The Impact Of The Lost Generation

World War I, or “The Great War”, began in 1914 and ended in 1918. The devastation witnessed in those four years alone, caused nearly 9 million people to die and millions more crippled, grief stricken, maimed, or psychologically scarred. Considered by some to be the first man-made catastrophe of the twentieth century, many scholars still debate over the main underlying causes of World War I. Many things contributed to the war, changing the lives of many people, many of them still evident today. Beginning only as a European conflict, gradually it developed into a world war.

“You are all a lost generation…” Ernest Hemingway writes in his book The Sun Also Rises. The lost generation often refers to a group of writers during the 1920’s; it consisted of many writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and Hemingway were two of many great literary writers who attempted to change the world in a post World War 1 era. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby both impacted the 1920’s world with their common themes and beliefs portrayed through their literary works. A similar theme between the two works was the impact the war had on the people of the world.

Her actions are viewed as foolish, creating the stigma around women, and though Daisy does not see herself as a fool, surprisingly she expresses that “the best thing a girl can be in this world [is] a beautiful little fool (Fitzgerald, pg 17).” Yet, Daisy is not a fool; she is merely a victim of her environment which is influenced by gender, money, and status. This leads to Daisy having no power or control over her own life and feeling as though women can only be “beautiful fools” as stated earlier.

“‘I’m glad it’s a girl and I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’”. This is a very vivid quote written by F. Scott Fitzgerald that helps identify one of the many themes in his book The Great Gatsby. This specific quote speaks of the topic I will be addressing which is money and materialism. This theme takes shape and form in many different ways and through different people throughout the book, and is shown through Fitzgerald’s characters Myrtle, Daisy, and Tom.

The novel’s key female character, Daisy Buchannan, represents the role of Tom’s shallow trophy wife who is idolized as the “ideal” individual within the consciousness of Jay Gatsby. Subsequently it was never Daisy’s knowledge or character type that attracted Gatsby; it was more based upon her wealth, “That was it. I 'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, [and] the cymbals ' song of it” (Fitzgerald, 99). Although Daisy is far from being flawless, Gatsby interprets

World War I had a more profound effect on society than wars prior. With new deadly weapons, like poison gas, high death tolls, and the first occurrence of total war, shocked the world, tearing people between the modern and the tradition. Traditional society was torn down by the destruction of the war. As with most literary movements, writers reflect the world

The “Lost Generation” is essentially a term that is used to describe the young adults of the 1920’s who were changing with the times and rebelling against what America had become after the war. They populated areas like Paris and London where they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life. The “Lost Generation" of American writers and poets left America, seeking refuge from the broken culture and devastation that had come from the war, and ended up in Paris, a city that had a thriving art culture where they could write freely and lavish in the Bohemian lifestyle without rules. They drank, traveled, had love affairs, and wrote. They were influenced by the paintings of artists like Dada and Picasso and collected their works, as well as socialized with them. They critiqued each other’s writing and often met in bookstores, cafés, and bars to talk about their works and life in general. They had mostly upper-middle-class upbringings and were sustained in hard times by their parents' fortunes. They chose to come to Paris to seek artistic fulfillment and ended up writing what is possibly considered some of the best fiction of the 20th century. It was the time when writers, painters, musicians, and composers went to Paris to work and

When Daisy is first introduced in the story and movie, she is dressed in all white symbolizing purity and innocence. She, Nick Caraway, Jordan Baker, and her husband Tom Buchanan sit down to have dinner. Her husband mistress calls time and time again. She finally gets up to say something to him but it solves nothing. She sits back down being fully aware of her husband infidelity and does nothing. I wondered why she didn’t do anything about it or leave him. The simple answer was the wealth. Even though Daisy loved Gatsby when she first married Tom, she is staying for the same reason she got married in the first place. She enjoys the lavish life and if she leaves she loses it all. This was typical of women in the 1920s though. Daisy character is questioned many times in this story. First she has a daughter that she barely mentions. Even in the movie the girl only appears once. In the story Daisy says when she woke after giving birth she immediately asks the nurse if she had a boy or girl and the nurse told her it was a girl. She then goes to say “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope shell be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful fool.” (Fitzgerald 17) This suggest that she feel like women have no place in the world. This also reflects how Fitzgerald own personal reflection of women. In an article titled Feeling "Half Feminine": Modernism and the Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby, Frances Kerr wrote that “"In 1935 Fitzgerald told his secretary Laura Guthrie, "Women are so weak, really-emotionally unstable and their nerves, when strained, break.” (Kerr 406) I think that this is why he made Daisy, who is the main female character in the book, look at herself as having no place in this world and as a fool. The next time Daisy character is really questioned is at the end of the book when she hit Myrtle Wilson and let Gatsby take the blame for it. She didn’t know he was going to get

The human cost of World War I was enormous. The war was the worst war in the history of the world. It certainly was the worst for the fighting men, the men existed for four years in unthinkable conditions. Millions of troupes lived in trenches and holes in the ground only as wide as their wingspan. Millions of men died horrible deaths and many millions more were wounded physically, mentally and spiritually to which it was almost impossible to recover. Casualties in a single day of fighting often rose to tens of thousands. In France, where the worst of the war was fought, they never have fully recovered from the conflict. The French lost half a generation of young men, and memories of the conflict, along with WW2, are still deeply rooted

The narrator, Nick is grouping together the women of the party and describing their persona all in the same way. The men of the party are comforting them, as they are providing protection and masculinity to the “swooning” and “puppyish” women. The women are following the social norm/stereotype that men must be their protectors because they are such frail beings and must be accompanied by a man. These societal standards were represented through the specific character, Daisy Buchanan and her actions throughout the novel. Daisy has intentional ignorance of her husband, Tom’s multiple affairs showing her lack of empowerment and fear of disrupting the gender roles. The woman was meant to be the housewife, caring for the children, and staying home. Daisy believes women should not be intelligent and applies these expectations to her own daughter: "I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right, ' I said, 'I 'm glad it 's a girl. And I hope she 'll be a fool—that 's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 116-118). It is evident that Daisy was disappointed by the gender of her baby, and thinks little of what a woman can be in

for a woman; the best she can do is hope to survive and the best way

Throughout The Great Gatsby, Daisy demonstrates that she cares most about her wealth and status. Right from the start, she tells Nick that she hopes her daughter will be a fool, because “...that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). This guides the readers the believe that Daisy thinks girls should be pretty, but unintelligent, so they can marry a man who’s rich, instead of a man who loves them. If they are a beautiful fool, they wouldn’t necessarily notice or care that the marriage isn’t based off of love. Daisy could be saying this because that’s how she wishes she was viewing her own marriage. She married Tom because he was rich, but now he is cheating on her and she knows it, so she could be wishing that she wasn’t bright enough to care. Nick as a narrator doesn’t explicitly state anything about Daisy wanting her daughter’s marriage to be to a rich man, but Fitzgerald manipulates her speech in order to communicate that idea to the readers.

Despite being a woman, she is sexist even towards her daughter. In the beginning, Daisy expresses her hopes for her daughter, “I hope she’ll be a fool-that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Women in the 1920’s gained more opportunity and freedom. Daisy’s rejection of these ideas demonstrates her resistance to conform to the society which explains her old-fashioned reasoning. Moreover, this reflects Daisy’s perspective that a girl’s intelligence should not be valued more than her appearance.

Daisy displays a distorted mentality towards women by stating that being ignorant, in a sense, is the only way a girl can maintain her social status. She also tells Nick Carraway, her cousin, that she is glad Pammy, her daughter, is a girl. “I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool (Pg  20).” This expression implies that Daisy reflects on her own experiences and believes that the world is no place for a woman. She understands that beauty is valued more than intelligence and how first impressions determine a person’s social standing in society. The best she can do is hope to survive by following the crowd and conforming to the perspectives of the upper class. Daisy later on decides to

"All right I said, 'I'm glad it’s a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.'" (Fitzgerald,17). This quote shows that in Daisy mind the best way for her daughter to succeed in life is to be beautiful to draw the attention of men. “(I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.) This quote explains that Daisy has found a way to draw people closer because she speaks very quietly. Daisy has many interactions with men throughout the novel that shows just how much influence she has over them.