Today, modern society increasingly experiences a disconnection from the real world as we connect more and more to the online world. People text more than they call, and friends around the world can interact within seconds, if not instantaneously. As society continues to modernize, we experience the same kind of disagreement with the natural order of things that the authors felt toward the end of the century when their culture changed. TS Eliot, Joseph Conrad and DH Lawrence are just three of these authors who have put pen to paper to explore this deracination. Eliot's The Waste Land, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Victor explore the idea that modern life and society negatively affects those who succumb to its rhythms. In the first section of The Waste Land, The Burial of the Dead,” Eliot offers a critique of London, a center of modern life, and its people. He describes London as an “unreal city” suffering “[under the brown fog of a winter dawn” (7), which suggests that London is dirty, cold, and uninviting. The people are also unhappy and discontented, as many often sigh and keep their eyes "fixed" on their feet (7). The fact that each person is focused on their own space suggests that each person is isolated, despite being surrounded by a crowd. Eliot also writes of the crowd: "I had not thought that death had destroyed so many... There I saw one whom I knew, and stopped him" (7); these references to Dante's journey through Hell connect the people in the crowd to the dead and London to hell. The images and words used by Eliot present the reader with the overwhelming feeling that London is a depressing and dirty place of isolation. In “The Fire Sermon,” Eliot describes the debris as being a… medium of paper. ...rbanization are common themes throughout literature, including the work of Eliot, Conrad, and Lawrence, perhaps because such effects are universal. These authors directly felt such changes in the natural order of the world, and modern readers today have first-hand experience of similar patterns. Most likely, uprootedness will continue as a common theme throughout society and literature, as human nature and therefore the world is never stagnant. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: authoritative text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism. Ed. Paolo B. Armstrong. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land: authoritative text, contexts, criticism. Ed. Michele Nord. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Print.Lawrence, D.H. “The Rocking Horse Winner.” The Norton anthology of short fiction. Ed. RV Cassill. New York: Norton, n.d. 299-308. Press.