What Was The Lost Generation?

The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. The phrase signifies a disillusioned postwar generation characterized by lost values, lost belief in the idea of human progress, and a mood of futility and despair leading to hedonism. World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and died, or returned home either physically or mentally wounded, and their faith in the moral guideposts that had earlier given them hope, were no longer valid...they were "Lost."

Although the description -- in its original sense -- only applied to survivors of the war who had been unable or unwilling to settle back into the routines of peacetime life, other writers eagerly adopted the catch phrase, using it more and more loosely until “The Lost Generation” came to signify the whole anonymous horde of young Americans abroad, particularly those with literary or artistic inclinations.

In A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1964 after both Hemingway and Stein were dead, Hemingway reveals that the phrase was actually originated by the garage owner who serviced Stein's car. She was unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic and asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a "lost generation" — une génération perdue. Stein, in telling Hemingway the story, added, "That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”

When Hemingway heard the story at the rue de Fleurus, he decided to use the sentence "You are all a lost generation" (attributing it to Gertrude Stein) as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, a story about the 'uncivilized', aimless lives of the very people M. Pernollet had in mind. Due to the book's tremendous success, the phrase was guaranteed enduring fame.

The novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation. However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.

Questions To Think About

Do you consider your generation to be "lost" as this generation was?

If these authors were still around today do you think they would consider your generation to be "lost" just as Gertrude Stein considered them to be?

Can you relate to any of these authors? If so which ones and why?

Ernest Hemingway


Ernest Hemingway, (1899-1961), was one of the most famous and influential American writers of the 1900s. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man And The Sea (1952)

Hemingway used a plain, forceful prose style characterized by simple sentences and few adjectives or adverbs. He wrote crisp, accurate dialogue and exact descriptions of places and things. His style has been widely imitated.

Hemingway also created a type of male character, sometimes called the "Hemingway hero," who faces violence and destruction with courage. The trait of "grace under pressure" -- that is, what appears to be unemotional behavior even in dangerous situations -- is part of what became known as the "Hemingway code."

Early life:
 Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he worked briefly as a reporter for THE KANSAS CITY (Missouri) STAR. In 1918 -- during World War I -- he served as a Red Cross volunteer in Italy, driving an ambulance and working at a canteen. After working in Italy for six weeks, he was seriously wounded. Hemingway's wartime experiences help suggest why his writing emphasizes physical and psychological violence and the need for courage.

In 1921, Hemingway went to Paris, where he met a number of American authors. He became the principal spokesman for a group of disillusioned younger writers sometimes called the "Lost Generation."

Hemingway's first published work, Three Stories and Ten Poems, appeared in 1923. It was followed by In Our Time (1924), a collection of short stories partly based on his boyhood experiences in northern Michigan.

Rise to fame:
Hemingway's most famous novels are two of his early works, The Sun Also Rises, (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). The Sun Also Rises portrays a group of Americans who, like the members of the "Lost Generation," were disillusioned by the war. A Farewell To Arms, set in Italy in World War I, is a tragic love story.

Hemingway returned to the United States in 1927. Two collections of his short stories were published during the 1930s. They contain some of his best writing, including "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." He also wrote some nonfiction. Death In The Afternoon (1932) deals with bullfighting, which fascinated him. In Green Hills of Africa (1935), Hemingway described his experiences on an African safari.

In 1936, Hemingway went to Spain and covered the Spanish Civil War as a war correspondent. He used the war as the setting of For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). This novel, about an idealistic American fighting the fascist forces in Spain, is one of Hemingway's finest books.

Later years:
 By the 1940s, Hemingway had become an international celebrity. He was famous for his colorful life style and his extreme concern with presenting a tough, masculine image.

Hemingway's first published work after 1940 was Across the River and into the Trees (1950). This novel reflects a growing bitterness toward life. It is largely regarded as inferior because of its sentimentality. In The Old Man and the Sea (1952), he revived his theme of a strong man courageously accepting fate. The hero, an old fisherman, catches a giant marlin after a long and brutal struggle -- only to have the fish eaten by sharks.

Hemingway suffered physical and mental illnesses during the 1950s. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961. A Movable Feast was published in 1964. It is an autobiographical book based on notebooks he kept in Paris in the 1920s. Two novels were also published after his death –Islands in the Stream (1970) and the unfinished The Garden Of Eden (1986).

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