The Lost Generation

(1899 -1961)

= a term coined by G.Stein to describe Young American artists

(mostly writers) who rejected American ideals in the 1920s and
moved to Paris to live the bohemian lifestyle (party it up, live
for today, because there may be no tomorrow)

 The generation of post 1920s (after WWI) writers -> born 1883-
1900
 The early 1990s = literature reflects the American experience
after WWI

LOST GENERATION
o Rejection of materialism
o Idealism
o Heavy drinking
o Despair, no satisfaction, insecurity, disillusionment (1899-
1961)
o No hope
o No face-to-face Communication

 Famous writers of the Lost Generation Movement

o Expatriate writers who left the US for Europe after WWI
(Paris/Montparnasse, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome)
 Ernest Hemingway
 F.S.Fitzgerald
 T.S.Eliot
 Ezra Pound
 John Dos Passos
 Gertrude Stein
 Writers who were heavily influenced by these writers and/or WWI:
 William Carlos Williams
 Wilfred Owen

 Background – (What defines our generations?)

o Music genres
 o The quintessential (i.e. typical) writers
o Life-altering events
o Developments in technology
o Human rights

Causes/Background:
 The WW 1 Generation:
o “That is what you are. That’s what you all are … all of
you young people who served the war. You are all a
lost generation” (E. Hemingway)
o G. Stein became famous for using the phrase,
borrowed from a car mechanic’s criticism of “20-year
old slackers” (the social misfits, avoid work or lack
work ethic, while being intelligent, does not really
like doing anything => putoare, codaș, chiulangiu,
pierde-vară, etc.)
Features
o Social misfits => life meaningless
o The phrase ‘lost generation”= a disillusioned postwar
generation characterized by:
 Lost values
 Lost belief in the idea of human progress
 A mood of futility/uselessness and despair
leading to hedonism (Greek: “pleasure”; a school
of thought that argues that pleasure is the
primary and most important intrinsic/inherent
good; bohemian lifestyle)
o Alienation
o Nihilism (all values in life are meaningless =>
pessimism)
o Existentialism (J.P.Sartre): “I would seat and stop
thinking”; finding self and the meaning of life through
free will, choice, and personal responsibility.
o Rejection of materialism
o Music (hesitation, cheerfulness, syncopation,
dehumanization/machine like, upper classes, a blend
of musical traditions): jazz, ragtime, swing; Jazz
originated in New Orleans as a fusion of African and
 European music and played a significant part in wider
cultural changes in this period, and its influence on
pop culture continued long afterwards. The Jazz Age
is often referred to in conjunction with the Roaring
Twenties.
o Taboos broken
o America is not good
o Younger generation no longer felt patriotic: “You see
you don’t believe in the war” (75)
o No religious faith: “all thinking men are atheists” (8)
o Violence, war, death
o No universal moral codes
o Irony, cynicism
o Hedonism (pleasure is most important intrinsic,
inherent good; bohemian lifestyle: love, lust, money,
food: “I was made to eat. Eat and drink, and sleep
with Catherine” (318); “You have the pleasant air of a
dog in heat” (27)
o Despair, no hope, no satisfaction
o Abandon of social conventions
o Lonely, isolated, inner self, individual/inner life
o Against war
o Break with tradition (old rules: non-important);
against Victorianism
o No moral values, moral degradation
o Confusion, uncertainty, insecurity
o Destruction, chaos => dichotomy
o Free expression (improvisations/rag music)
o Pessimism, lost belief in the idea of human progress:
“I don’t believe in victory anymore. But I don’t believe
in defeat” (77)
o Alcohol, drugs
o Non-conformism
o Social evils
o Disillusionment
o Indifferent universe: “There isn’t always an
explanation for everything” (18)
 o Hostile universe: rain and mud, snow and winter,
dust-field battlefield
o No abstract values: no justice, glory, patriotism
o Literary techniques & symbols: economy of language;
spare dialogue (journalistic style); “iceberg theory”:
allusions, make inferences, understatements;
symbolism: colors, nature, etc.
o Stream of consciousness (events happen in one’s
mind)
o Confusional states (reality from hallucinations)
o To forget the war: love
o Naturalistic techniques

Literary techniques to convey the themes above:

o Economy of language
o Presence of war (overt or implied)
o ‘iceberg theory’ = you have to make inferences (i.e.
deductions/lucruri subînțelese)
o Symbolism – colors, nature, etc.
o Alcohol
o Jazz
o Influence of European culture, art, etc.
o Rejection of Victorian era style
o Spare dialogue (short, direct sentences)
o Use of understatement (i.e. a form of
speech/disclosure, which contains an expression of
less strength than would be expected) vs euphemism
(i.e. a polite phrase used instead of a harsher or
more offensive expression); subapreciere, pu țin spus,
atenuare, declarație incompletă, e.g. It is an
understatement.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway working on his

book For Whom the Bell Tolls at
the Sun Valley Lodge, Idaho in
December 1939
July 21, 1899
Born
Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.
July 2, 1961 (aged 61)
Died
Ketchum, Idaho, U.S.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
(1953: The Old Man and
the Sea)
Nobel Prize in
Literature (1954: A
Farewell to Arms: "for
Notable his mastery of the art
awards of narrative, most
recently demonstrated
in The Old Man and the
Sea, and for the
influence that he has
exerted on
contemporary style".)
Spouses Elizabeth Hadley
Richardson
(m. 1921; div. 1927)
 Pauline Pfeiffer
(m. 1927; div. 1940)
Martha Gellhorn
(m. 1940; div. 1945)
Mary Welsh Hemingway
(m. 1946; his
death 1961)
Children Jack, Patrick, Gregory
 ERNEST HEMINGWAY and THE LOST GENERATION

 “Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make

any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from
yourself moving from one place to another. There’s
nothing to that.” (The Sun Also Rises 19)

Life:
o Born in 1899, Illinois
o Hunter, fisherman, sports, safari
o 4 marriages
o Dropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to fight
WW1, but the war ended so he did not fight
o 1953: Kenya: spirit of adventure, isolated places
o Badly injured in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in
Italy – used this experience as the basis for A
Farewell to Arms (1954: Pulitzer Prize)
o Became a foreign correspondent in Paris for the
Toronto Star; expatriate American to Paris ( The Sun
Also Rises 1926)
o A reporter during the Civil War in Spain (1937) ( For
Whom the Bell Tolls 1940)
o Committed suicide in 1961
Literary career:
 7 novels
 6 collections of short stories
 2 non-fiction works
 4 collections of short stories posthumously

 A Farewell to Arms (1929) – an American ambulance officer’s

disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter; the love
between the American soldier and a British nurse

 The Old Man and the Sea (1952/short novel/novella) – an old

fisherman’s defeat in a long and lonely struggle with a fish and
the sea

 “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” & “The Short Happy Life of Francis

Macomber” => fictionalized results of his African experiences:
o Moral vacuum (left church; failed medical exams; wars,
etc)
o His human conduct – hedonism & sentimental humanism
Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is
said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is
called the Masai "Ngaje Ngai," the House of God. Close to the
western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard.
No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that
altitude.

Modernist Features in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

 Shifts back and forth (traditional narrative form <_____>
italicized passages that reveal the protagonist’s inner thoughts
and memories
 The story’s conclusion: moves back and forth between events
happening in reality and events happening in Harry’s mind; as
he approaches death, he cannot distinguish between reality
and hallucination.
 Modernist themes:
o Alienation
o Nihilism (i.e. rejection of all religious and moral principles,
often in the belief that life is meaningless; nothing is real)
= Harry has lived a life of alienation, emotionally distant
from his several wives and never identifying with or
belonging to the wealthy society in which he has lived,
due to his most recent wife’s money. As he dies, no
 spiritual faith sustains him. He has no thoughts of a
Supreme Being or an afterlife. He thinks only of all he
intended to write but did not write. He worships only the
gift he wasted.
 Employment of allusion = Harry’s tough and unsympathetic
observations about his former friend Julian’s destruction is an
easily identified reference to F.S.Fitzgerald, Hemingway’s
former friend who has suffered a severe emotional breakdown.
HOMEWORK

Use quotes with page numbers that highlight:

- a particular theme
- a facet of a character
- a feature of The Lost Generation
- a feature of Modernism

Give the source book details, page number, character speaking,

and theme, etc.

e.g.
Violence: “You can’t sing Italian.” “He’s a nut,” said Edgar Saunders.
“All he knows is throw benches.”(Hemingway, 155)
“I was blown up while we were eating cheese. “ p.29

Disillusionment, death, no hope: Priest: “Then it’s hopeless?” “It is

never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope. I try always to hope
but sometimes I cannot.” (Hemingway, 98)

Against war: Rinaldi: “This war is killing me,” Rinaldi said, “I am

very depressed by it.” He folded his hands over his knee. “Oh,” I
said. “What’s the matter? Can’t I even have human impulses?” […] I
tell you this war is a bad thing. Why did we make it anyway.”
(Hemingway, 219)

Confusion: “I sat on the chair and prayed for Catherine” p. 134

“I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do
with me. I felt no feelings of fatherhood. “ p.139

No religious faith
“The priest was young and blushed easily and wore an uniform like
the rest of us, but with a cross in dark red velvet above the left
breast pocket of his gray tunic.”
“Priest never with girls” p.5
“I am an atheist, all thinking men are atheists, the major said” p.5
“Bless me father, for you have sinned, Rocca said” p.49
“You understand but you don’t love God.
No.
You don’t love Him at all? He asked.
I’m afraid of Him in the night sometimes” p.59
“You see, darling it would mean everything to me if I had any
religion… But you gave me the Saint Anthony. That was for luck.
Someone gave it to me. “ p.110 Catherine and Henry
“Bless me father, I killed a sergeant” Bonello p. 78

Collapse of morality/values
“He should have fine girls. I will give you the addresses of places in
Naples. Beautiful young girls - accompanied by their mothers. Ha ha
ha, “ the captain said. p. 10
“Did you have any beautiful adventures?” Rinaldi p.11
“Am I sneaky Fergy? You are. You are worse than sneaky. You’re
like a snake. A snake with an Italian uniform.” P.105
“I’m ashamed of you, Catherine Barkley. You have no shame and no
honor and you’re as sneaky as he is. “ p. 106

Old ways of thinking were not important

“This was better than going every evening to the house for officers
where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward
as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother
officers.” P.39
“Do you want a vermouth?
“All right, then I have to go. She (Miss Gage) got out the bottle from
the armoire and brought a glass. You tke the glass, I said…Here’s to
you, said Miss Gage.” P.42

No Love
“I knew I didn’t love Catherine Barkley” Henry said p.39
Pessimism
“I don’t believe in victory anymore. But I don’t believe in defeat. “
p.77
“You see, we don’t believe in the war anyway” Piani said p.75
Deliberate break from tradition
“Let’s go some place and have beer instead of tea. It’s very good for
young Catherine. It keeps her small. “ said Catherine when she was
pregnant p. 125
“I could cut my hair and we’ll be just alike. It would be fun. I’m tired
of it. It’s an awful nuisance in the bed at night. “ p.128

Death
Death was everywhere on the front, but then the baby died and also
Catherine
“God please don’t let her die. I’ll do anything for You if you won’t let
her die.” P.142