Acknowledgementsi
Abstractii
摘要..iii

1 Introduction    1
2 Origin of Lost Generation    3
2.1 Lost Generation in American History    3
2.2 Lost Generation in Hemingway’s Works    5
3 Lost Generation in Different Ages    9
3.1 Lost Generation after Great War    9
3.2 Lost Generation in Today’s China    10
4 Causes of Lostness    12
4.1 The Epoch Background of the “Lost Generation”    12
4.2 The Epoch Background of the New “Lost Generation”    13
5 Conclusion    15
5.1 Struggle with the Loss    15
5.2 Outlook on the Lost    16
Bibliography    18
1 Introduction
With the beginning of World War I, people became more and more frustrated since they found that the cruelty of reality was totally different from what they had once imagined. Therefore, they lost their faith in themselves and in everything as well. The old values and beliefs collapsed. Yet, new ones were not established. It was difficult for them to find a solution to this issue. These people were called the “lost generation”.

The so-called “Lost generation” firstly occurred in 1920s, which referred metaphorically to a number of American intellectuals, poets, artists and writers, most of whom were born around 1900 and who actively took part in World War I, sought different lifestyles and renounced the values of American materialism. These inpiduals full of idealism pursued the meaning of life, excessively drank, were promiscuous, had love affairs and most significantly created some of the finest American literature up to date(Liu, Jianfeng, 2000). This generation of distinguished artists includes the authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Waldo Peirce, Alan Seeger, and Erich Maria Remarque while Ernest Hemingway is acclaimed to be the representative of those “lost generation” writers.

As a typical representative of the “lost generation”, Hemingway produced a document of the chaotic post war in 1920s and corroborated a testament to the writer’s ability to create characters, mood, situation, and happenings that were as real as life. Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises Published in 1926, which turned out to be his most important work, was regarded as the proclamation of the “lost generation”. Readers are impressed deeply by the protagonist’s striking experiences, wonderful dialogues, and the simple and colloquial language. The term “lost generation” became widespread with the publication of The Sun Also Rises in 1926, since Hemingway used it as an epigraph in the novel. Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises had provided a vivid picture of the deranged lives of young English and American expatriates crowding the bars in Paris, engaged in aimless merry-making and labeled as the “lost generation” by Stein(Liu Huiming, 2000).

Furthermore, Karita Kan (2013), a journalist of China Perspectives, found that the so-called “post-1980” and “post-1990” tended to focus on collective generational characteristics and became the “new lost generation”. As the first generation of the “single child” policy, they are seen as self-centered “little emperors” lacking the talent for the communication and horizontal interaction. Growing up in the reform era of the economic prosperity and material abundance, they are portrayed as obsessed with appearance and consumption. Unused to hardship, they are characterized as having the unique inability to “eat bitterness”, succumbing easily to criticism and pressure. They are called “strawberries” polished and attractive in outward appearance but highly vulnerable and easily wounded. From Karita’s perspective, the emergence of a “winner-takes-all” society dominated by special interest conglomerates that operate above the law according to “privilege-consciousness” deprives young people of the perspective of upward mobility. 浅析海明威笔下“迷惘的一代”(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_17199.html