Lost Generation

Lost Generation

What was Lost Generation?

Lost Generation was a group of American writers during World War I, who were not only influenced by the war and post-war era (the post-war era is more accurate), but also by the Spanish Influenza and the Great Depression.

And why lost?

Many of the writers actually went and fought in the war and that's why the generation is called "lost". They were feeling "lost" because the values they hd before had no longer been relevant in the post-war world. It also refers to feeling "directionless", "wandering", or even "disoriented", as mentions Robert Longley (Who Was the Lost Generation?, 2023)

Characteristics

As mentioned before, the writers experienced the war and that's why war played a part in their books along with a cynical perspective on life. They also rejected American materialism and very cynically presented the American Dream. 

Writers of the Lost Generation

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most prominent writer of the Lost Generation. His main pieces of work are The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway is also winner of the Nobel Prize.

Gertrude Stein was a close friend to Ernest Hemingway and is credited for coming up with the term "Lost Generation". 

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was also a close friend to both Ernest Hemingway and Getrude Stein and after serving in the army also joined the Lost Generation, however, ho mostly explored the idea of the American Dream. His well - known books are The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. (He is also connected with the term Roaring Twenties :-)

T. S. Eliot is also a Nobel Prize Laureate and his most famous piece of work is a poem called The Waste Land.

Sources:

"Lost Generation." Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc,.                          www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Generation. Accessed 21 Sept. 2023.

"Take Online Courses. Earn College Crdit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers."                  Study.Com / Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools,                           Degrees & Careers, study.com/learn/lesson/the-lost-generation-expatriate-                  writers-of-the-20th-cetury.html. Accessed 21 Sept. 2023.

"Lost Generation." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Sept. 2023,                                           en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation. 

Pavla Hasoňová