Part Of His Father's Generation example essay topic

I n Our Time is a collection of short stories published by Ernest Hemingway in 1925. When the book was issued, it immediately received the highest praises of many famous writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passes, and others. All they were delighted with the simplicity and preciseness of the author's language he had used to describe a variety of complex emotions. The American version of this collection contained the following pieces: "Soldiers Home", "Indian Camp", "A Very Short Story", "My Old Man", and " Big Two Hearted River".

All of these stories are related because of a common theme of the "lost generation". Having a glimpse into the author's biography, one would obviously find out that Hemingway survived WWI as a soldier. He had to go through so much evil and blood that he began to rank himself as well as other victims of war among the "lost generation", people who had no future. This idea is reflected in the book. The main character is Nick Adams, an autobiographical personage.

By the way, Hemingway had a tendency to write about those things he had experienced himself or had a complete information about. In the story titled The Three-Day Blow, Nick and his friend Bill spend an ordinary afternoon talking about baseball and books. They enjoy a bottle of Irish whiskey, and the time passes slowly as they talk and drink. This way of spending leisure time seems like a pastime that has no place in today's fast moving modern society. They seem to care about nothing else but their own company.

These men neither want to react to any outside interference or they need any other means of entertainment to prolong their time together. Two of them and a good bottle of whiskey seem to be enough! Stories written by Hemingway are likely to have an old-fashioned kind of feel. However, at the same time they describe modern times. It seems they have some kind of moral dilemma in them. The characters constantly search for something but not all of them are really aware of what.

They even cannot imagine the reason why destiny has brought them to the place they are in. In a word, they are the "lost generation". Another story, Cat in the Rain, portrays a so-called happy marriage. Being on a vacation in Spain, the couple spends a day inside due to the bad weather (probably by the choice of husband). It seems that the wife is searching for something to fill in an unbearable void inside of her. She talks about a cat in the rain.

This is a kind of her answer to the void. The wife goes out to find the cat but she fails to. She shares her impressions with her husband about the event. However, unfortunately, she realizes that this void has emerged because of her callous man, namely, due to the lack of his attention to the wife. The cat is just a metaphor for her desires and needs. Suddenly, someone knocks at the door: it is a maid with a cat in her hands.

Unexpectedly, the manager who gave it to the maid appears to be the person paying her the attention she needed so much. This story is likely to picture the "lost generation" of love between a wife and her husband. Cat in the Rain describes the ruin of marriage in Western society and how two people can easily part with each other in such a huge world. They are just another "lost generation".

The expression "lost generation" can be interpreted differently. Let's remember the short story My Old Man. This story is told by one man's son Joe. He tells about what living with his father has been like. Joe demonstrates a lot of pride and compassion towards his dear father. Generally, the father represents all that is good, firm, and reliable in the world where Joe lives.

On the other hand, the son is really a part of his father's generation even more than he is a part of his own. This story represents the "lost generation" because it stresses a tight relationship between a father and his son, something that is not a common social phenomena today. For example, it is enough to recall the moment when Joe hears someone call his father "you son of a bitch". He starts feeling "sick inside". The son cannot understand "how anybody could call my old man a son of a bitch and get away with it". In the end of the story the father becomes a victim of a horse racing accident and dies.

It makes Joe cry bitterly and feel a huge sense of loss. This is the loss not only of his father's generation, but also of part of his own. Now he has to face his own generation which is unlike his father's one. Therefore, Joe becomes the part of the "lost generation". Due to all those hardships Hemingway had to experience in his life, he considered himself the member of the "lost generation" as well as thousands of other people.

He had a gift to realistically depict his emotional experience through his own style of lean and tough prose. His background can still teach how to live and reveal truths. Due to all of this, he surely deserves to be one of the most prominent American writers of the 20th century..