The Lost Generation - W5 Literature online lesson 2-3

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Epigraph

An engraved inscription
A quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme. 

Lost Generation?

What was the article about you had to read?

The Lost Generation

"All Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken..."  

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Decadence - Does a lot of money and partying really bring you happiness? 
• Gender roles - soldiers had lost some of their 'masculinity' in the war or after the war. Traditional ideas of a strong man and a woman he needed to care for were not logical anymore. 
• Idealised past - some writers thought it nice to think back to a past without war and wrote about this. 

War > destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously good things would happen. Good soldiers, good men still died in the trenches. > As a result people started to live their lives as if there was no tomorrow. > The Lost Generation criticised this in their books. Good example of this is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. 

Gender roles > women didn't need to go to war but they had to stay at home and care for their families without the help of the patriarch of the family. Usually they did pretty well and it was hard to go back to the situation before this. 1919 - right to vote for women in America - 1928 in Britain - 1919 Netherlands

The authors

• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ernest Hemingway
• T. S. Eliot
• John Steinbeck 
• William Faulkner 
• Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein - not the most famous of authors but her home in Paris was one of the Salon's where artists would meet and therefore she is tremendously impotant when we are talking about the lost generation.
 "brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art."

Life partner > Alice B Toklas

Ernest Hemingway

• WWI as an ambulance driver
• Paris - first book in 1924
• Cuba - 1939-1960

• Depression > Took his own life in 1961
• 'Hero' > adventurous and widely publicized life
• Nobel Prize in Literature 1954
• Ice-berg theory 

WWI > was rejected for military services because of a defective eye. Ambulance driver for the American Red Cross

Went to Paris as a Journalist. Met Stein there and was encouraged by the people he met at Stein's to publish his prose works. 

In 1960 he had to leave Cuba (he was either forced to leave by the American government because he would be considered a traitor if he didn't OR he left because he didn't agree with the uprising that was happening at that moment). Speculation about that.
He was depressed before that. Paranoid that he was being watched by the US government. > suffered from the same condition his father had that would lead to severe mental problems hemochromatosis (His brother Leicester and sister Ursula also killed themselves). Heavy drinking didn't help the matter of course.

Hobbies included, bullfighting, skiing, fishing and hunting. He married 4 times and divorced 3 of his wives. 

All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war—in A Farewell to Arms he focused on its pointlessness, in For Whom the Bell Tolls on the comradeship it creates—and, as World War II progressed, he made his way to London as a journalist.

Themes in Hemingway's writing

• Nature
• Death
• Fatalistic Heroism
• Disillusionment 

Nature > Lots of beautiful landscapes in his short fiction. 
Ability to conquer nature by hunting and killing animals is the test of masculinity. 

Death > or the inevitability of death or the belief that life is meaningless and that resistance to death is futile,

Fatalistic heroism - death is certain, face death with stoicism and resignation. 

Disillusionment > Lost after WWI > Lost Generation but he's also an important writer in Modernism. 
In the story you're going to read > A Clean and Well-Lighted place you'll be able to spot this disillusionment.

Hemingway and others drifted into existentialism, a philosophy that posits life is meaningless until an individual gives his or her own life meaning, and nihilism, a philosophy that posits life is meaningless and without objective value.

Homework

Read pages 10-15 in your literature booklet and answer the questions on page 72 - The Lost Generation.
Answer the questions here on LessonUp. You can also take a picture of your written work.

10. Why is a group writers called "The Lost Generation"? Mention as many reasons as you can.

11. What are their characteristics in writing? Mention as many as you can.

12. Mention three themes that these writers often used and describe them.

13. How can you explain or illustrate one of more themes that you mentioned in question 12 in 'A Clean and Well-lighted Place'?

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning and that man is an insignificant speck in a great sea of nothingness. The older waiter makes this idea as clear as he can when he says, “It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too.” When he substitutes the Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indicates that religion, to which many people turn to find meaning and purpose, is also just nothingness. Rather than pray with the actual words, “Our Father who art in heaven,” the older waiter says, “Our nada who art in nada”—effectively wiping out both God and the idea of heaven in one breath. Not everyone is aware of the nothingness, however. For example, the younger waiter hurtles through his life hastily and happily, unaware of any reason why he should lament. For the old man, the older waiter, and the other people who need late-night cafés, however, the idea of nothingness is overwhelming and leads to despair.

The old man and older waiter in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” struggle to find a way to deal with their despair, but even their best method simply subdues the despair rather than cures it. The old man has tried to stave off despair in several unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, well-lit café. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the night-time and the café, and although he is essentially in his own private world, sitting by himself in the café is not the same as being alone.

The older waiter, in his mocking prayers filled with the word nada, shows that religion is not a viable method of dealing with despair, and his solution is the same as the old man’s: he waits out the nighttime in cafés. He is particular about the type of café he likes: the café must be well lit and clean. Bars and bodegas, although many are open all night, do not lessen despair because they are not clean, and patrons often must stand at the bar rather than sit at a table. The old man and the older waiter also glean solace from routine. The ritualistic café-sitting and drinking help them deal with despair because it makes life predictable. Routine is something they can control and manage, unlike the vast nothingness that surrounds them.

14. What is Hemingway's special writing-style? Mention the characteristics.