Summary:
Apparently, The Sun Also Rises is the successive novel of A Farewell To Arms. Based on Frederic's morality,faith and justice waken by the war,as his successor, Jack lives an aimless life in Paris. Therefore, it is not hard to find that the world war one undercut traditional notions of morality, faith and justice.
Analyzing Frederic's charateristic to study the formation of the Lost Generation
Abstract
This paper makes a thematic study on the formation of the lost generation based on the analysis of Hemingway's experience in WWI and his novel A Farewell to Arms's protagonist, Frederic Henry's charateristic.The exploration of this subject is made in three steps with the young Hemingway's experience as its clue. The first part of the essay mainly makes a short introduction of the lost generation.In the second part, I choose the novel A Farewell to Arms to analyze the changes of Henry's charateristic.Then, I compare the fictional hero with Hemingway in the real life,which proves that the war has a great impact on the joiners. In the third part,I conclude the historical and cultural reasons that couse the formation of the lost generation.
Part I
The lost generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling aganist what America had became by the 1900's. The lost generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because the country was devoid of a cosmopolitan culture. So they travelled to European's cosmopolitan cities,such as Paris and London.Here they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life.Most of them took a part in world war one which left them with painful experience. In fact, the term was coined by Gertrude Stein who once called Hemingway "the lost generation."Therefore, Hemingway cited this term into his first novel the sun also rises and became the represantative of the group of writers.As the description of the charaters in the sun also rises,the lost generation writers' living attitide was quite negetive.They killed time by drinking,dancing and had no aims. Actually, they were not born to do it.There are two reasons, I think, at least fored them to do. First it is their experience in WWI. In the world war one,most lost generation writers,such as Hemingway,Fitzralder,found the "ture"face of the society, that is,in the battlefields,people kill each other for survial.The cruelty of the world forced them to respond with debauchery. Second, they used this kind of lifestyle to rebelling aganist the govenment. In 1917,President Wilson asked the declaration to Germany. He encourage the young men to fight for freedom and democracy. When the patriotic young men came to the battlefields, however, they found there was out of freedom or democracy but just corpses lying here and there.So they had a common feeling that they were betrayed by the govenment and wanted to rebound on with the lost lifestyle.That's why the lost generation writers were apart from American society,not only in geograhpic terms, but also in their style of writing and subjects they choose to write about.(add why Hemingway did not want to write something about his hometown ---Oak Park)
"None of Hemingway's fictional characters grew up in Oak Park.His story of the returning veteran,"Soldier's home" uses some of his own experience but he moved the locale to Oklahoma.......It is hardly albe to imagine Faulkner not writing about Oxford,Mississippi,or Steinbeck leaving the Salinas valley out of his fiction.It is almost axiomatic that American authors write about their home towns,yet Hemingway did not.He may have rejected Oak Park's frequently pompous, sometimes hypocritical Victorian social behavior, but he never fouled the nest"(the young Hemingway P52)
Part II
one
As to the lost generation, I have to mention the sun also rises because the novel is the represantative work of the lost generation. But as to study the formation of the lost generation,Hemingway's other famous novel, A Farewell to Arms has to be put up with. In this fiction, Hemingway pointed out deirectly that the reason that let the once-joined young men is the war.However,in the sun also rises,Hemingway never explicitly states that Jack and his friends'aimless lives are a result of the war,even he did not state their lives are aimless. So I chooes A Farewell To Arms to study the lost generation's formation,I believe the later published novel ( A Farewell To Arms was published in 1929,there years later than The Sun Also Rises) is more mature and Hemingway's stand also more clear,that is,he hates the war!
A Farewell To Arms is a story of Frederic Henry,an American ambulance driver for the Italian Army during the world war one.The novel taks us through Frederic's experience in the war and his love affair with Catherine Barkley,an American nurse in Italy.The novel traces his movement toward an understanding of the world.At the beginning of the novel, Frederic firstly shows his indifference to the war.As an ambulance driver,he need not stay at the front all the time,so he has a lot of time drinking and making friends with British nureses in which he can forget the war easily.And when he flirting with Catherine, he has no will to talk about the war.But Catherine is different---more mature,replies,"it is very hard.There is no place to drop it." Permanently scared by the loss of her fiance, she already knows that the war can not simply be "droped."Why does Frederic show less maturity than Catherine? I suggest because he never losses or suffers until then. Additionally, Frederic tells us that his declaration of love for Catherine is a lie."I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her,"he elaborates,comparing their affair to a bridge game.He seems almost boyish at this point in the story.Furthermore.through the conversation between Frederic and the priest( he is a chaplain and Frederic's spirital support),which supports further the point that Frederic does not believe in God and love nobody so far.However,the novel's turnning point comes out when Frederic was wounded in a bombardment by shell shrapnels.From then on,Frederic knows more because he experiences more.He completely realizes that he is in a war and not only in a love affair with a nures,although which is elevated to a ture love.However the change,from not to love to love,is fatal.It foreshadows that if Catherine dies,Frederic will get nothing because he loves her as a religion.However,they have to use the way,loving each other,to deal with the indifference of the war.This point can be proved in the conversation between Frederic and Count Greffi(Frederic's old friend in Milan).He tells the count that what he values most is someone he loves and that he "might become very devout" For that matter, he has replaced his loyalty from the Italian Army to Catherine.
Another apparent change of Frederic is demostrated at the start of CharpterXXXIV,after Frederic "desertion from the Italian Army" Of the hostile aviators with whom he shares a train compartment,he says that "in the old days I would have insulted then and picked a fight." Now,no longer insecure due to his experiences in the love and war, he does not even feel insulted. With the development of his personal relationship to the war and love, Frederic comes to realize that there is no God and life is diaordered,meaningless,indifferent and sometimes hostile to man. He learns the knowledge from the blast of the dugout when they are eating in it, the doctor's absence from the hospital, the choas of the retreat, the sudden and unreasonalbe death of Aymo who gets killed by his own people and the death of Catherine.He also learns no one could win the victory of struggle with nature in terms of death. "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.But those that will not break it kills .It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry"(???)
From the changes, I find the war indeed matures Frederic, but in the end of the story,after Catherine's death,Frederic says nothing just walking to the hotel in the rain.This kind of muteness is the better way to rebound upon the war'indifference. Because of the war Frederic gets nonthing except lossing his spirit, which foreshadows his former novel,The Sun Also Rises.In the book, the protagonist, Jack Barnes,is a veteren of world war one.He was wounded in the war and lost his sexual ability. Jack and his friends no longer believe in anything, their lives are empty. They fill their time with inconsequential and escapist activities,such as drinking,dancing.That is the best way to escape from the cruel world but let them become debauchery. Apparently, The Sun Also Rises is the successive novel of A Farewell To Arms. Based on Frederic's morality,faith and justice waken by the war,as his successor, Jack lives an aimless life in Paris. Therefore, it is not hard to find that the world war one undercut traditional notions of morality, faith and justice.No longer able to rely on the traditional beliefs that gave life meaning, the men and women who experienced the war became psychologically and morally lost, and they wandered aimlessly in a world that appeared meaningless.
Part II
two
Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest Amrican writers in 20th century,is the representative of the Lost Generation writer.He was born on July 21,1899,in Oak Park,Illinois. He had ever take part in three wars, WWI,Spanish Civil War and WWII. As a war writer, Hemingway put a quite number of his own war experiences into his novel. He joined the world war one as a ambulance driver for Italian army and wounded in a bombardment which let over 200 pieces of shrapnel be lodged in his legs. Then, he was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Valor and his subsequent recovery at a hospital in Milan where he had love affair with his nurse Agnes von Kurowsky.All this experience inspired his great novel A Farewell To Arms.As the hero's experience,Hemingway also had a similar one.The WWI experience leaves Hemingway endless pain.When he returned home from Italy in January of 1919 he found his parents who never quite appreciated what their son had been through and living with them was difficult.Hemingway's short story "Soldier's home" covers his feelings of frustration and shame upon returning home to a town and to parents who still had a romantic notion of the war and who did not understand the psychological impact the war have had on their son . As a middleclass family in Oak Park,Hemingway's parents are more traditional.Through the war,Hemingway's values and views to the society changed partly,but his parents never realized."Ernest thought quite a lot about his father,whose prescribed rituals were unchanged by the war......Father and son,never ones to share much, had now even less common ground.Ernest Hemingway was home from the war, but he would not abe to stay long"( The Young Hemingway by Michael Reynolds P39).Besides his parents, Hemingway also found that his hometown,Oak Park,was the same as he left for European battlefields."Oak Park was not easy to live with after the war.Ernest had changed rapidly; the village at a slower rate"(P42).Although the united states joined the war, the battlefield was outside of the country. Most Americans' values and beliefs were not changed by the war.So when the soldiers who had been the battlefields came home,they found that they were not fit for living in this country.Hemingway was one of the soldiers,too. Additionally, the gap happened to Hemingway was bigger.He found his parents seem to never know him.And due to his age,it was shame to living with parents. So he went to Toronto and got a job as an European corespondent of a local newspaper.That is the second turning point in Hemingway's whole life.( The first is he wounded in the WWI)
Although the so-called great war ruined the most land of Europe, which became the focus of the world and more and more people went to there, Paris and London became more cosmopolitan. In Paris,Hemingway made friends with some prominent writers, including Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. As a fledgling writer, Hemingway learnt a lots frome them.Take the Frequent Repetition of some words and phrases for example: when you get there, there is no there there---a technique learned from Gertude Stein.During the time that Hemingway working for Toronto Star Weekly, he learnt some stylistic lessons that would later influence his fiction. Because as a journalist,you have to use short sentences,short paragraphs and active verbs to describe the event,and all of these is embodied in Hemingway's works.He later said:" Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I have never forgotten them."
Despit of his improvement in writing,Hemingway still lived in the shadow of spirital hurt.Because of his painful experience in WWI and the misunderstanding of his parents,as most lost generation writers done, Hemingway tried to rebel against the traditional values.At that time,the White Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic was the only culture considered by the majority of Americans. Instead, the abroad lost generation writers lived a aimless lives.Based on this life style,Hemingway wrote his first novel:The Sun Also Rises which let him get his fame.However,when the book appeared to his mother who wrote a letter that Hemingway kept all his life:
"What is the matter? Have you ceased to be interested in loyalty,nobility,honor and fineness in life.....Surely you have other words in your vocabulary besides Damn and Bitch--Every page fills me with sick words in it, I should read no more---but pith it in the fire"(The Young Hemingway P53)
In spit of his fame,Hemingway's mother still did not understand her son.I suppose,that is the kind of cultural gap.So when the lost Generation writers went to Paris or London not only for cosmopolitan culture, but also for escaping from the traditional values and ethics.
Part III
From the analysis above, I conclude that there are two,at least,conditions to develop the formation of the lost generation.First, it is the historical condition,that is, the take-place of the WWI.The patriotic young men did not only have painful experiences in the WWI, but also felt that they were cheated by the govenment. So they used a kind of lost life stlye to rebound on.I think,the historical condition also is the direct condition to force the formation of the lost generation.The second, but not least condition,I reckon, is the cultural gap.After the world war one,American work ethic was still prominent by the White Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic,which gave moral sanction to profit making through hard work,mantainted that work was a sacrifice that demonstrated worthiness.Therefore,in that period, most Americans viewed hard work as a duty and looked down upon excessive luxuries. However, the lost generation authors'values and views were absolutely conflict with it. Consequently,when Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises published, his mother's reaction was harsh to him.Although the great war has an important role in forming the lost generation,the cultural condition should not be ignored.
Anyway,nowadays majority of people do not advocate the lost generation's values or life style though, it makes a significant role in Amrican literiture and culture.
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