Week 4 – World War I, the “Roaring 20”, and the Lost Generation Flashcards
1
Q
The US enters WWI 1917
A
- Initially pursuing a policy of isolationism, in 1917 the US enter the war, after the Germans resume their unrestricted submarine war.
- In May 1915 Germany had sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania, killing more than 120 US citizens on board.
- The United States never formally becomes a member of the Allies but acts as self-styled “Associated Power”. America has only a small standing army, but drafts four million men and by summer 1918 is sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day.
- Women took jobs in factories producing supplies and enlisted in the American Red Cross at home and abroad.
2
Q
The Trauma of War
A
- Although the Allies (Entente) finally achieve victory over the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, the German, and Ottoman Empires, and Bulgaria), WWI leaves strong scars on the mentality of all involved.
- WWI is led with an unprecedented degree of brutality and characterized by the employment of high-tech weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
3
Q
New War Technology
A
- WWI sees the use of revolutionary war technology, such as tanks, airplanes, and steel ships.
- Gas War: For the first time, chemical weapons are used on a large scale, such as chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene.
- Artillery: Long range artillery causes most of the deaths in WWI, as powerful railway guns achieve a firing range of up to 100 km.
4
Q
Trench War – The Western Front
A
- The trench war causes casualties on an unprecedented scale.
- The Western Front ran for 700 Km from Belgian coast, through France, all the way to the boarder with Switzerland.
- Theatre of some of the bloodiest battles of WWI, the front line remained largely static.
- Defensive technologies more effective than offensive ones.
- On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army endures the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties and 19,240 dead. Most of the casualties occur in the first hour of the attack. The entire offensive costs the British Army almost half a million dead.-
5
Q
The Trauma of WWI
A
The experiences endured during WWI leads to a collective trauma for all participating countries. The soldiers returning home from WWI suffer greatly from the horrors they have witnessed. Although it is called “shell shock” at the time, many returning veterans suffer from what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
6
Q
The ‘Lost Generation’
A
- The optimism of the 1900s is gone. WWI puts at rest any Enlightened illusions of the perpetual improvement of the human race, as well as the belief in the values of 19th century Victorianism.
- Although the toll in human lives that WWI has claimed is high, the end of the war finds the US as the grand profiteer of it, as its economy profits from both the wartime production as well as the rebuilding of Europe.
7
Q
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A
- The chronicler of the “Jazz Age”…
- Term normally credited to writer Gertrude Stein and used to define a group of American writers who came of age during WW1 and who are unable to follow President Harding’s ‘back to normalcy’ policy
8
Q
Ernest Hemingway
A
- Becomes one of the most famous expatriates that flee America toward Europe, where Paris becomes the center of the Lost Generation.
- In his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926), as well as in his memoirs A Moveable Feast (1964), he captures the disillusionment and loss of beliefs of the Lost Generation.
- One of the preeminent literary voices of 20th century America
9
Q
Earnest Hemingway Novels
A
- 1926: The Torrents of Spring
- 1926: The Sun Also Rises
- 1937: To Have and To Have Not
- 1940: For Whom the Bell Tolls
- 1952: The Old Man and the Sea
- 1970: posthumously; Islands in the Stream
- 1986: posthumously; The Garden of Eden
- 1999: posthumously; True at First Light
- 2005: posthumously; Under Kilimanjaro
10
Q
When and what prizes did Hemingway win?
A
- 1953, he receives the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea
- 1954 he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
11
Q
Hemingway and the War
A
- After having worked as a journalist, Hemingway serves as medical ambulance driver in WWI.
- Soon after arriving on the Italian Front Hemingway witnesses the brutalities of war. On his first day on duty, an ammunition factory near Milan blows up. Hemingway has to pick up the human remains. This first encounter with death leaves him shaken.
- Later, he is wounded by an Austrian artillery shrapnel as well as by machine gun fire.
12
Q
What’s the Iceberg Theory?
A
- Also theory of omission
- Writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway
- Deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly
- Strategy of fiction writing in which most of the story is hidden, much like an iceberg underneath the ocean. The largest percentage of an iceberg is underwater (not visible) and is subsequently the strongest part of the iceberg
- 20% of what his writings contain is visible / put in words, other 80% is hidden beneath or “between the lines
13
Q
Hemingway – The ‘un-American’ All-American
A
- Considering America to have betrayed its ideals and promises, Hemingway indulges in a nostalgia for the self-reliant individual, the male American adamic hero who, however, is tragically doomed to fail in the contemporary world.
- As such, he is both typically a American author, as well as highly critical of America “as is”
14
Q
The Nick Adams Stories
A
- The same detachment – and the tragic absence of an underlying, shared set of values as in “Soldier’s Home” and in many of his novels – characterizes the short story “The Killers.”
- The main protagonist of the story – as in many stories of Hemingway – is the adolescent Nick Adams, whose child-like perspective of wonder at the adult’s world provides the necessary distance to the action.
- In many ways, the rites of initiation that Nick Adams has to go through allegorically dramatize the story of an ‘American Adam’ being confronted with the problems of growing up, and in the process losing his innocence, being faced with moral corruption and compromises.
15
Q
The Context of Nick Adams: Prohibition and the Chicago Gangster Myth
A
- Hemingway’s short story “The Killers” alludes – in an almost postmodern, ironic-intertextual way – to the notorious gangster myths that surround especially Chicago during the 1920s, the time of prohibition.
- Prohibition in the US begins in 1920, after the 18th Amendment of the US constitution is ratified on 29 January 1919, and lasts until 1933.
- Section 1 of the 18th Amendment reads: “After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”
