The Theme of Lost Generation: A study of Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
This paper primarily examines the theme of lost generation in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and the physical and psychological desperation faced by the protagonist, an American volunteer, Robert Jordan. This paper attempts to find the reasons behind this emotional crisis and Hemingway’s notion of describing the mental trauma of Postwar effected generation. Coming to a very close grip with harsh realities and brutalities of wars, Hemingway along with his characters adopt a strong tendency to denounce war which induces abominable sense of emptiness. The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation. The "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever". The characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) may have been "battered” and “lost” No study of Ernest Hemingway’s literary work can be completed without an understanding of the author’s life because he is one of those authors whose life and works are interdependent. Hemingway made the term ‘Lost Generation’ famous by using it permanently in his novels. All his protagonists are lost generation, wandering aimlessly in the post-war world and had refused to look at the world through rose-coloured glasses. They cut a sorry figure in terms of moral, social and religious values.