The Lost Generation

Lost Generation is a literature school original in American in the twentieth century. Lost Generation refers to the generation after the World War I. Meanwhile, it also refers to the young writers who lived as expatriates in Western Europe for a short time. Besides Hemingway, there is Lewis Mumford, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Matthew, Sherwood Anderson, and many other novelists. The Lost Generation is also called the Sad Young Man by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his book which describes the disillusioned younger generation after the First World War.
The Lost Generation was a group of rebellious youth appeared in America after the First World War. The 1920s was an age of Prohibition. Alcoholic beverages were outlawed by a constitutional amendment. However, young people cheerfully evaded the law in thousands of “speakeasies” (illegal bars). They played jazz, took drugs and bravely denunciated the Puritan morality and the social convention. At the same time, a lot of works appeared to reflect these young men’s depression and sad emotion. They seemed to lose their directions for the future.
The Lost Generation’s writers held many common points. At first, all of them were weary of the imperialistic wars but cannot find the way out. Expatriation was another common point. Many young writers had an experience living in the European countries, especially in Paris. Although the government pronounced “recovering the atmosphere before the war”, war had left deep hurt in people’s heart. Therefore, the writers’ self-exile became the way escaping from the reality.
Actually, the young people’s rebellion was inevitable. It must be remembered that the revolt was not confined within the United States, but affected the entire Western world as the result of the aftermath of the first serious war in a century. Although the government was reluctant to admit, the United States was not isolated from the outside world any more. The October Revolution quickly swept across all over the world, and exposed the inherent contradiction of capitalism. The booming of the industry made the traditional value out of work at that time.
The war acted as a direct blasting fuse. The young people’s revolt started with the World War I. At the beginning of the war, people were still idealistic towards the war with the typical American adventurousness. By the strenuous jingoism Theodore Roosevelt’s enhancement, the young men began to enlist under foreign flags. At the same time, all the media such as radios, televisions and newspapers propagated the optimism at the front. Moreover, the government tried its best to persuade the youth to join “the glorious war” under the slogan of “democracy” through which they could realize their personal value. Thus the young men of college age who knew little about modern warfare took part in the European conflicts with the idealistic dream against war and the excitement of the military adventure. However, after witnessing the massacre of human being and tasting the cruelty of modern warfare, the young men began to realize that the war was not the one they thought before. They felt cheated by the government. This turning of mind made them angry.
After being fed up with the pains of the war, a lot of soldiers returned home. However, it was despaired to return to a home town totally untouched by the wars and they found their old jobs had been taken by those who did not join in the war. Because of the recession of economy, they could not find a new job. At the same time, the small villages they lived in were uncomfortable to them. They found that the citizens still talked about the war bombastically, which made them guilty for two or three years.
The “Lost Generation” was never lost actually. In the book—Backgrounds of American Literature Thought , it was written that “It (The Lost Generation) was shocked, uprooted for a time, bitter critical, rebellious, iconoclastic, experimental, often absurd, more often misdirected—but never ‘lost’”. (Zhang Hanxi, P165, 1995) The achievement in literature can prove this point of view. A lot of great works was produced by the Lost Generation. Generally speaking, the Lost Generation was a group of people who were sobered up by the War.