Why was the generation following World War I known as the “Lost Generation”?
“All of you young people who served in the war, you are the lost generation.” And with those words that history has recorded were directed to writer Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein’s place in history was marked forever not for the volume of words she published, but for an offhand remark that defined an age (King, 2005). While perhaps a good enough start, by the time the Lost Generation had been usurped by the next, the effect of World War I was only one contributing factor capable of accurately defining the revolutionary impact on science and the arts made by those who came of age during this era.
The focus of Stein’s characterization seems to indicate that it was those coming of age during this generation that were lost, but the more accurate characterization is that they were of a generation forced to confront monumental loss, dislocation, and “a series of frustrations and disasters, including the Great War, the failure of the League of Nations…and the failure of Prohibition” (Tindall, 2004).
What this generation really lost was the faith in an underlying sense of control that, while not always predictable, had maintained a certain quality of comfort comes only with familiarity. The world that had changed relatively little over the preceding few centuries was being ripped apart right in front of this generation’s eyes.
Their response to this sense of loss and being lost is telling. Representational art gave way to the deconstruction of reality known as Cubism. Stream-of-consciousness writing that attempted to reconstruct the fractured reality inside the mind replaced naturalist fiction and traditional poetry. The irrationality of physics displaced the rational laws applied to time and space in science. Even the relatively brand new art form of film which was still placing a premium of realistic depictions at the outbreak of World War I would be transformed into a true art form in large part due to the irrational, fractured and dislocated version reality exemplified by German Expressionism.
References
King, D. (2005). World wars and the modern age. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley.
Tindall, G., & Shi, D. (2004). America: A narrative history (6th ed.). New York: Norton.
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