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A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation

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A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation Opción, Año 34, Especial No.15 (2018): 1436-1463 ISSN 1012-1587/ISSNe: 2477-9385 A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation Seyedeh Zahra Nozen1 1Department of English, Amin Police Science University [email protected] Shahriar Choubdar (MA) Malayer University, Malayer, Iran [email protected] Abstract This study aims to the evaluation of the features of the group of writers who chose Paris as their new home to produce their works and the overall dominant atmosphere in that specific time in the generation that has already experienced war through comparative research methods. As a result, writers of this group tried to find new approaches to report different contexts of modern life. As a conclusion, regardless of every member of the lost generation bohemian and wild lifestyles, the range, creativity, and influence of works produced by this community of American expatriates in Paris are remarkable. Key words: Lost Generation, World War, Disillusionment. Recibido: 04-12--2017 Aceptado: 10-03-2018 1437 Zahra Nozen and Shahriar Choubdar Opción, Año 34, Especial No.15(2018):1436-1463 Un estudio crítico de la pérdida y ganancia de la generación perdida Resumen Este estudio tiene como objetivo la evaluación de las características del grupo de escritores que eligieron París como su nuevo hogar para producir sus obras y la atmósfera dominante en ese momento específico en la generación que ya ha experimentado la guerra a través de métodos de investigación comparativos. Como resultado, los escritores de este grupo trataron de encontrar nuevos enfoques para informar diferentes contextos de la vida moderna. Como conclusión, independientemente de cada miembro de la generación perdida de estilos de vida bohemios y salvajes, el rango, la creatividad y la influencia de las obras producidas por esta comunidad de expatriados estadounidenses en París son notables. Palabras clave: generación perdida, guerra mundial, desilusión. 1. INTRODUCTION Lost Generation is known as a term attributed to the group of writers who were born between 1883 and 1900 and experienced many striking events which happened in the first half of the twentieth century, especially the two World Wars and the different social and political changes afterward. The term is coined by Gertrude Stein and Hemingway (1964) made it popular by mentioning it in his The Sun Also Rises as an epigraph. Later on, Hemingway (1964) included this phrase in his A Moveable Feast, All of you young people who served A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation 1438 in the war. You are a lost generation, he claimed Stein happened to hear this term in a garage while having her car serviced. Most of the writers who are known to be under this title are exiled American writers that found Paris suitable for their Avant-guard activities. Puritan America was not a proper place for writers who wanted to find freedom of existence and freshness of thought in a way they could find anywhere else in the world. Paris got more freedom, it was cheaper and sprightlier city which was entitled city of lights (Chandler, 1981). In the last years of his life in his A Moveable Feast which was only published posthumously, the American author Chandler describes Paris in this way: There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were, nor how it was changed, nor with what difficulties now what ease, it could be reached. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it (1981: 236). These writers were disillusioned by World Wars and lost faith in any social, political and religious institutions. They believed a human being is no longer capable of finding prosperity in the aforementioned concepts. Lost Generation is not only a term which contains well-known writers but also a modernist movement that influenced so many authors who never met these writers, so it can be broadened to a term which can be defined as a movement with traceable elements in the majority of post-war writers and pioneers of modernism. This term includes existential and psychological leftovers of the Great War. Like other modernists, the writers of this movement 1439 Zahra Nozen and Shahriar Choubdar Opción, Año 34, Especial No.15(2018):1436-1463 tried to seek sense in the world that lost its last traces of social, spiritual and religious entities in a war that brought about the viciousness and devastation. To find this meaning in the new era, they turned their trend from exterior elements to interior ones and from Victorian values, which were social and moral, to existential and mental qualities of life. The experience of the war and its brutality shattered their belief in the existence of a spiritual supremacy who governs the world and a single absolute pathway to reach prosperity if it exists at all. 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF FIRST DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Among many political movements, the twentieth century witnessed an entirely different method of governing of the states. By the commencement of the twentieth century, the monarchy was still the governing system of many countries in the world. Queen Victoria, who ruled the vastest empire on which the sun never sets died with the advent of the new millennium. Many believed her death would put an end to monarchy system which did not come true. In spite of the sensation of a great change, nothing actually changed in 1901 which had any significant effect on the lives of those who had been her subjects. That the old queen was no longer on the throne did not alter the way they went about their work, thought about their families, worshiped and prayed, A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation 1440 sought pleasure and suffered, nor did it improve or worsen their real incomes and standards of living (Roberts, 1999: 9). On the other side of the Atlantic, an assassination shook the political atmosphere of America. William McKinley, the president of the United States, was killed and his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt succeeded his office. All in all, these changes in great political roles did not change the political system in the states until other authoritative sources made their way for changing the long lasting structures of governing. Migrations of early twentieth century, technological and scientific advances and great wars could be seen as the main reasons for political changes in the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Immigrations from Europe to America dramatically increased by the last decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century. People tried their chances in finding new life and job opportunities in their new land. So many people left their homelands because of religious persecutions and war. A magnificent growth in manufacturing machinery altered the appearance of the cities and lifestyle of their citizens. Horses and carriages were replaced with automobiles and consequently, stables gave their place to gas stations. The traditional way of posting envelopes was substituted by using the telegram or the newly invented telephone. Scientific advances and theories engendered a sweeping view towards the old-fashioned accepted way of understanding science and the world. The classic physics, which was founded by Newton spread the belief that everything in the world is predictable by the means of physics and its laws. The new perspective which was 1441 Zahra Nozen and Shahriar Choubdar Opción, Año 34, Especial No.15(2018):1436-1463 introduced by Einstein denounced conventional absolutism and broadened the relative perception of different physical entities. All these factors were the primary reasons for alteration of the positivist view towards scientific knowledge and traditional approaches in science and governing states. By such reconstructions and social changes New Enlightenment prepared the conditions for a gradual shift towards democracy and abolished the dynastic ruling of states. 3. THE ORIGIN OF THE LOST GENERATION To refer to the Lost Generation’s origin, one should first evaluate the Modernist movement. Although these movements were shaped outside the United States, it can be also defined in the American context. There are many suppositions about the starting date of the Lost Generation movement but as Bernard DeVoto, critic and historian, asserts nobody can decide just what a literary generation is because one cannot categorize each writer in a particular generation due to the continuous procedure of making up of such generations: The time scale is ambiguous: the first novelist of the Younger Generation began publishing in 1900, its first poet died in 1886, and its twilight genius is only thirty-five. No date can be agreed on for its beginning: Mr. [Carl] Van Doren believes that it began with the Armistice, […]. The A Critical Study of the Loss and Gain of the Lost Generation 1442 end is also undetermined. We are told that the period closed with 1929 and the Wall Street crash, […]. But wherever you fix a date for the beginning of dotage, you find that nine- tenths of the reasonably good writing since that deadline has been done by men you have extinguished. (1936: 18) This younger generation gets its meaning in its opposite older generation. If the younger generation of writers in the twentieth- century American literature is mentioned, this term distinguishes them from the Victorians. There are different explanations for the younger generation and it is similar to the term lost generation in this respect. This term was used by other authors in different articles like A Generation Lost? Written by Florence Valentine Keys but their implication did not contain any comprehensive mode of cultural and literary meaning and it only referred to a generation of soldiers who could not get back to their normal lives after the war.
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