The twenties were strange and wonderful years in America. “The uncertainties of 1919 were over – America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.” These are the words

The twenties were strange and wonderful years in America. “The uncertainties of 1919 were over – America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.” These are the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), whose best books form a kind of spiritual history of the “Lost Generation”. Many young people in the post-World War I had ‘lost’ their American ideals. At the same time America ‘lost’ many fine young writers – like e.e. cummings and Ernest Hemingway – because they had moved to Paris. Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), describes this new generation. They had “grown up to find all gods destroyed, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.” They had their lives now filled with two concerns: “the fear of poverty and the worship of success”. From the beginning, Fitzgerald had a feeling that the twenties would find all dreams shattered.

Jay Gatsby, the hero of Fitzgerald’s famous novel “The Great Gatsby” (1925), has a belief in the absolute power and “natural goodness” of money. But Gatsby is also a true romantic. He has spent his whole life dreaming of his childhood sweetheart. He gives expensive parties at his home in the hope that she will come and fall in love with him again. Gatsby symbolizes the American belief that money can buy love and happiness. His failure makes him a rather tragic figure. See the description of him, after his guests have gone home:

“A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house... surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows, and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture offarewell.”

(Peter High. Outline of American Literature. Essex, Longman. 1996. p. 146-7. Adaptado)

The “Lost Generation” refers to