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Muhammad Siddique Anjum

MEL01163012

Maam Zeenat Shahid

Lost Generation

There are many illusions about lost generation, the exact concept of lost generation is that the

"Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was

coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway. Generally it means that

the generation of men and women who came of age during /immediately following World War I:

viewed, as a result of their warexperiences and the social upheaval of the time, as cynical,

disillusioned, and without cultural or emotional stability. And literally it means, the young men

who were killed in World War I, who could have been successful in art, science, literature etc.

The "Lost Generation" were said to be disillusioned by the large number of casualties of

the First World War, cynical, disdainful of the Victorian notions of morality and manners of their

elders. This overgeneralization is true for some individuals of the generation and not true of

others. It was somewhat common among members of this group to complain that American

artistic culture lacked the breadth of European workleading many members to spend large

amounts of time in Europeand/or that all topics worth treating in a literary work had already

been covered. Nevertheless, this same period saw an explosion in American literature and in art,

which is now often considered to include some of the greatest literary classics produced by

American writers. This generation also produced the first flowering of jazz music, arguably the

first distinctly American art form. Jazz is known for its inconsistent format, use of
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improvisation, and the tendency of many musicians to be totally self taught and experimental.

Many Lost Generation thinkers looked for a new world view or philosophy to replace the one

that had failed them so miserably going into the Great War. One of these was Existentialism, a

philosophical movement that views human existence as having a set of underlying themes and

traits, such as anxiety, dread, freedom, awareness of death, and consciousness of existing (i.e.

you think a lot about why we are here). They thought that existence cannot be reduced to or be

explained by a naturalscientific approach. Existentialism tends to view human beings as

subjects in an indifferent, objective, often vague or unclear and even "absurd" universe in which

meaning is not provided by a natural order, but rather is created by human beings' actions and

interpretations. One expression of this was in the arts, in which surrealism began as a movement.

In paintings, surrealist pieces often include distortions of reality and images that most people

would associate more with dream states than the conscious mind. Painters like the Spanish Pablo

Picasso and Salvador Dali represent this movement. One way of thinking about surrealists is to

recognize that their arts show a perception of reality that is distorted yet reflects the

existentialist idea that reality is only what you make of it. At various times individual surrealists

aligned themselves with communism and anarchism to advance radical political and social

change, arguing that only transformed institutions of work, the family, and education could make

a difference.

Another part of the Lost Generations search was for a new political model, since

many of them saw part of their parents failure to be political. This, plus the desperation born of

the worldwide economic depressions that followed the war, led to experiments in fascism,

communism, socialism (totalitarian government forms) led by strong individualists who formed

the reality of their nations politics into their own visions (reflecting existential thinking).
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Literary taken the literature figures of the Lost Generation tended to use common

themes in their writing. These themes mostly pertained to the writers' experiences

in World War I and the years following it. It is said that the work of these writers was

autobiographical based on their use of mythologized versions of their lives. One of the

themes that commonly appear in the authors' works is decadence and the frivolous

lifestyle of the wealthy. Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald touch on this theme throughout

their novels, The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. Another theme that is common

for these authors was the death of the American dream, which is exhibited throughout

many of their novels. It is most prominent in The Great Gatsby, in which the character

Nick Caraway comes to realize the corruption he was surrounded by. Other themes

include Gender roles and Impotence In The Sun Also Rises, the narrator, Jake, literally is

impotent as a result of a war wound, and instead it is his female love Brett who acts the man,

manipulating sexual partners and taking charge of their lives. Think also of T. S. Eliot's poem The

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Prufrock's inability to declare his love to the unnamed

recipient.

Idealized past - Rather than face the horrors of warfare, many worked to create an

idealized but unattainable image of the past, a glossy image with no bearing in reality.

The best example is in Gatsby's idealization of Daisy, his inability to see her as she truly

is, and the closing lines to the novel after all its death and disappointment:

So it may be concluded, that destruction and the devastation of WWI completely

changed the outlook and way of thinking of the generation after war (Lost Generation).

New themes as well as interpretation of feelings after war was fully impacted both

psychologically and literally in all arts especially in paintings and literature.

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