Which modernist theme is featured in these lines about the character of Peter?

“For Peter, the city was a vast, impersonal machine, a place where people were reduced to mere cogs and wheels.”

Correct option is A

Explanation

The correct answer is Option 1: Alienation.

The image of the city as a “vast, impersonal machine” where people become “mere cogs and wheels” strongly expresses the modernist theme of alienation. In modernist literature, industrial society, urban life, bureaucracy, and mechanization often make individuals feel isolated, powerless, and disconnected from themselves and others.

Peter’s perception shows that human beings are no longer valued as unique persons but are treated like parts of a machine. This loss of individuality and emotional connection is central to modernist anxieties about modern civilization. The city becomes a symbol of dehumanization.

Modernist writers frequently portray characters who feel estranged in crowded cities, fragmented in consciousness, and unable to find meaning in rapidly changing social conditions. Thus, the quoted lines clearly foreground alienation.

Information Booster

Modernism was a major literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially after World War I. Writers experimented with form and explored crisis, fragmentation, and uncertainty in modern life.

Major Modernist Themes
Alienation
Fragmentation
Loss of faith
Psychological depth
Urban isolation
Crisis of identity
Time and memory
Disillusionment after war
Writers Associated with Alienation
T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land
James Joyce – Dubliners, Ulysses
Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway
Franz Kafka – The Trial, The Metamorphosis
D.H. Lawrence – industrial society and emotional estrangement
Why the Machine Image Matters

The metaphor of machinery reflects the modern fear that industrial capitalism reduces people to functions rather than human beings. Cities are crowded, yet loneliness increases.