Disillusionment

Objectives Define Disillusionment. Identify reasons for disillusionment. Explain how disillusionment influenced art movements after WWI (Lost Generation, Dada, etc.)

“Disillusionment” To lose your belief in idealism, morality, love, or other such forces. Hopelessness. Think: What “illusions” would soldiers have held before entering the fighting? How could the fighting of WWI destroy these “illusions”?

Causes for disillusionment Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – “Shell Shock” Loss of faith in leaders Witnessing deaths that brought no benefit: did anyone really “win”? Returning home, where nobody understands the experience (censorship)

Wilfred Owen British Poet Volunteer Soldier: Honor and patriotism Experienced horrors: Shell Shock Wrote poems all through the war Died in 1918 – just before armistice

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori Latin: “How sweet and glorious it is to fight and die for your country.”

How sweet was it to die for your country?

“Lost Generation” Artists who were young people during WWI Many Lived in France Wrote/made art about disillusionment

-People who became disillusioned with society due to WWI “Lost Generation” -People who became disillusioned with society due to WWI

“Lost Generation” “Every man becomes civilized between the ages of 18 and 23. If he does not go through a civilizing experience at that time of his life, he will not become a civilized man. The men who went to war at 18 missed the civilizing…All you young people who served in the war are a lost generation. You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.” --Gertrude Stein on the American writers living in Paris after World War I

Changes to Art & Culture Cubism popularized: looks like distorted versions of reality

Changes to Art & Culture Dada Movement: revolt against WWI with humor, absurd subject matter

Changes to Art & Culture Spare, simple, harsh literature: Earnest Hemingway Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.  ~E. Hemingway

Self Check Can you: Define Disillusionment? Use it in a sentence? context of sentence demonstrates understanding Come up with 3 reasons why WWI would cause disillusionment?