Lost Generation Writers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, Eliot (PDF)

Representatives of Modernism part 01/ Lost Generation  After the war, a generation of young individuals, known as the "Lost Generation," emerged due to the profound disillusionment and lack of purpose resulting from their experiences of the war. It refers to a group of American...

Representatives of Modernism part 01/ Lost Generation  After the war, a generation of young individuals, known as the "Lost Generation," emerged due to the profound disillusionment and lack of purpose resulting from their experiences of the war. It refers to a group of American writers who came of age during World War I and gained literary recognition in the 1920s. The term was inspired by a statement overheard by Gertrude Stein and later used by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises (1926). This generation had witnessed immense suffering and death during the war, leading to a loss of faith in traditional values and a focus on material wealth. The Lost Generation felt disconnected because their traditional values no longer applied in the postwar era and they felt spiritually estranged from a United States that seemed to be overly focused on materialism and lacked emotional depth. The main figures of the lost generation  Ernest Hemingway  , born on July 21, 1899 and died on July 2, 1961. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, primarily recognized for his novels and short stories as well as his successful career as a journalist and war correspondent.  Following his graduation from high school, he commenced his professional journey as a journalist. During his service as an ambulance driver in World War I, he sustained injuries. As part of a renowned group of expatriate writers in Paris, he ventured into a lifestyle of travel, skiing, fishing, and hunting, all of which manifested in his literary works.  His collection of short stories, In Our Time, was published in 1925, followed by the novel The Sun Also Rises in 1926. Subsequent novels include A Farewell to Arms in 1929 and To Have and Have Not in 1937. His enduring affection for Spain, including his fascination with bullfighting, led to his role as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, which ultimately inspired the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Additional collections of short stories encompass Men Without Women in 1927, Winner Take Nothing in 1933, and The Fifth Column in 1938. In recognition of his literary achievements, he was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.  John Dos Passos  was born on January 14, 1896, in Chicago, Illinois, and passed away on September 28, 1970, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a prominent American author and a key figure among the novelists of the post-World War I "lost generation." His trilogy U.S.A. solidified his reputation as a social historian and a radical critic of the state of American life.  During his time as a newspaper correspondent in the postwar years, Dos Passos traveled extensively in Spain and other countries, which expanded his understanding of history, honed his social awareness, and affirmed his radical views. Over time, his initial subjectivity gave way to a broader and more robust objective realism.  In his novel Manhattan Transfer, published in 1925, Dos Passos offers a rapid-transit rider's perspective of the metropolis, with the narrative wavering between the lives of over a dozen characters in a nervous, jerky, and impressionistic manner.  Dos Passos enhances the histories of his fictional characters by incorporating real history through "newsreels" – skillfully curated montages of authentic newspaper headlines and popular songs of the era. Additionally, he integrates biographies of influential figures like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, President Woodrow Wilson, and J.P. Morgan, while also featuring members of the "other nation," such as Socialist Eugene V. Debs, economist Thorstein Veblen, labor organizer Joe Hill, and the Unknown Soldier of World War I. Furthermore, he employs a "camera-eye" technique,  Thomas Stearns Eliot  , an American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, was a prominent figure in the Modernist poetry movement. He was recognized as a poet, dramatist, and literary critic, and was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 for his innovative contributions to contemporary poetry. His notable works include The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets, as well as the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, and the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. Eliot was born in the United States but moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 at the age of 25, and later became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39.  Eliot's impact on Anglo-American culture extended from the 1920s to the end of the century. His linguistic, stylistic, and metrical experiments breathed new life into English poetry, and through a series of critical essays, he challenged established beliefs and established new ones. Exemplary Major Modernist Authors and Works  Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse  During the Victorian era, women were primarily expected to marry and oversee their husbands' affairs and businesses. Before getting married, they would be taught domestic chores like weaving, cooking, laundry, and housekeeping, unless they were from affluent families that had servants to manage these tasks. Women were not allowed to seek education or knowledge beyond the household, as this was considered to be the domain of men. According to critic Richard D. Altick, women were viewed as inferior to men in all aspects except for their femininity. They were supposed to confine themselves to domestic duties rather than engage in worldly matters. These principles were enforced by the patriarchal society, and women who did not comply with them risked remaining unmarried.  Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse is considered her most significant work, depicting the characteristics of Victorian marriage by portraying the daily life of a Victorian family facing challenges in the English countryside. The various characters in the story offer different viewpoints, adding complexity to Woolf's narrative and inviting readers to interpret metaphors, allusions, and irony throughout the novel. Set on two days and ten years apart, the novel revolves around the Ramsay family's anticipation of visiting The Lighthouse, with much of the action taking place in the characters' thoughts.  This work serves as a concrete representation of the transition from the Victorian to the modern era, illuminating the influence of external factors such as the Great War on the shift. Virginia Woolf's feminist concerns are evident in the novel, particularly in her exploration of women's opportunities to engage in various aspects of life. The novel presents a dichotomy between the traditional maternal figure, Mrs. Ramsay, and the independent unmarried artist, Lily, reflecting the contrast between Victorian values and modern independence.  Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness  3. Joseph Conrad, a non-native English speaker, managed to overcome his literary challenges (Garnett, 1928) and produce the thought-provoking and ambiguous work Heart of Darkness.  In 1890, he traveled to Africa and journeyed up the Congo River with the Belgian colonial service, experiences that would later influence his notable literary works.  Conrad's Heart of Darkness narrates Marlow's journey through the African jungle and his quest for the European Kurtz, who exploits the natives by imposing violence on them. The novel is primarily based on Conrad's own experiences in Congo, where he witnessed how Europeans exploited and traded the natives for their own gain during his journey. The book is considered a critique of imperialism and condemns the immoral treatment of African natives by European colonizers in the 19th century. According to Keith Booker, "the book addresses issues such as imperialism, capitalism, race, and gender, which were central to the European mindset at the turn of the century. Conrad's ambivalent treatment of these issues is highly representative of the way they were addressed in various European discourses of the time" (p.217).  James Joyce’s Ulysses  The book tells the stories of three people from Dublin during a single day on June 16, 1904, which has become known as Bloomsday among fans of the book. Ulysses is the Romanized version of the name Odysseus, the hero from Homer's famous poem The Odyssey. The book draws comparisons between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus.  There are also connections to Shakespeare's Hamlet and to other literary and mythological characters, such as Jesus, Elijah, Moses, Dante, and Don Giovanni. The novel explores themes like antisemitism, human sexuality, British control in Ireland, Catholicism, and Irish nationalism in the context of early 20th-century Dublin. The book is full of references and written in various styles. Joyce states: The pity is... the public will demand and find a moral in my book—or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.... In Ulysses I have recorded, simultaneously, what a man says, sees, thinks, and what such seeing, thinking, saying does, to what you Freudians call the subconscious. (as cited in Barnes, 1922).  Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, is heavily influenced by his experiences in Paris. The main character, Jake Barnes, is a World War I veteran whose injury has rendered him impotent and unable to consummate his love for Lady Brett Ashley. Ashley, a divorced woman in the 1920s, embraces promiscuity and newfound sexual liberation. The novel aims to represent the aimlessness of postwar Europe, symbolized through Jake's injury, which prevents him from expressing his romantic love both figuratively and literally.  A Farewell to Arms revolves around Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver in Italy, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. The novel presents a contrast to Barnes and Brett in The Sun Also Rises, as Henry and Barkley do end up together in the end, but their inability to escape the war disrupts their happily ever after. While The Sun Also Rises portrays a character whose physical condition directly relates to the war, A Farewell to Arms reflects the subtle, pervasive impact of war in societal structures. Nevertheless, both novels center on war as the  Hemingway's attempt to infuse an idealistic backdrop with political significance can be attributed to the political views of his expatriate contemporaries. Hemingway's theory of the iceberg, a writing technique that emphasizes minimalist prose and narration without excessive context, is evident in his own argument: "If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave out or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff [that] you, not your editors, omit." (1932, p.192). According to Hemingway, by omitting exposition and context, the essence of every story becomes more apparent and forceful. This was Hemingway's most significant accomplishment as a novelist and short-story writer: his ability to convey social truths through prose crafted from what remained "after eliminating all the words that one could not stand to hear." (Baym and Levine 2013, p.10).