U.55 THE LOST GENERATION: F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, JOHN STEINBECK AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY. THE NARRATIVE WORKS OF WILLIAM FAULKNER.

2. DEFINING THE ‘LOST GENERATION’. Gertrude Stein.

• Term coined by Gertrude Stein (presumably to Hemingway)→ You are all a lost generation

• This struck him to the point that he used it in the epigraph of The Sun Also Rises (1929)

• It was a label for a group of American writers whose works were influenced by the experience of WWI

2. DEFINING THE ‘LOST GENERATION’. Who were the most famous authors under this umbrella term?

• Hemingway

• John Dos Passos

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Ezra Pound

• HOWEVER!! John Steinbeck was NOT. He belonged to the Great Depression writers.

2. DEFINING THE ‘LOST GENERATION’. What defined it?

• 2.1. Disillusion:

  • WWI (Cat in the Rain, Big Two-Hearted River)

  • Return to a society whose values seemed superficial/meaningless compared to the roughness of the battlefield.

• 2.2. Exile:

  • Sense of alienation with American society led them to live abroad, like France temporarily for both Hemingway and Steinbeck

• 2.3. Alienation and private emotion:

  • Explored themes like alienation, identity, personal relationships, moral uncertainty, the search for meaning.

  • These novels focus on inner lives and emotional struggles more than social reform.

• 2.4. Extravagance:

  • The period following WWI → a period of economic prosperity and social extravagance

  • Authors like Fitzgerald made a pretty penny off of his writings ($18,000 to be exact, which was very much at the time)

• 2.5. Hedonism:

  • The former encouraged a life of excess and hedonism marked by the JAZZ AGE

  • Many characters in their novels pursue excitement, travel, wealth, or romance.

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.1. Life.

• Childhood:

  • Born Oak Park, IL to a physician father obsessed with fishing and hunting and a cultured mother

  • Much of his childhood spent in northern Michigan where Hemingway discovered his love for nature

• Education and interest in writing:

  • Early interest in writing, contributed to the newspaper and magazine of his high school.

  • Graduated 1917 and wanted to enlist in the army, but rejected for poor eyesight

  • After working briefly in the Kansas City Star (which taught him how to write concisely), he was an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross

• Italy, 1918

  • Hemingway was sent to the Italian front, where he fell in love with a nurse, which inspired A Farewell to Arms

• France, 1920s

  • Married Hadley Richardson and moved to France

  • Paris artistic circle included: Picasso, G. Stein, P. Guggenheim, Miró, James Joyce, etc.

• Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

  • Hemingway was a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

  • He supported Spanish Republic against the Nationalist front led by Franco

  • Civil War inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls

  • Loved Spain, Pamplona, bullfighting…

DIED OF SU1C1DE AT KETCHUM, ID. 1961

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.2. Works. 3.2.1. Writing style and Iceberg Theory. Iceberg Theory

• Hemingway believed that a writer should present only the essential facts of the story, leaving the rest to the writer’s interpretation

• Believed that a well-executed piece of writing should make what’s omitted FELT by the reader.

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.2. Works. 3.2.1. Writing style and Iceberg Theory. Style

• Concise

• Simple and short

• Clear

• Realistic imagery

• Limited use of adjectives and emotional comment

• Symbolism

• Action » description

THIS MADE HIS WRITING STYLE REVOLUTIONARY

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.2. Works. 3.2.2. Major Works

• The Sun Also Rises

  • Plot

  • On simple pleasures, fishing, friendship, Pamplona

• A Farewell to Arms (explain plot)

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.2. Works. 3.2.3. Short stories

• Hills Like White Elephants

• Big Two-Hearted River

• The Snows of Kilimanjaro

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961). 3.2. Works. 3.2.4. Later works

• Some critics argued that Hemingway avoided dealing with major social/political issues of his time.

• His response:

  • To Have and Have Not (on the Great Depression)

  • The Fifth Column (on the Spanish Civil War)

  • From Whom the Bell Tolls

3. ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1861). 3.2. Works. 3.2.4. Later works. The Old Man and the Sea and African Safari.

• TOMaTS is his most famous novel (explain plot btw), which made him win a Pulitzer Prize (1953) and contributed to the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1954.

• Death in the Afternoon (1932) and Green Hills of Africa (1935) recount his days spent at an African Safari

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.1. Life

• Born St. Paul, MN (Minnesota). Grew up in the American Midwest.

• Attended Princeton University, but left without graduating to enlist in the US Army (WWI)

• Married Zelda Fitzgerald, whose beauty, independence, and extravagant lifestyle made the couple iconic in the Jazz Age

  • Relationship marked by alcoholism and Zelda’s mental illness → inspired Tender is the Night.

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.1. Life. What was Fitzgerald’s long time fascination?

Wealth and elites. However, he was also very critical of them, especially of issues like emptiness and corruption.

This tension defines his fiction.

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.2. Early works and style. 4.2.1. Style

• Defined by:

  • Elegant prose

  • Lyricism

  • Rich symbolism

• Themes explored:

  • The American Dream

  • Wealth and social class

  • Youth, beauty, love, and death

  • Ambition and failure

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.2. Early works and style. 4.2.2. Early works

• This Side of Paradise (1920) → established his reputation

• Flappers and Philosophers (1920)

• Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

• The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

• The Rich Boy → explores the privileges and limitations of great wealth

The three in the middle explore aspirations, excesses, and disappointments of young Americans in the 1920s.

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.3. The Great Gatsby (1925)

• Plot

• Nick Carraway → UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

• American Dream

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 4.4. Tender is the Night (1934)

• Plot

• Critics received it unfavourably, believed it was “out of step with the concerns of the Great Depression”.

4. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) Tender is the Night vs TGG?

• Tender is the Night is more:

  • Complex in narrative structure

  • Broader in scope and with more characters.

5. JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) 5.1. Life and style

• Born Salinas, CA → from family of German/Irish ancestry

• Attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA; but dropped out.

5. JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) 5.1. Life and style. 5.1.1. Style

• Typically portrays life of workers and labourers (socially disadvantaged groups)

• A person deeply concerned with HUMANISM. His works highlight dignity, and the struggles, compassion and respect toward the poor.

• He was also a regionalist and naturalist (his works were almost always set in the Salinas Valley and Monterey region)

5. JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) 5.2. Main works

• Of Mice and Men (1937)

  • Plot

  • Dramatic style which was easily adapted to the stage

• The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

  • Plot

  • Dust Bowl and Great Depression

  • PULITZER PRIZE 1940

• East of Eden (1952)

  • Plot

  • Biblical, Cain and Abel

• Others:

  • In Dubious Battle (1936), and Cannery Row (1945)

5. JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) 5.2. Main works. How are Steinbeck’s characters?

• When they live in harmony with the land, they display generosity and love toward each other

• When economic hardship hits, these relationships are eventually destroyed.

5. JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) 5.3. Politics and Nobel Prize

• Despite advocating for the disadvantaged, Steinbeck did not belong to any political party or movement.

• He won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1962

• Passed away in NYC, 1968.

6. WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962). 6.1. Life

• Nobel Prize-winning American..

  • Novelist

  • Short story writer

  • Essayist

• Born New Albany, Mississippi. Grew up Oxford, Mississippi.

• He is a key author of Southern literature, more specifically, of SOUTHERN GOTHIC alongside authors like Tennessee Williams

• Awarded Nobel Prize in 1949

6. WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962). 6.2. Major works and style. 6.2.1. Style

• Common settings:

  • Yoknapatawpha County (modeled on Lafayette County, Mississippi)

  • Exploration of the American South and its issues (racism and segregation, legacy of slavery, family decline)

• Particularly remarkable for:

  • Use of stream of consciousness

  • Non-linear chronology

  • Presented events through: thoughts, memoirs, emotions (of characters)

6. WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962). 6.2. Major works and style. 6.2.2. Works

• The Sound and the Fury (1929):

  • Plot.

  • Breakage with traditional form of the novel

  • Stream of consciousness like Woolf and Joyce

  • Innovative structure, poetic language, profound psychological insight

• As I Lay Dying (1931):

  • Plot

  • Story narrated through 59 INTERIOR MONOLOGUES

  • Novel combines: humour, tragedy, symbolism, multiple perspectives

  • One of the best examples of modernist literature

• Sanctuary (1931)

  • One of the most disturbing villains

  • On violence and corrupt Southern system

• Light in August (1932):

  • On identity and race, religion, isolation and violence, and social exclusion

• Absalom! Absalom! (1936):

  • His most complex novel

  • Plot

6. WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962). 6.2. Major works and style. 6.2.3. Short stories

• The Bear (1942)

• A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Dry September (1931)