1. An Introduction to the Movement
The Lost Generation
An Introduction to the Movement
Medford High School English Department
For use by all teachers
May 2012

2. The Lost Generation
“That is what you are. That’s what you all are…all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”
- Gertrude Stein
“Who is calling who a lost generation?”
- Ernest Hemingway
The term originated with Gertrude Stein who, after being unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a "lost generation" — une génération perdue.[2]
The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph. The novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation.[3] However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.[4]
In his memoir A Moveable Feast, published after his death, he writes "I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage owner with one from Ecclesiastes." A few lines later, recalling the risks and losses of the war, he adds: "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought 'who is calling who a lost generation?'"[5]
Pictured: Gertrude Stein with Ernest Hemingway’s son, Jack

3. Essential Questions for the Unit
How do writers employ tone, symbolism, and other literary techniques to convey a theme in American literature of the early 1900s?
How does this literature reflect the American experience after World War I?
Explain the goals of the unit. Explain how they adhere to the frameworks. Explain how we will read short stories, poems, and a novel.

4. The Lost Generation
Term used to describe the generation of writers active immediately after World War I (post 1920s)
Gertrude Stein became famous for the using the phrase, borrowed from a car mechanic’s criticism of twenty-year-old slackers
The phrase signifies a disillusioned postwar generation characterized by…
Lost values
Lost belief in the idea of human progress
A mood of futility and despair leading to hedonism
Tell them to write this down in their notes. Explain what difficult words mean (hedonism, futility, etc.).

5. What else makes something a “Lost Generation” story?
Economy of Language
Presence of War (overt or implied)
“Iceberg Theory”
You have to make inferences
Symbolism – colors, nature, etc.
Alcohol
Jazz
Influence of European culture, art, etc.
Rejection of Victorian era style
You can reference back to Faulkner. You can allude to the idea that we’ll explore Hemingway’s style in more detail. You can reference back to Victorian era novels they have read. You can describe how some of these elements will be more present than others, but that the idea of Modernism – more spartan language, etc. – is really a dominant element.

6. Famous Writers of the Movement
The Lost Generation mostly includes expatriate writers who left the United States for Europe after WWI:
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
You could also include writers who were heavily influenced by these writers and/or WWI:
William Carlos Williams
Wilfred Owen
Explain that Williams was influenced heavily by Pound in the States and Owen was basically the definitive poet of WWI, so even though they didn’t roll with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others, they made valuable contributions.

7. In a Station of the Metro
What does this imagery suggest?
Complete with students or have them complete it in groups and then review. Use handout. You could point out how it has 14 words, organized in octet or sestet – a weird modern variation of a sonnet.

8. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Complete with students or have them complete it in groups and then review. Use handout.
How prominent is Icarus in this painting? What is the message that is conveyed?

9. Generations What defines our generation? Music genres
The quintessential writers
Life-altering events
Developments in technology
Human rights
Engage students in a discussion of what defines our generation. Define a generation as a span 20 or so years. Ask them to come up with ideas for each of these bullet points and more.

10. Tonight’s Homework
Do a little internet research on the Lost Generation.
Write a side-by-side bullet point comparison of the Lost Generation and our generation.
Shoot for at least ten points, and try to have each column correspond with the other.
Cite your sources.
If students don’t understand, provide examples with musical genre (our generation = hip hop, etc., Lost Generation = Jazz) or big events (our generation = 9/11, economic crises, Lost Generation = WWI).

11. Sources
Information from and was used in the creation of this website.