By the time of World War II, America had gone through several military conflicts. Literature is thought to be one of the means of expression that have always responded to such traumatic experiences. Therefore, human suffering resulting from the War of Independance (1775-1783), conflicts with Indians, the War of 1812, the Mexixan - American War (1846-1848), Civil War (1861-1865), Spanish - American War (not led on the American territory), World War I (1917-1919) and finally World War II (1941-1945) has been portrayed in numerous American poems and novels. Nevertheless, for a long time it was failing to depict realistically the depressing picture of human loss which was seriously affected by the wars.
World War I undercut traditional notions of morality, faith and justice.The key figure of american modernism - Gertrude Stein, once said to Ernest Hemingway: You are the lost generation. This expression coined by Stein, has been since that time exclusively used with reference to a particular group of people, a generation of the young who suffered from direct consequences of war. Not only physically but most of all psychologically hurt, war participants were no longer able to uphold their lives with dignity. Devoided of any values, their lives appeared to be senseless and futile. Those who underwent the war, felt lost and alienated. They were coming back to the houses which were no longer theirs. Unchanged interiors seemed to be in stark contrast with their already gained experience. Nothing seemed to belong to them. The past was far beyond their comprehension. Therefore, neither men nor women could rely on anything that could give life meanig. They were psychologically and morally lost, and were suddenly forced to exist in such a world.
Not only Gertrude Stein with her famous expression described the feelings of alienation, disappointment, doubts which were typical for those who took part in the combat, but she also defined their need to find their place in the postwar reality. Among the soldiers and common people who fought at war were those who for ages have been responsible for depicting human feelings and responding to various events. The generation of the `lost' american writers consisted of those who served at the sanitary units ( E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Edmund Wilson) and of those who had completed military training just before the end of the conflict in Europe (Francis Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner). For those writers the end of the WWI equalled to the end of the distant epoch rather than the beginning of the new one. They felt the necessity to oppose useless and senseless sets of values and beliefs in the face of physical and moral emptiness. Consequently, they discovered falsity of language which, by no means, could express the reality of war and postwar experience. Therefore, they were searching for new means of expression, for new forms that could correspond with their trauma. Ernest Hemingway is believed to be one of the main representatives of the Lost Generation. Both his life and works are faithful proves of this przynaleznosc.
As Bronisłwa Wiśniowski claims, Hemingway's work can be fully understood only when compared to his life. The writer's saying: `I only know what I have seen.' seems to support this thesis.
Bronisław Wiśniewski, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Czytelnik, Warszawa, 1963