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Chapter Ten • Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) born in Oak Park, Illinois, volunteered for service as an ambulance driver with the Italian Army, was seriously wounded during WWI. From the publication of his first books hewas acclaimed as a spokesman for the “Lost Generation”—the young who had been disillusioned and cast adrift by the murderous blunders of those who had plunged the world into war.
Literary achievements • Novels: The Sun Also Rises (1926) A Farewell to Arms (1929) To Have and Have Not (1937) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Story collections: In Our Time (1925) Men without Women(1927) Winner Take Nothing (1933) • He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.
The Lost Generation • The term “Lost Generation” was first used by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), one of the leaders of this group. • It included the young English and American expatriates as well as men and women caught in the war and cut off from the old values and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad.
It means this generation had lost the beautiful sense of the calm idyllic past. • Stein’s comment suggests the ambiguous and pointless lives of expatriates as they aimlessly wandered about the Continent, drinking, making love, traveling from place to place and from party to party. These activities seem to justify their search for new meanings to replace the old ones.
Yet in fact, being cut off from their past, disillusioned in reality, and without a meaningful future to fall on, they were lost in disillusionment and existential voids. They indulged in hedonism in order to make their life less unbearable.
Text study :A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Analysis of the three characters: The old man. The older waiter. The young waiter. Theme of the text: Writing style:
Questions to ponder • How do you interpret the irony of the title after reading the story? • Do you think youth and confidence can help people withstand the metaphorical dark? Why or why not? • In what ways do the three characters differ in the story?