Great Books - FINALS

Gertrude Stein

The author and literary hostess who, talking with Ernest Hemingway, spoke of a "lost generation" of the young - those who had served in World War I.

"Lost Generation"

"Lost" in this context means disoriented or alienated, as opposed to disappeared.

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Hemingway's novel where he used the term "Lost Generation" in the epigraph, referring to young American expatriate writers in Paris in the 1920s.

Lost Generation Writers

F Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Ezra Pound, and Hemingway himself.

F Scott Fitzgerald

One of the Lost Generation's most essential writers.

The Great Gatsby

Tells a personal story of Gatsby's doomed dream of love. However, at the same time, it is a story about the doomed American Dream - its promise of a better world revealed as a sham.

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (1920)

F Scott Fitzgerald's short story that looks at the tension between traditional feminine values and the liberation of the Jazz Age.

The Waste Land (1922)

T S Eliot's work that prefigures Lost Generation writing in its exploration of the disintegration of culture - including empty sex and loss of spiritual meaning.

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Ernest Hemingway, in this novel, delves into the themes of love, death, and masculinity.

Jazz Age

Fitzgerald saw the Jazz Age as an era of miracle and excess.

Wall Street in the 1920s

New post-war prosperity was centered on Wall Street, where vast fortunes were made trading in stocks and bonds.

Self-made man

The ideal of this was an attractive antidote to the power of old money passed on by inheritance and marriage among the "best" families.

18th Amendment (1919)

Prohibited the sale of alcohol.

Bootlegging

Smuggling of illegal liquor, much of it sold in speakeasies (illicit bars).

Tom Buchanan

In the first chapter of The Great Gatsby, expresses the supremacist view that "if we don't look out the white race will be - will be utterly submerged."

Fitzgerald's view of The Great Gatsby

"A purely creative work - not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world."

Jay Gatsby's mansion

A colossal mansion, in the style of a French hôtel de ville (city hall), in West Egg, on the shore of Long Island, outside New York.

Gatsby's rumors

That he has killed a man; that his claim to an Oxford education is a lie; that he made his money bootlegging.

Nick Carraway

The novel's narrator, who rents a small house next door.

Gatsby's love

For five years, he has been obsessively in love with the beautiful socialite Daisy Buchanan.

Meyer Wolfshiem

A mafioso-style crook from whom Gatsby acquired his wealth through shady business dealings.

Colour symbolism in The Great Gatsby

Gatsby wears a pink suit and drives a yellow Rolls-Royce - hues denoting his desperate need to make an impression.

Green Light

The color of the light at the end of Daisy's mooring dock, which Gatsby gazes at yearningly from across the water.

Green symbolism (end of the novel)

The "fresh, green breast of the new world," glimpsed by the first settlers to reach Long Island; and Gatsby's belief in that symbolic "green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."

Sales during Fitzgerald's last year

Only 72 copies of his nine books were recorded as sales in his royalty statements.

F Scott Fitzgerald's birth

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.

Fitzgerald's education and military service

In 1917 he dropped out of Princeton University to join the army.

Zelda Sayre

The daughter of a judge, married Fitzgerald after his first novel brought success.

This Side of Paradise

Fitzgerald's first novel, brought him success at the age of 24.

The Beautiful and Damned

His second novel, confirmed his reputation as chief chronicler and critic of the Jazz Age.

Move to French Riviera (1924)

Moved with Zelda to the French Riviera to write The Great Gatsby.

Joseph Roth (1932)

The Austrian-Jewish writer who writes The Radetzky March, which details Austria-Hungary's decline, a year before he leaves Germany for Paris. He remains in exile for the rest of his life.

Bertolt Brecht (1939)

his anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Children is written a few years after he flees Nazi persecution.

Stefan Zweig (1941)

Published just before his suicide in Brazilian exile, Austrian author Stefan Zweig's novella The Royal Game criticizes the brutality of the Third Reich's Nazi regime.

Paul Celan (1952)

Holocaust survivor who produces a collection of poems, Poppy and Memory, after settling in Paris following horrific wartime experiences in his native central Europe.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

who wrote The Little Prince in New York after he had left France, following its occupation by the Nazis.

The Little Prince

Saint-Exupéry's book has been read in numerous ways: as a general moral and philosophical fable, as a children's fairy tale, as an autobiographical story that has been re-imagined as fantasy; and as a direct reflection of its times.

Exile Literature (Common Theme)

These interpretations have all been made of other works of exile literature, which commonly lament a lost way of life.

Narrator and Setting

Given its genesis in a time of displacement, it is not surprising that the title character of Saint-Exupéry's novel is an alien boy who falls to Earth in the eerie landscape of the Sahara Desert. The narrator, a pilot who has crash-landed, encounters the boy there.

Themes (Abandonment and Alienation)

Abandonment, wandering, escape, and instability characterize the narrative of The Little Prince, which presents us with a seemingly simple children's story.

State of Childhood

Saint-Exupéry takes from classic children's literature the idea that the state of childhood is one of transition, where difference predominates.

The Prince's Identity

The prince is literally and metaphorically an alien wandering the Earth - a child lost in an adult world.

Alienness and Moral Philosophy

But as a character, his alienness is infused with a moral philosophy that celebrates dissimilarity and questions the world of adults, which has led to war - and, in Saint-Exupéry's case, an exile from home.

Exile as Maturation

Like a child's painful maturation into the unknowable realm of adulthood, the state of exile is a process of losing and relearning one's place in the world.

Baobab Trees (Political Symbol)

The baobab trees, which infest the home planet of the little prince, have been interpreted as a reference to the contemporary "sickness" of Nazism and its equally grasping nature as it moved across Europe destroying all in its path, including Saint-Exupéry's beloved France.

Humanist Values vs. Nazism

the novel positions the humanist philosophy of rationality, compassion, and respect for differences against this spreading disaster.

Little Prince's Advice

The alien boy advises us all that "eyes are blind. One must look with the heart".

Main Message

The Little Prince is a timeless yet timely exploration of the value of human life.

Theme (Tolerance and Kindness)

Like other writers in exile, Saint-Exupéry explores loss and change against a backdrop of upheaval and alienation, which fosters kindness towards others and toleration of difference.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Early Life)

Born to a French aristocratic family in 1900, he had a strict upbringing in a château near Lyon. During his national service, he became an aviator.

Saint-Exupéry (Aviation Career)

Before World War II, he was a commercial pilot who pioneered airmail routes in Europe, South America, and Africa.

Saint-Exupéry (Wartime Role)

When war broke out, he joined the French Air Force and flew reconnaissance missions until 1940.

The Little Prince (Writing Context)

The Little Prince was not written until he and his wife, Consuelo Suncin, fled heartbroken into exile after France's defeat and its armistice with Germany.

Saint-Exupéry (Personal Struggles)

Vilified by his government and depressed by his stormy marriage, Saint-Exupéry flew his last flight in 1944, over the Mediterranean, where it is believed he was shot down.

Legacy

His posthumous reputation has recovered him as one of France's literary heroes.