Lost Generation

1. The Lost
Generation
and the Cultural Context of…
THE GREAT GATSBY

2. Germinal Statement of the 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
World War 1 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 expatriate writers living in
Paris after World War I

3. WOLD WAR I
1914-1918

4. FEATURES
Literary Generation of American writers with these characteristics:
• Youthful idealism .
• Searched the meaning of life .
• Drank a lot of alcohol.
• Had frequent love affairs .
• Many of the finest literary masterpieces were
written during this period .
• Criticized modern American materialism and
values.
• Lived in Paris during the Happy Twenties.
• Gained prominence in twentieth century
literature and created a mold for many future
writers.
• Many of their novels were adapted into
Hollywood films.

5. WORLD WAR 1 HAPPY GREAT DEPRESSION
1914-1918 TWENTIES 1929 -1937
10’s 20’s 30’s
Common "Lost Generation" Members
• The common people of the "Lost Generation"
(born from 1883 to 1900)grew up in a time
when mass immigration was occurring and
America was changing drastically.
• Upon the return of the soldiers from WWI, the
American lifestyle was altered. Many became
disillusioned and they became known as the
"bad kids" and "flaming youth."
• Badboys, flappers, gangsters, and stars were
all common during the “Happy Twenties."

6. However, the twenties came to a close with a
bang when the Stock Market crashed, ending
the spirit of the 1920's. The Great Depression
started in 1929 and is also present in the
themes of the Lost Generation novels.
The group of writers who moved to Paris
believed that America was intolerant,
materialistic, and unspiritual. They helped to
establish many of the styles and themes that
are still used in literature today.

7. themes
 WORLD WAR 1
 THE HAPPY TWENTIES
 JAZZ AGE
 FLAPPERS
 PROHIBITION (1920-1930):MAFIA
 THE GREAT DEPRESSION

8. THE HAPPY TWENTIES
Crazy years between World War 1 in
the 10’s and the Great Depression of
the 30’s
Joy of life, freedom,Jazz era,music,
parties, flapers and Great Gatsby.

9. THE FLAPPERS
Very modern and fashionable ladies of the twenties.
Flappers were a "new breed" of young Western women in
the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened
to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then
considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as
brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex
in a casual manner,smoking, driving automobiles and
otherwise flouting social and sexual norms

10. PROHIBITION

11. THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Wall Street Crack Down in 1929:
Strong American and World finalcial
crisis:
Unemployment,hunger, poverty:
END OF THE HAPPY TWENTIES
DREAM
BEGINNING OF THE GREAT
DEPRESSION OF THE THIRTIES.

12. ALL THESE REALITIES
ARE REFLECTED IN THE
WORKS OF THE LOST
GENERATION WRITERS
AND IN THE
HOLLYWOOD MOVIES
MADE WITH THEIR
NOVELS

13. Lost Generation Writers
 John Steinbeck
Ernest Hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ezra Pound
William Faulkner

14. John Steinbeck
East of Eden. The Pearl.
The grapes of W rath

15. Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea. For whom
the Bell Tolls. The Snows of
Kilimanjaro

16. FScott Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, This side of
Paradise, The great Gatsby

17. The life of F. Scott Fitsgerald is like
the life of Gatsby.

18. Scott Fitzgeral became rich thanks to his first
novels. He and Zelda went to live in Paris and
lived a life of luxury, spending a lot a money,
moving in big cars, organizing big parties and
drinking more than recomendable.
This is the life style reflected in his novel The
Great Gatsby.
The women in The Great Gatsby are flappers
who drink like men and enjoy parties and sex.

19. Gatsby and the Twenties
 This was the style of the twenties : Young
people began to test new limits with more and
more outrageous forms of behavior: W ilder
music, faster cars, heavy drinking and shorter
skirts were just a few symptoms of this
strange postwar era called The Jazz Age.
 In this context live and act Gatsby and Daisy
as acted and lived Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.

20. NOTHING NEW
The lifestyles of young men and women in the 1920s were
UNDER THE SUN
as shocking to their Victorian-era parents as the 1960s
"hippie" generation was to Americans who came of age
during W orld W Two, or as today’s hip-hop culture and
ar
new urban tribes are is to parents who grew up in the
1970s.
Each succeeding generation seems to be born to shock its
parents, and the children of the twenties were no
exception.

21. The Great Gatsby
1st term reading
Nothing new
under the sun
One of the “real”
Gatsbies
One of the
Great Gatsbies
of the 21st Century

22. READING SCHEDULE
 60 PAGES
 2 PAGES A DAY = 30 DAYS
 24TH OCTOBER TO 28TH NOVEMBER
 FINAL TEST ON Great Gatsby: 28th Nov.
 Partial tests at any time following the reading
schedule.

23. This presentation was made
possible thanks to the works of:
WIKIPEDIA
GOOGLE IMAGES

24. Books can be dangerous. The best
ones should be labeled:
"This could change your life."
Helen Exley
ENJOY YOUR READING