The Sun Also Rises
...a change in life, culture and perception. Those who returned from the war had their view on life shattered and changed completely. This change of awareness is evident in the literature following World War I. Authors such as Ernest Hemingway demonstrated what many were experiencing with the short sentences and tough prose found in his novels. His first and defining novel, The Sun Also Rises, was written in 1926. Hemingway uses foils to develop flawed characters and convey a message of what the "Lost Generation" experiences in The Sun Also Rises.
World War I was a war in which much new technology and innovation was used. This advancement made killing more effective and the horrors of war even greater. The trench warfare on the Eastern Front was horrendous. Poison gasses were used to flush soldiers out of trenches. When they emerged, they would be met by bullets from machine guns, which would mow men down. Survivors of the ghastly battles had the images and memories scarred into their minds. Young men were sent to war, and what they saw changed them forever. One of these men was a certain ambulance driver on the Italian Front. He witnessed the effects of the new innovations on the human body, and the devastation they caused. That man was Ernest Hemmingway, and after the war, he translated his memories and experiences into the literature that is now famous. Novels like The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are examples of this defining literature ("The Sun Also Rises" 332).
Those soldiers that returned from the war were traumatized beyond belief. They were disillusioned and stunned by what they had gone through in World War I. They were a generation of people morally and spiritually lost, and dubbed the "Lost Generation" by Gertrude Stein ("The Sun Also Rises 332-334).
One of Hemingway's talents was to create characters with flaws and...
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