Life in the USA after World War I
After World War I the world was changed forever. During World War I the world rapidly transformed by new technologies and moreover, owing to them the war had a bigger affect on people; the total number of casualties was over 37 million of both, military man and civilians. World War I lasted many years and by the end there were not only millions of casualties but also millions of man who were affected by horrors of battle. War had forced the generation to grow up quickly, and for those, who had spent years in trenches, war was all they really knew. “What’s to become of us?” asked one soldier to another. “We have lived this life for so long. Now we shall have to start all over again.”
The years immediately after World War I weren’t the most serene. People were not satisfied with the established social and aesthetics conventions at the time and some young artists were trying to do something about it; they gathered to big cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, in order to protest, exploring their own set of values, the ones that clearly went against what their elders had already established, and to make a new art. Some writers no longer felt the need to stay and went to Europe, mostly to Paris. As the Chicago and San Francisco were the center of the art and creation of new, better values, Paris became a center of literature.
The Lost Generation
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, The Lost Generation in general, was the post-World War I generation, but especially a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputations in 1920s.
As a centre of writers, who belong to the Lost Generation, was considered France. A Salon, which was in possession of Gertrude ...
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Works Cited: Source: #1 Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 123: Nineteenth-Century French Fiction Writers: Naturalism and Beyond, 1860-1900. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Catharine Savage Brosman, Tulane University. The Gale Group, 1992. pp. 188-214.
World War I is often regarded as the Great War. It was fought from 1914 until 1918 and it is considered to be the bloodiest war humankind has led so far. In merely four years a whole generation of young men was wiped out: approximately 16, 5 million lives were lost, even more were wounded, and the rest that had managed to survive was traumatized for life. One of the reasons why there were so many human casualties was the fact that World War I turned out to be the first trench warfare in history. The sense of permanent stalemate brought about great disillusionment from the romantic idea of warfare and the concept of the soldier was no more one/that of an honourable warrior but that of a victim.
Paris in the 1920's was a place that seemed to embody dynamic artistic achievement. Many of the great artists of modernist movements were either there or had passed through at some point. It became the living embodiment of the old joke "So Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Modigliani walk into a bar..." For Americans traveling to Paris after the war with artistic intentions, it was a win-win situation: Freedom from stultifying artistic conventions and the burgeoning corporate culture, and life in a bohemian community with cheap francs, an old order debunked by the war, and an already established network of expatriate heavy hitters (Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound). Even among the American expatriate class, however, there was a division between groups. There were those who went to Paris to fully immerse themselves in the bohemian lifestyle (even if part of it was more show than reality) and interact and bicker with other self-proclaimed artists, while the other went to Paris due to its burgeoning reputation as a place to see and be seen among the literati (much like the latest trendy eatery in Los Angeles). Some were there for the art, others for the atmosphere. Hemingway, in his retrospective "A Movable Feast", would consider himself a staunch member of the former and Fitzgerald a hopeless member of the latter. While Paris had a crucial formative effect on Hemingway that it did not have on Fitzgerald, it would be...
... considered documents of Paris capital of modernity to a great extent. Their subjects, style, and juxtaposition of the transitive and the eternal give effective depictions of life in Paris at the time. Impressionist paintings will stand alongside written documents as records of late nineteenth century Paris for years to come.
World War I, also known as “The Great War”, was a global war that revolved mainly around Europe. It took place from 1914 to 1918. This was a very brutal war that caused many casualties. The soldiers who survived experienced severe trauma and mental discomfort. This trauma was a direct result of the violence and agony they experienced during the war. Motivation for this war was the idea of nationalism and the pride in one’s country. This war was the cause of disillusionment among many of the soldiers that were involved in it.
Many expatriates flocked to Paris to follow forerunners in the movement such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Most of the expatriates wished to have an introduction to Gertrude Stein at her apartment. There they would discuss art, literature, and the ideals of America for hours on end. Gertrude Stein characterized the expatriates' view of America when she said, "America is my country, and Paris is my home town". (Stein) This idea, of having a place that you consider your home, but not your homeland, is the basis of the expatriate movement.
George Orwell once wrote “If the war didn’t happen to kill you, it was bound to start you thinking.” He is referring to the impact which World War One had on the United States of America. It affected both those fighting and the home front, including wives and children of war soldiers. The brutality of the war opened an eye for the Americans, which influenced an expression of the horrifying thoughts brought on by the war through the use of literature. Due to World War One, Journalism became more popular, Romanticism moved to the Realism movement, and poetry moved from being metaphorical to being straightforward.
Fitch, Noël Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in
Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time is a true representation of his "lost generation" for the simple reason that all generations are eventually lost as time goes by. Hemingway focuses on a generation he knows about, his own. It becomes apparent throughout the novel that Hemingway is deconstructing the world without overly using vast amounts of description. All of the “messages" bring the reader to an understanding of a generation, the "lost generation" that appears to result from Hemingway's novel.
The World War One novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There were many words you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene” (Hemingway, ‘A Farewell to Arms’, 1929). Hemingway knew the horrors of war. He was a veteran of World War One. This was a war where 65 million troops were mobilized, and 37 million were killed, wounded, or went missing. War was seen as glorious until these views were brought in. Hemingway became famous for his writing as a member of the ‘Lost Generation’ of American writers. He, along with writers such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T. S. Eliot made up the great American writers of the time. However, they did have their European
In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.
With the end of the first World War in the year 1918, many soldiers, young and old, came home to their families dark and cynical. Many famous authors of this time, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, wrote short stories not of their times at war, but of how material the world truly is. These were considered the “Lost Generation,” due to their lack of belief in humans in general and their dreary outlook of life in general. F. Scott Fitzgerald is famous for his book, The Great Gatsby which showed how he as an author viewed the Roaring Twenties, as one of the main themes is the idea that the American Dream is dead and humans are fickle and obsessed with material things, like money. On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, was the bright young generation, which “came into power” shortly after the Lost Generation. These young people were full of bright ideas and with the American Economy is a good place, everyone seemed to be happy. Art and fashion changed drastically, w...
Thesis: The French Revolution transformed not only the French society, but also had a huge influence and marked impact on what the purposes of the arts and their expression were now, making profound changes in what they would supposed to be used for, in the form of the Neoclassic works of art that made their appearance prior to the French Revolution, in which very special emphasis is given to the patriotic, the nationalist feeling, together with a strong sense of self-sacrifice that should be present in every person’s heart.
losses in blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of the modern age, not only
The First World War, The Great War between Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria) and Allies Powers (Russia, France, Britain, Italy, and the United States) started in July 1914 and ended in November 1918. It changed the people and their point of views; writers changed their subjects and their literary techniques, readers changed their taste and expectations. It has had many significant influences on Literature in American culture. For instance, T.S. Eliot's poems, "The Waste Land”, which he referred to post-war Europe, expressed a sense of anguish about life, using many different historical, religious and literary references. Eliot witnessed the social turmoil and transformation surrounding World War 1. The modernist movement heavily influenced his work, and his works became the greatest expression of the perspective of the modern mind. In his poem, The Waste Land, Eliot explains that the Fire Sermon corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount. It combines contrasting religious references that create a sense of multiplicity, ambivalence, and...