The Battler By Ernest Hemingway

In the short story “The Battler”, we witness Nick go from a naive young boy at the beginning of the story to someone who has learned an important lesson by the end of the story through his experiences. In the opening paragraph, we see Nick being tricked and punched by the brakeman, resulting in a black eye. Internally, he chastises himself for being naive enough to fall for the brakeman’s trick and thinks to himself, “What a lousy kid thing to have done” (Hemingway, 1925, pg. 1). However, by the end of the story, we see Nick look back on the track that he had looked upon at the beginning of the story. This is after the experience he had with Ad Francis, a champion boxer, who he had had a conversation with, shared a meal with, and who had ultimately

Due to his late return home, he receives a disappointing welcome compared to the enthusiastic welcome that the men who had arrived home earlier from the war had received. It appears that people are now disinterested in and bored by the details of the war, so much so that Krebs feels the need to embellish the stories about his war experiences in order to get people to listen. Throughout the story, we see Krebs experiencing a sense of disillusionment for all the institutions and foundations so deep in the core of America, such as religion, family, marriage, etc. We see this indifference in Krebs all throughout the story, especially when it comes to romance and religion. Specifically, we can see Krebs’ distaste towards the abstract idea of romance in this quote: “He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting” (Hemingway, 1925, pg. 2). For these reasons, I believe Krebs is a member of “The Lost Generation” because of Krebs clear aversion and rejection of core American values and institutions. Specifically, the individuals who are a part of “The Lost Generation” were characterized by a mistrust of these institutions, such as the government, religion, and family, as a result of the traumatic experiences and stories of World War 1. Particularly, an instance where we can explicitly see Krebs representing “The Lost Generation” is in his response to his Mother talking about God in which he states, “I am not in His Kingdom” (Hemingway, 1925, pg. 6). In the lecture, Dr. Edwards highlights this section of the text by saying, “Notice we really see the loss of faith here. We really see the loss of religion and of the loss of faith in God” (Edwards, 2023). Therefore, I believe the