Who were ‘The Lost Generation’?

‘The Lost Generation’ refers to the generation that came of age during the first World War. Over nine million people died throughout the war causing many men to be disillusioned with life and everything they believed before the war. Many of the American men who went to war lost their belief in the traditional values that were still being enforced back home. When they returned home only to find that the country was ignoring the war and starting to force prohibition, many felt detached and fled.

However, ‘The Lost Generation’ as a literary movement was a term coined by writer and art collector Gertrude Stein. When she talked about this group, she referred to all the post-war men that left America and moved to cultural capitals such as London and Paris to take part in the literary movement. The main names that took part in this movement were: Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. They hadn’t gone to literary schools, in fact, part of the charm of ‘The Lost Generation’ was how their writing style was more simplistic and rebellious in comparison to the more traditional style.

The loss of traditional values and post-war trauma heavily influenced their literature. Most of the main characteristics of this movement can be justified by the need to escape the war and glorification of the time before it. ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a perfect example of this; Scott Fitzgerald’s descriptions of Gatsby’s lavish lifestyle as a way to distract people from his sadness is exactly what many post-war men were doing. Gender roles also were affected, in rejecting the traditional family values many writers decided to switch the way men and women were portrayed in literature. Some writers, Hemingway especially, would write about women being in control and sexually hungry whilst men were shown as weaker and even impotent.

There are a certain freedom and experimentation in this movement, that makes it very interesting. There are several books, including ‘Everybody behaves Badly’, that explore the lives of the individuals that took part in it. You can find it at our online library www.medialaze.com.