong new image of the “ideal” American – one who successfully participated in and thrived in this atmosphere of cultural progress – and this also meant focusing on the “nuclear family.” According to “Chapter One” of A Companion to Post 1945 America, a combination of the war’s effects on rates of marriage and childrearing, the popularization of the idea of an “egalitarian partnership in marriage based on friendship, mutual respect, and a breadwinner/homemaker division of labor in the family,” and government programs protecting the rights of children and incentivizing homeownership all contributed to the establishment of the nuclear family unit (Lassonde 6). In the end, that fresh sense of nationwide unity and pride post-World War II was the golden ingredient in the coalescence of a shining portrait of the quintessential American citizen everyone should strive to be.

Another juggernaut of influence was the rise of consumerism. The aforementioned economic, technological and domestic waves accelerated production of and spending on home goods, resulting in capitalistic endeavors that took full advantage of the rapidly developing cultural values to insert themselves into the new norm – such as can be seen in the dual motivation of Home Economics classes for young women to both encourage traditional gender roles and serve American corporate interests (Barnard 40). Those Home Economics advocates were not the only people telling Americans “how to buy, where to buy, what to buy, and also what to eat, where to eat, when to eat, and who to eat with” (Barnard 42). Now more than ever, a uniform American identity was being pushed by scholars, public speakers, and corporate entities alike. The advent of television allowed it to spread to the masses even easier. But ultimately, despite governmental and corporate involvement, it wasn’t all simply a plan set in motion by some nebulous few in power to achieve perfect conformity; it originally came about organically as a response to the fact that people in America had just surfaced from a traumatic, massive-scale war and wanted so desperately to come together, to belong to something good, and to do things right. 

It was unsurprising, then, that the next war on the horizon, the Cold War, only served to exacerbate the toxic side of the burgeoning set of dominant cultural values: it was a war of ideologies rather than armies, so suddenly it was “us versus them.” America sought to disavow everything the Soviet Union and other communist nations stood for on principal, so as a dichotomy of “what we do” and “what they do” formed, anyone who lay on the other side or even outside of the dichotomy was met with hostility and ostracisation (Whitfield). It is from this tense environment that some of the most prominent dissenting voices arose, not only popularly recognized counterculture voices like Jack Kerouac and the other Beatniks, but also those who spoke for those in the country with less of a voice, such as Sylvia Plath and James Baldwin.

Sylvia Plath was not immediately vocal about her disillusionment with American cultural norms when she began her career as a writer, but her later works are what cemented her in literary notoriety, and in them it is evident that she is in Tracy Brain’s words “deeply, politically engaged with [the] world” (23) and sharply cognizant of many disconnects between that “ideal American” fantasy and the actual reality for many Americans. Her dramatic transition from rule-following, polite conformism to deeply emotional, raw and darkly honest writing is well documented, especially as it surrounds her eventual suicide in 1963. It also provides one of the most illustrative examples of how the ideological pushback against societal norms of the 1950s came to be, especially amongst women. Luke Ferretter, in his critical analysis of Plath’s full body of work, maintains that her tonal transition did not necessarily come out of nowhere; as early as her college years, despite still doing her best to strive towards mainstream literary recognition, she was “nevertheless adept at exploring the effect of social structures on the emotional lives of the women who live within them” (96). By the time she was out of college and pursuing a successful writing career, many of her stories, such as “Sweetie Pie and the Gutter Men,” subtly expose a darker, disquieting underbelly to that glossy, hollow doll-like ideal of suburban perfection. Her political critique turns far less subtle in her writing up to and within her novel The Bell Jar, which details the psychological breakdown of a young woman as she comes in contact with problematic gender politics as well as a troubling blasé attitude exhibited en masse in the U.S. towards those suffering on the other ideological side of the Cold War.

Throughout her writing Plath displays that she values empathy towards people’s personal experiences, regardless of their level of compliance with the norm, and considers a lack of that empathy to be antithetical to what it means to be human (Ferretter 103). Therefore, this undercurrent that can be found within her work of desiring human connection might be seen as existing in opposition to her criticism of societal conformity, but in actuality it exists alongside it. Although the dominant cultural dogmas of the time valued universality, they focused on the universality of only a specific type of people; challenging “who had [universality], who wanted it, and who wished to deprive it of its cultural power” and calling attention to “previously hidden or ignored experience” as Sylvia Plath did was in itself political dissent (Nelson 23). Deborah Nelson, in her chapter from The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath, also discusses Plath’s personal, confessional, autobiographical writing style as an element of her dissent, because of the prevailing importance placed on privacy in Cold War ideology (23). Plath made it quite clear that we ought not to pretend like everything is just fine in an effort to preserve the status quo – what’s more important is reaching out to those that don’t fit into it with openness and radical honesty.

Another prominent figure within the confessional writing sphere was James Baldwin. In a 1961 interview with Studs Terkel, Baldwin remarks, “Art has to be a kind of confession … if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too – the terms with which they are connected to other people” (21). Throughout his writing, he confronts his shame associated with what sets him apart in America, particularly being Black and being homosexual. In that Terkel interview, he speaks of having moved to Europe to try and escape from the reality of what those things meant for him within American society – hatred, stereotyping, othering – and yet it was a Bessie Smith record that helped him “dig back” to his cultural roots as a Black man that he had “buried very deep” (4). Addressing, moving past and talking about his shame was what inspired him to write, and what disillusioned him from the idea of assimilation he had previously subscribed to. Giving voice to this experience made him a controversial but ultimately greatly respected literary figure, all because other people who were also different than what American society expected them to be felt seen and connected with his messaging. 

In many of Baldwin’s works, another recurrent theme makes itself known of how difficult and scary it is to accept oneself in spite of one’s deviance from the norm, and pursue free will in the face of societal repercussions. In Giovanni’s Room, which thematically links homosexuality and race, Baldwin explores the complexities of trying to lead an “alternative” lifestyle; his characters desire freedom and honesty with themselves and each other, but ever-present is a fear of social consequences, judgement, and pain (Armengol). Much of the turmoil Baldwin’s characters experience in this novel stem from the perceptions and responses of white heterosexual people and the dominant systemic societal structures that back them. However, even as leading an unbothered lifestyle in America that is non-white, non-cisheteronormative, and/or non-male became gradually (but not fully) more accepted and less shunned between the 1950s and 1980s thanks to strong strides made by counterculture and Civil Rights movements, that same theme of nonconformity being difficult and scary became stronger instead of weaker within American literature. This can be attributed in part to a shift in what the American ideal looked like, and by extension what not adhering to that looked like. In a way, nonconformity actually became encouraged, and then glamorized (but only, of course, if you did it the “right way”).

While the direct effects of World War II and the Cold War waned in influence on American cultural values, other historical developments reversed, increased in significance, or arrived entirely new on the scene, and many of these developments overlapped and contributed to one another. For example, feminist movements catching wind in the 1960s rejected traditional gender roles and “called for a broader conception of the forms and functions of family and household,” and though this was certainly a step in a positive direction for women’s rights, one must also take into account America’s steady creep further into late-stage capitalism and broadening wealth inequality, causing  the average American family to feature both parents employed, working long hours to keep the family afloat. Both of these trends contributed to higher divorce rates, lower marriage and birth rates, and the overall breakdown of the family structure that was formerly so strongly promoted by mainstream 1950s society (Lassonde 6-7). That same capitalistic acceleration and glorification of materialism that the Reagan presidency ushered in, paired with narratives of self-improvement and individualism stemming originally from counterculture rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s, engendered a new competitive American mindset preoccupied with wealth, status and independence (Singer; Thomson). In stark contrast to the 1950’s sanctification of the status quo, the new American ideal had to do with valuing one’s own success and self-expression over the feelings of the community. 

Therefore, some of the most notable social commentary found in literature of the 1980s displays yet again that desire for positive connection with one another that is now made all the more difficult in the 1980s cultural environment. On the less hopeful side of the spectrum lies the work of Tama Janowitz, who takes a humorous, postmodernist angle in her method of critique. She satirizes in her stories, among other things, the posturing and in-fighting present in modern feminist spaces, the frivolity of materialism, and the breakdown and convoluted imitation of 1950s domestic roles – all of these elements featuring most prominently in her popular short story collection Slaves of New York (Matthews 151). Her critique is subtle and minimalist, and her dark, flippant, casually risqué tone causes some to be unclear on whether that critique is intentional or incidental. However, her ironic approach could be considered symptomatic of the very same evasion of genuine feeling and connection exhibited by her characters (Matthews 159). What is perhaps a defense mechanism in response to prevailing societal attitudes around earnestness on Janowitz’s part, is also indicative of a common thematic undercurrent within literature, reappearing in force, of a need to relate to others and share the emotional load of existence. 

An author that also leaned towards a minimalist, detached tone but in specific opposition to satire and irony was Raymond Carver. Unlike Janowitz, it was easier to tell he took his subjects seriously: he focused on a concise, gritty, unsugarcoated representation of the “desperate class” within America and the problems they faced. As he tells John Alton in a 1986 interview for the Chicago Review, his writing explores in depth what is fundamentally “not enough” in the lives of those who don’t measure up to that American cultural ideal of success and self-reliance (16). The powerlessness of his characters in the lower economic strata manifests as a failure to “meet their financial and moral obligations and responsibilities” (14), resulting in the deterioration of quality of life and social relationships. His characters struggle, self-sabotage, miscommunicate, and are at their core deeply lonely. And because he writes from a place of familiarity, since he was in their position for a large part of his life, he holds a “tremendous sympathy” for them, telling Alton “I have to care for the people in the stories. These are my people. I can’t offend them, and I wouldn’t” (9). That compassion is what ties him back to many of his predecessors in social commentary, like Plath and Baldwin.

It is then Susan Sontag’s display of compassion towards those ignored and neglected by American society that truly drives home the importance of community and connection. Sontag is most known for writing intellectually on a broad range of academic and philosophical subjects throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s, but a thread that remains from her nonfiction to her fiction is her belief in learning about and speaking on topics and people who are left out of the popular American narrative. She expresses in a 2000 interview with Evans Chan, “I want for myself to take in more reality, and still with the tools of modernism, to address real suffering … in the larger world.” Her short story “The Way We Live Now,” as a story about dialogue within American communities surrounding victims of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, exists as a direct critique of the comparative silence on the matter from those in positions of power. Sontag weaves together collective thought processes within her characters’ social network, employing a meandering, puzzle-like writing style to reflect the chaos and confusion in the conversation space, while also emphasizing that even amidst the cacophony, these people are all involved in each other’s lives and keep tabs on each other for better or for worse (Treichler). In much of Sontag’s writing there appears to emerge a silver lining of sorts to that chaos and confusion of real American life, and that is the ability to lean on one another and face it together.

The tension between the desire to collectivize and the desire to stand apart from the crowd has always and will continue to exist within American cultural discourse. However, the shift in which ideal the dominant societal narrative preferred between the 1950s and the 1980s precipitated the amplification of a truth that got harder and harder to ignore: that dominant societal narrative has always applied to and served a small (and shrinking) portion of the actual American people, and everyone needs to be heard, accepted and loved. Because of this acknowledgement some of the most powerful counterculture voices to stand the test of time and speak to human truth have been those that have reached out to those for whom it’s more difficult, more uncertain and more stressful to exist within the cultural climate of the United States. Decades before the 1980s, James Baldwin said to Studs Terkel in an interview, “Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to them from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it” (21). It’s no real wonder that much of the art that held true throughout significant societal shifts in America was art that told us that we don’t have to be alone in feeling alone. 

Works Cited

Alton, John. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Literature: An Interview with Raymond Carver.” Chicago Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 1988, pp. 4-21.

Armengol, Josep M. “In the Dark Room: Homosexuality and/as Blackness in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.” Signs, vol. 37, no. 3, 2012, pp. 671-693.

Barnard, Julia. “Home Economics and ‘Housewifery’ in 1950s America.” The Role of Food in American Society, KU Scholarworks, 2010, pp. 39-48.

Brain, Tracy. The Other Sylvia Plath. London, Routledge, 2001.

Chan, Evans. “Against Postmodernism, etcetera–A Conversation with Susan Sontag.” Postmodern Culture, vol. 12, no. 1, 2001. 

Ferretter, Luke. Sylvia Plath’s Fiction: A Critical Study. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

Jeffries, John W. Wartime America: The World War II Home Front. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 

Lassonde, Stephen. “Chapter One: Family and Demography in Postwar America: A Hazard of New Fortunes?” A Companion to Post-1945 America, edited by Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 3-19.

Matthews, Graham. “Feminism, Satire and Critique in the Work of Tama Janowitz.” Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism: Contemporary Satire, Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 151-173.

Nelson, Deborah. “Plath, history and politics.” The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath, edited by Jo Gill, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 21-35.

Singer, Peter. “Greed in the Reagan years.” How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest, Text Publishing, 1993, pp. 74-83. 

Terkel, Studs. “An Interview with James Baldwin.” Conversations with James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt, University Press of Mississippi, 1989, pp. 3-23. 

Thomson, Irene Taviss. “Individualism and conformity in the 1950s vs. the 1980s.” Social Forum, vol. 7, 1992, pp. 497-516.

Treichler, Paula A. “Collectivity in Trouble: Writing on HIV/AIDS by Susan Sontag and Sarah Schulman.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, vol. 57, no. 2, 2012, pp. 245-270.

Whitfield, Steven. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.