Literature after WWI

Paper Summary:

This paper explains how the devastating effects of WWI had a lasting impact on contemporary literature. The paper uses the examples of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos, authors from what is often termed "the lost generation", to demonstrate how they and other authors from the same era were affected by the war.

From the Paper:

"The lost generation was a group of people who emerged after World War I. Shocked and torn by the seemingly senseless destruction of the first war these people realized that the values and norms they had been brought up in were wrong. As they lost their past they sought meaning in life and searched for the future. They could not understand how humans wrought such devastation and in trying to understand this they lived a life of opulence as writers and artists began to express themselves through their work. Their work thus focused on their lives or their perception of it and through their depictions emerged the lost world they lived in for their characters searched for meaning even as they strove to live the hand life had dealt them."

More papers on Literature after WWI:

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• Research Proposal # 146125 : "After-School Programs in the U.S. and U.K."

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