The transition from the 19th century to the 20th century brought with it many big changes to world, especially within the western sphere. People became faced with a new reality, unimaginable one hundred year prior. Advancements in transportation such as the airplane and the first mass produced cars transformed the way people lived their lives. These improvements, coupled with the continued rise of capitalism and urbanization, brought with it just as many problems than it did solutions. This new society alienated its members into thinking primarily in terms of instrumental rationality. This train of thought is especially damaging when applied to people’s relationships with one another; making people only interact in a mutually, beneficial fashion. By commodifying human interactions, communication between individuals becomes increasingly strained. This strain of communication is exemplified in William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, Franz Kafka’s story, The Metamorphosis and Virginia Woolf’s short story, “The String Quartet.” Although the authors Faulkner, Kafka, and Woolf came from different backgrounds, they all noticed the decline of communication in their societies and took note of it in their works. Through the use of unique first and third person narratives, these authors were able to portray the communication issues they perceived in their society and in turn depicted the arts as a universal language that is able to breach the walls built between us from society. A part of the transition into the twentieth century involved an increase of the use of first-person narration. Each of the aforementioned stories by Faulkner, Kafka, and Woolf break away from a typical third-person omniscient narration in an attempt to better convey the experiences of the members of their society. Faulkner and Woolf use unique forms of first-person narration while Kafka uses third-person limited, only giving us insight into the main character’s viewpoint and thoughts. Because the narrator in the stories is not all knowing, the reader is limited to the perspectives and thoughts of one character. Not having an absolute guide telling us exactly what is happening in the story forces the reader to lean on the personal viewpoints given to us by the narrator and in doing so, the reader is never sure if things are actually how they appear; similar to the limitations of our everyday consciousness. One of the most innovative applications of the first-person narrative was Faulkner’s use of multiple perspectives in, As I Lay Dying. Faulkner was able to fully relate the individual alienation of the characters by splitting up the story-telling between t