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Lost Generation

Good Essays

Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway represent their inner state and feelings at the time they lived through their novels. Ernest Hemingway corresponds to the “Lost Generation” of 1920’s and Jack Kerouac corresponds to the “Beat Generation” of 1950’s. Both of these generations were after wars. It is not coincidence, wars make people devastated and lost. People tried to overcome problems and pain through literature and music. Writers put all their emotions on the paper, musicians wrote songs, which described the hard time they had. These two generations produced the most talented writers of our days. For us it seems that there was no big deal to write such openly, but if we try to go back to the time of these authors, we will understand how …show more content…

I’d just tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it” (p.62). Jake is lost; he could not fully realize himself as a normal man. This problem means that he could not have sex, he could not marry, and finally he could not have a normal family with children. All of these problems made him get drunk often, as alcohol helped him to forget about problems for a little time. Once, Robert Cohn asked him: “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize that you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” and he answers, “Yes, every once in a while.” (p.30). So, alcohol was an escape from his problems and he said: “Under the wine I lost disgusted feeling and was happy” (p.150). When he is drunk, life seems better and easier. But when he wakes up next morning, he regrets it, but he never tries to change his life, he just accepts it as it is. Hemingway presented Jake and Brett to portray people with lost believes and nothingness. Both of them accepted their lives as it was and did not try to change anything. Hemingway is not optimistic about the future, for him and his characters the meaning of life is lost. Similarly to Hemingway, Kerouac shows readers how people wanted to escape reality, as to forget about war young people traveled across the country in order to find the lost meaning of the life and have fun. Kerouac chooses a different path and describes the characters of the

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