Scholar Tim Armstrong theorized the idea of "prosthetic modernism". Prosthetic Modernism presents the idea that both literal prosthetics and narrative prosthesis are an internal part of literature in the modernist period that helps define the mindset of the modernist period as one defined by a curiosity towards the place where the real and unreal (biological and material) meet. 

Claremont Graduate University

Academic Henri-Jacques Stiker writes that the 1920s were a time of cultural shift in attitudes towards physical disabilities as many veterans returned to the US with missing limbs and other physical disabilities. The attitude became less about hiding away the disabled person and more about covering up their disability with a prosthetic. Novels and short stories of the time began to similarly cover up a character's disability by not depicting it directly but by showing it via unusual narrative flow or structure such as the narrative used in Faulkner's story Soldier's Pay.

The 1920s and Narrative Prosthesis

Hall, A. (2016). Literature and disability (Ser. Literature and contemporary thought). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

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