The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway

A war always changes people’s destiny and sometimes make people lose their life that they did not expect. According to the article, “The First World War In France,” World War I is known as the “great war,” and resulted in over ten million deaths. Throughout the war, many American writers in France who came of age and established their own literary reputations were called “Lost Generation.” This is a term used as an epigraph in the book, “The Sun Also Rises,” written by Ernest Hemingway. Actually, Hemingway got this term from another American novelist, Gertrude Stein, who is also Hemingway’s mentor. Both Hemingway and Stein are considered as “Lost Generation,” because both of them are writers who had been influenced by the World War I. However,

Writers and poets lost their goals and dreams in the WWI. In hence, they lost their way on their career. However, some of the writers became famous and rewarded after the war. Meanwhile, the meaning of the word, “lost” on writers’ situation can only be understood as “effected,” but not “lost,” because writers did not actually lose anything.

In contrast, the young men of the war should really be considered as the “Lost Generation.” The term, “lost generation” is coined from something Gertrude Stein witnessed the owner of a garage saying to his young employee, which Hemingway later used as an epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises: “You are all a lost generation.” According to the article, “Lost Generation” written by Kate O’Connor, “this accusation referred to the lack of purpose or drive resulting from the horrific disillusionment felt by those who grew up and lived through the war, and were then in their twenties and thirties.” Which exactly means the soldiers in World War I, “having seen pointless death on such a huge scale, many lost faith in traditional values like courage, patriotism, and masculinity” (Kate). Despite the spirituals, soldiers also lost parts of their bodies and some of them lost their lives. Soldiers suffered many kinds of attack during the war. For example, “World War I was a war of attrition because its’ use of trench warfare, in which both sides dug elaborate trenches where they could shelter from the enemy's artillery fire” (Kate). The trench would be protected by barbed wire, but soldiers still got tinnitus in such protected trench. Furthermore, soldiers living in trenches are suffering