American literature between World Wars

After the World War I. a group of known as the ?Lost generation?
entered literature. They were writers who were influenced by the war; some of
they were on the service in the Army like Hemingway or Dos Passos. Their
experience resulted in disillusionment. The best were Ernest Hemingway and
Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Ernest Hemingway

was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954 for his famous book
the Old Man and the Sea, which is about human strength for fighting both
external natural things and bad sides of his character. Hemingway became a journalist
after the World War I. A Farewell to Arms is one of the best novels about
the World War I. It is a love story of an American Lieutenant in the
Italian Ambulance Service and an English nurse. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a psychological
picture of war on an episode from Spanish Civil War. One of the best parts of
the novel is Robert Jordan?s monologue what beautiful place the world is and
how much it is worth fighting for. His other famous novels are fiesta, Death in
the Afternoon, A Moveable Feast a Islands in the Stream. Hemingway was
a master in short story writing.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

is connected with the Jazz Age of the 20s. He
wrote money stories about wealthy people, from whom everything is so easy
because of money. It is in the book names Tales of the Jazz Age. The Great
Gatsby is his best novel – about a very rich man who earns all his money by
smuggling. He is doing this because he wants to be on the same level as Daisy,
his former lover who had always been rich.

William Faulkner

was also Nobel Prize winner. He was a Southerner
who wrote a cycle of novels dealing with all possible problems of the South.
To this cycle include the novels Light in August, As I Lay Dying, Absolon,
Absolon!, The Sound of the Fury.

John Steinbeck

won the Nobel Prize in 1962. He tried to uncover the
reasons of social injustice. The Grapes of Wrath describes the Depression
following after the crisis of 1929. This novel is a picture of a poor
family which is exploited by the fruit-growers in California. His other works
are Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, East of Eden?

Theodore Dreiser

had a proletarian childhood he became a reporter,
editor and novelist. In his naturalist novels he showed the ugly sides of
American Life – it is in Sister Arrie. His masterpiece is An American Tragedy.
His Hero is negative, he becomes a murderer, but it is not the hero who is
to blame but the society and the system.

Sinclair Lewis

was a little bit younger than Theordore Dreisler, and
particularly agreed with him. He was the first US writer to win the Nobel Prize
in literature in 1930. He deals mainly with a small town in the Middle West
and its middle-class citizens. He wrote Main Street, Arrowsmith and Babbit.