Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry

Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry 1.1 Introduction: When World War1 broke out in 1914, it ended almost 100 years of relative peace in Europe. America at that time adopted a policy of neutrality and isolation regarding war. This approach was fully supported by the people of America at that time but later, in 1917 the German submarines entered the US marine territories against which the US government finally had to break the ice. So, as a reaction to German invasion America finally launched a counter attack and consequently the whole nation plunged into the great World War1. Unaware of the consequences America unwillingly had to participate in the greatest holocaust of the world known as the World War1. America would never have become a part of World War1 and have stuck to its neutral policy but the German submarines defied the US marine laws and entered the US territories on January 9th, 1917. Woodrow Wilson the US president at that time finally asked congress to declare war on Germany and it was April 2nd, 1917. As a result of this legitimate order America joined the war along with the other Allies. On the other hand the continent of Europe was under the attack of war where World War1 rose like a wall of blood red mountains. Despite having massive military and great weapons war killed ten million Europeans, most of them were young soldiers, nurses and subjects and all became the victims of ultimate death brought by heavy war weapons, flying jets and bullets swimming in the air. It was deaths command everywhere and when death comes to its empire it kills all what it finds. Similar was the situation in America where men, women and children all were on the mercy of a single bullet. Four million American soldiers were killed in war and almost equal number of civilians got killed and injured men, women and children left homeless due to the great wreckage all around with the spread of epidemic disease that resulted in the cause of further deaths of many civilians. It was a chaotic situation after the war ended in 1919. People were completely disillusioned and stunned by the aftermaths of the World War1. They were hopeless and unaware of their futures. The basic matrix of life was completely dissolved by the cruel war and human civilization became a victim of demolition. People lost their faith in basic norms and values of life as war took away with it their hopes, happiness and loved ones too. They seemed completely lost with having no basic aim behind being alive. Young men and women of America started living like herds of sheep and were spending life just for the sake of killing time. Eventually the war ended but it left behind its impact on the mind of masses and its terror got stored into the minds of the post-war generations. People became mentally sick and even after the war was over they felt its aftershocks later on in their lives. World War1 was the greatest trauma of the lives of a great number of Americans who survived the brutal attack of the war. The post-war American race became a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental disorders which were the result of the shocks given by the World War1. PTSD is a severe kind of state of mind after a great shock or accident that leads a human being to become a patient of insomnia and several other mental retardations. Almost each community and every class in Americas post-war society became a victim of PTSD which became a cause of disbelief and disgracing of the traditional life style on part of American generation. Watching all the above mentioned events and incidents in the midst of the battle fields and among the victims of the World War1 was present Ernest Hemingway, an American Red Cross ambulance driver who witnessed and used all these war events and post-war condition of the society as a backdrop of his literary works. Hemingway represented the American society and a post-war perturbed American generation which is known as the Lost Generation of America. Hemingway being a spokesman of the lost generation, masterly managed to give a unique account of events and incidents that took place in the war and changed the lives of millions of Americans. Hemingways main concern was the American society and its members who were suffering from a post-war disturbed psychological state of mind. Aiken (1926) writes in his essay as edited by Meyers (1982) as follows: The half dozen characters, all of whom belong to the curious and sad little world of disillusioned and aimless expatriates who make what home they can in the cafes of Paris, are seen perfectly and unsentimentally by Mr. Hemingway and are put before us with a maximum of economy 1. (90) As we know wars have always been a cause of destruction, devastation and demolition on a great scale since the descent of mankind on earth. There is no doubt that wars shatter the matrix of human civilization and bring forth despair, death and disease for mankind. Surpassing all the previous wars, the great World-Wars dismantled the hopes, dreams and races on a large scale and nations falling victims of disillusionment, aimlessness and mental stress and physical disorders. One of the greatest diseases that damage the brain after a war is ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a severe state of human mind after a shock or a trauma. Durand and Barlow (2000) comment on PTSD as follows: In recent years we have heard a great deal about the severe and long-lasting emotional disorders that can occur after a variety of traumatic events. Perhaps the most impressive traumatic event is war, but emotional disorders also occur after physical assault (particularly rape), car accidents, natural catastrophes, or the sudden death of a loved one. The emotional disorder that follows a trauma is known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2. (131) Then I. Sarason and Sarason (2006) in their book on Abnormal Psychology comment: PTSD involves an extreme experience, such as war, a natural catastrophe (for instance an earthquake), a physical assault, or a serious car crash. The traumas range from those that are directly experienced (e.g., being threatened with death) to those that are witnessed (e.g., family member being threatened with death). The onset of the clinical condition in posttraumatic disorders varies from soon after the trauma to long after it has occurred. Most studies have found higher rates among women than men. The prevalence of PTSD in the general population is about 0.5% in men and 1.2% in women (Andreasen and Black, 2001). Because life today is considered to be high in trauma for the population in general, it is estimated that Americans currently have a 5 to 10% chance of developing PTSD at sometime during their lifetimes. The combination of vulnerability factors and exposures earlier in life to traumatic experiences increases the likelihood of PTSD. For instance, having been abused as a ch ild or have had other previous traumatic experiences increases the risk for PTSD, especially for individuals who generally have emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression 3. (256) Now keeping in mind the American society which is the sole area of our research, we found the reason behind PTSD in American society and the characters introduced to us by Ernest Hemingway in his works. And that reason was the First World War and its aftermath. The lives of millions of people were badly influenced by World War I in America and in Europe as well. The great holocaust changed the whole concept of life by destroying the basic norms and traditional beliefs in all parts of the world. Priestley (1962) comments on World War I as follows: In the very middle of this age the First World War rises like a wall of blood-red mountains. Its frenzied butchery, indefensible even on a military basis, killed at least ten million Europeans, mostly young and free from obvious physical defects. After being dressed in uniform, fed and drilled, cheered and cried over before they were packed into their cattle-trunks, these ten million were then filled with hot lead, ripped apart by shell splinters, blown to bits, bayoneted in the belly, choked with poison gas, suffocated in mud, trampled to death or drowned, buried in collapsing dugouts, dropped out of burning aero planes, or allowed to die of diseases, after rotting to long in trenches that they shared with syphilitic rats and typhus-infested lice. Death, having come into his empire, demands the best, and got it 4. (321) Almost all the works of Ernest Hemingway are a result of his first-hand experience of war and his staunch observation of life around him. Most of his works prove to be autobiographical in nature and Cooperman (1964) comments on autobiographical nature of Hemingways works as follows: Three elements in Hemingways life shaped many of his attitudes, and indeed shaped much of his works: the fact that in World War I, he suffered a painful and terrible mortar wound, which made him conscious of the dread possibilities of the loss of manhood; the fact that his father committed suicide; and the fact of his growing old†¦ and the fears created by old age itself. Similar to Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms, Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was afflicted with the fear of letting go and the fear of thinking. The nightmare of chaos, of passivity, loss of will, loss of initiative, loss of masculine role was a terrible nightmare, and one to be avoided at all costs 5. (85-92) It has already been observed that all the Hemingway fiction comes from his war experiences and the aftermath of the war. Many critics have commented on this experience-based technique of Ernest Hemingway. According to Putnam (2006), Tobias Wolff at the Hemingway centennial celebration said, â€Å"Hemingways great war work deals with aftermath. It deals with what happens to the soul in war and how people deal with that afterward.† Putnam (2006) further comments: No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it firsthand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable works 6. Ernest Hemingway is best known as the representative of the â€Å"Lost Generation† of America. He as an artist and writer of literature selected characters from the post-war American society as he was himself a member of that society and he observed it staunchly. Most of his works are based on his personal experience of the society and that is why he is often himself present in his novels as a leading character. Asselineau (1980) comments on Hemingways fiction as follows: It was indeed a â€Å"lost generation† in more senses than one. Yet, Hemingway among others survived the Great War for over forty years and, after appearing as the cynical and disillusioned Byron of twentieth century, ultimately turned into a new â€Å"teacher of athletes† and a â€Å"professeur d energie† a la Barres. A rather surprising change and a very spectacular recovery, which we can follow step by step in his works, since his novels make up an interminable Bildungsroman whose hero is always himself 7. While going through the works of Ernest Hemingway one realizes that Hemingway has very skillfully managed to present before us a group of expatriates who had left their homeland America after getting disillusioned by the war and were living as useless people in different parts of Europe under a special code of life. Asselineau (1980) comments as follows: All the veterans of foreign wars who appeared in Hemingways fiction are united by a common belief in an unwritten code. They are morally and physically very tough. They can take it. They keep a stiff upper lip. They grin and bear it. They refuse to discuss their own emotion and despise loquacious swaggerers like Robert Cohn. They hate gushing. They believe in self control and self imposed discipline. They have reached true wisdom in the etymological meaning of the word â€Å"wisdom†. They are those who know- who know that they are mortal and that sooner or later life ends in death. They know that man- whatever he does- will sooner or later be crushed by the hostile forces which surround him and is bound to be defeated- defeated, but not vanquished, for, like Pascal, they believe in the dignity of man, â€Å"a mere reed, and the weakest that can be found on earth, but even when the universe crushes him, man is still nobler than what kills him, for he knows that he is dying, wh ile the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe is unaware of it.† 8 (1844) High (1986) has also commented on the lost generation as follows: Man young people the post-World War 1 period had â€Å"lost† their American ideals. At the same time America â€Å"lost† many fine young writers- like e.e. cummings and Hemingway- because they had moved to Paris. Fitz Geralds first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), describes this new generation. They had â€Å"grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.† Two concerns now filled their lives: â€Å"the fear of poverty and the worship of success.† 9 (143) Hemingways The Sun Also Rises proves to be the best of his works and it was also his first proper novel on lost generation of America. The novel stands as a monument over which the whole drama of the lost generation of America has been carved. It was Gertrude Stein the American authoress and Hemingways mentor who for the very first time told E. Hemingway: â€Å"You are all a lost generation.† Hemingway was struck by the comment and used it as an epigraph and also the theme of his first novel, Fiesta (called The Sun Also Rises in US. Ousby (1979) in his essay The Lost Generation comments as follows: Today the ‘lost Generation has come to seem an over-worked catchphrase. Used indiscriminately in its own era, the title has been claimed by successive generations of writers and applied retrospectively to earlier schools, such as the American naturalists. Yet the term remains useful in discussing the novelists of 1920s, if only because epitomizes the way they liked to see themselves. 10 (205) Ousby (1979) further explains the characteristics of the writers of lost generation in following words: Their unique and common experience was a disillusion bred by the First World War. They returned from that conflict to a society whose values seemed hollow and artificial by comparison with the harsh realities of the battle-field. Their alienation from America often took the form of exile and expatriation: Hemingway and Dos Passos spent most of their early adult lives in Europe, while Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe were frequent visitors. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Paris became the extra-parliamentary centre of American culture in 1920s. It was the shrine to which most ambitious young writers of the era made their pilgrimage. 11 (206) Ousby (1979) in the same essay tells us the factors which affected the writings of the writers of lost generation in the following words: Disillusioned with society in general and America in particular, the novelists of the Lost Generation cultivated a romantic self-absorption- a deliberate retreat into private emotion. They became precocious experts in tragedy, suffering and anguish. The early novels of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald are peopled by sad, bitter young men who have lost all illusions at an early age; Amory Blaine of This Side of Paradise and Jake Barnes of Fiesta are the prime examples. They are haunted by war memories and by images of violence, cynical about idealism in any form, and given to only the most cryptic and laconic expressions of feeling. 12 (206) Ousby (1979) also comments on the characters introduced to us by the writers of lost generation as follows: The characters of Lost Generation novels live in restless pursuit of excitement and pleasure. Their Europe is not the gallery of cultural objects found in Hawthornes and Jamess fiction: it is a Europe of elegant restaurants, picturesque bars and intriguing local customs. They delight in kicking over the conventional traces (and in the resultant cries of middle- class horror), indulging in heavy drinking and casual sex. 13 (207) It was only Ernest Hemingway, who among the most famous writers of lost generation of America has been able to won the title of the avant-garde writer of the lost generation. His novel The Sun Also Rises was recommended all over the world as a true story featuring real people from the lost generation. This novel also made Hemingway a world-known celebrity. Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments: This book made him, almost instantly, an international celebrity identified with an entire generation, torn by war and grieving throughout the Roaring Twenties for their lost romantic idealism. Although he was somewhat ill-suited for the role, because he was a hard-working young writer with a wife and a son to support, he came to be regarded as the spokesman for American expatriates, those disillusioned and disaffected artists, writers, and intellectuals who spent the decade on the Left Bank in Paris. 14 (87) In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway uses Jake as a puppet, a narrator and also his famous code hero. Jake narrates the whole story which Hemingways eye saw sincerely. Nagel (1996) again in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on the character of Jake Barnes as follows: He is certainly one of the most isolated and vulnerable figures in American literature, and he narrates out of his disillusionment and pain, his grief evident throughout. As he says about himself, all he wants is to figure out how he can live in the world. It would seem that telling what happened is part of the process of learning how to live in the special circumstances of his world. 15 (90) Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on Jake being a representative of lost generation in following words: Hemingway humanized this dichotomy in the character of Jake Barnes by creating a man who bears the wounds of the war in a profoundly personal way yet combines his disillusionment with traditional American values of hard work and just compensation. It is surely an oversimplification to see Jake as an uncompromised representative of lost generation radicalism, for he exhibits much of the midwestern values he sometimes satirizes†¦ Above all, it is his judgment that provides the normative sensibility for assessing the people and events of the novel. But to grasp the meaning of what he relates, it is essential to understand the psychological context in which he tells it. 16 (91) Lady Ashley Brett is another important character from the lost generation. She is pure nymphomaniac sort of a woman and is a true representative of the women of the early 20th century. According to Nagel (1996), â€Å"Brett is by no means the first representation of a sexually liberated, free-thinking woman in American literature but rather an embodiment of what became known as the â€Å"New Woman† in nineteenth-century fiction.† Nagel (1996) further says: Brett is not only a women but an extraordinary woman for the age, a point not clear unless she is considered in historical context. Form this perspective, the women in The Sun Also Rises might be regarded as more interesting then the men. The role of women in society had been changing with each decade for a century, always with a good deal of social conflict and ideological struggle. 17 (92) Keeping in mind the agony of Jake due to his relation with Brett, we may easily nominate him as the most suffering person in the novel. His love with Brett makes him feel the pain of his wound which he got during the war, because he could not physically fulfill what he felt. According to Nagel (1996): From the beginning, the world is out of sexual order, the social evening is a parody of erotic potential, and the deeper irony is that this pathology is at the very heart of Jake and Bretts relationship. Their conversation in the taxi reveals the central problem of the novel: that they one another, that they feel that there is nothing they can do about it, that it is painful and destructive for them to be together. Whatever else happens is driven by this fact, and it is impossible for them to change it. The central dilemma for Jake is whether he can change the situation by finding some satisfaction in life. The problem for Brett is that she needs companionship of a man, and no one but Jake can offer her much beyond fleeting sexual pleasure. 18 (94) Jake truly deserves pity because he is the one who lost the most he had during war and even afterwards. His love with Brett gives him nothing except pain and he is also unable to sleep at night due to the agony brought by his love for Brett. Nagel (1996) comments: The â€Å"loss† in the â€Å"lost generation† is sustained primarily by him, and it makes for powerful fiction. The novel works, ultimately, because Jake, in anomalous circumstances, nevertheless presents a normative sensibility in the story he tells. He emerges as a man of intelligence, humor and good sense who lost more than he deserved in World War 1 but learned how to make a life for himself. 19 (105) According to Martin (1987): Jake Barnes and his friends- all of them- are a group because they share the same beliefs and experiences. Except for Robert Cohn, whose differences are less heinous than Jake sometimes thinks them to be, the displaced Americans and Britons are moving through a festival period in their lives, punctuating their aimless existence abroad with an organized visit to Spain for the bullfights. 20 (07) The characters introduced to us by Hemingway live under a peculiar but yet an extraordinary code of life. They behave like a community of people sharing similar set of thoughts and beliefs. Martin (1987) in her New Essays on The Sun Also Rises says: A key theme is the notion of community: These are people who understand each other, the rules they live by, and the reasons for their choices. Only someone outside that community will have difficulty with the social code. Count Mippipopolous may be a stranger to the group, but he understands the code and fits into the society. Robert Cohn, although he spends much time with the members of the group and thinks himself a special friend of both Jake and Brett, never manages to assimilate the rules. Jake, however, is clearly in charge- of the plans, the guest list, the activities, and the emotional nuance. He is the apparent hero of the novel, and his approval or disapproval sets the pattern for the other characters reaction to things. 20 (08) All the characters in the novel The Sun Also Rises seem dissatisfied and unhappy and most of the time they feel themselves useless. Martin (1987) comments on this condition of the characters in following words: There are many reasons for these characters unhappiness. To dwell on â€Å"irony and pity† is just a pastime; the real issues are the lack of alignment between profession and occupation, between lovers, between vacation and work, between ideals of Spain and France, between nature and the commercial. As full of disjunctures as a picture puzzle, The Sun Also Rises still presents a story whole, its fragments necessarily scattered throughout the narrative, and readers accept the fragmentation as one the marks of Hemingways truth. They seize on the purity of Pedro Romero, the wit of the bemused Mike Campbell, the taciturn acceptances of Jake Barnes, the flip bravado of Brett Ashley as the symbols of the characters who survive the onslaught of real life. 21 (16) Chapter 2 Life and Works of Ernest Hemingway 2.1 Birth and Parentage: Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21st, 1899. His father was a doctor. He spent much of his time in his early days roaming about in the woods, rifle on his shoulders, or rowing out across the water of a large lake in quest of big fish. Although his family owned a cottage on a lake, he usually slept outside in a tent, the dim light of a kerosene lantern flickering long hours into the night over his temporary cot as he laid reading. 2.1.1 His Schooling: In June 1917, Hemingway graduated from Oak Park High School toward the bottom of his class. Meanwhile, war had broken out in Europe and, preferring fighting to college, he tried to get enlisted in the army but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Frustrated, he went away to live with an uncle in Kansas City where he found a job as a reporter in a newspaper. He liked his writing job, but he still had a compelling urge to get into the war, and the opportunity came soon afterwards. On learning that Italy was recruiting ambulance drivers to serve on the Italian front; he gave up his job and became an ambulance driver in Italy. 2.1.2 Injuries of War: Hemingway had been driving behind the lines for only a few days when he found that his work was too safe, in fact, dull. He wanted to serve on the frontlines in the thick of things. So he volunteered for canteen service and was soon riding a bicycle, handing out mail, tobacco, and chocolates to soldiers in the trenches. On his tenth day in Italy as he was handing a chocolate bar to a soldier, a large mortar shell fell near by. Hemingway was almost buried. His body was filled below the waist with over 250 pieces of shrapnel, but after regaining consciousness, he rescued a badly wounded Italian soldier and was turning to help others when he was hit again, with a machine-gun bullet, below the left knee. 2.1.3 Falls in Love with a Nurse: He spent several weeks in a Red Cross hospital and there he fell in love with an English Nurse Agnes. While in Europe, he received several medals for bravery, and then was sent home, limping on a cane. The Hemingway who went back to America was different person from the young man who had left. War, death, suffering, new people, a new language and love had all been crowded into a short period of time. 2.1.4 Disappointment in Love: While his feet and legs healed, he read a lot and impatiently watched the mail until, one day after receiving a letter, he suddenly became ill. He retired into seclusion and for days hardly left his room. Finally, on being repeatedly asked by his family, he revealed that the letter has came form Agnes informing him that she was not coming to America and that she had married an Italian army major. 2.1.5 Failure and Fame: Sad and disappointed, Hemingway went to Paris for study and to make a living by writing. There, he met and became friendly with some of the worlds greatest literary figures of that day- James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and others. But despite their advice and help, he could not sell his literary attempts. Manuscript after manuscript kept coming back from editors, usually without a single word of encouragement, and with only a printed rejection slip. One day, he was sitting at a side walk cafà © on the Left Bank in Paris and complaining to a friend about his ill luck. The friend observed that perhaps the reason why Hemingways writings did not sell was that he had not suffered enough and that he did not know misery. Hemingway bitterly replied, â€Å"So I have not known misery! So thats what you think!† Then at first seemingly lost in memory, he narrated the story of his lost love, Agnes, the English nurse. He told his friend about the suffering he had endured in World W ar 1. Later, he put the story on paper in the form of a novel, A Farewell to Arms. The book proved to be immensely popular and Hemingway found himself famous. We could probably say that an unhappy love affair and his unhappy experiences in war were the motivating factor which made him being a great author. 2.1.6 Reporting in Spain: He went on writing and was now a successful and established writer. He traveled extensively, hunting in Africa and the Far East, fishing in numerous oceans and seas. He felt greatly attracted by bull-fighting in Spain and spent several years in that country. He covered the Spanish Civil War for American newspapers and could not resist getting into the fight in Madrid. By then, he was known as â€Å"Papa†, a bearded huge figure of a man who joked and swore with the best of the soldiers. 2.1.7 World War II: When World War II began, Hemingway, then living in Cuba, armed his own boat as a submarine chaser and patrolled the Atlantic Coast off the United States. But in 1942, he was in the thick of battle again as a magazine correspondent. He flew from England on bombing missions and became an expert on German rockets. Near the end of the war, he was among the first wave of troops to storm the Normandy beach in 1944. After the war, he retired to Cuba to fish and write. One book proved a failure, and his critics remarked that Papas carrier was over. 2.1.8 The Nobel Prize: Then, in 1952, after years of work, he brought out The Old Man and the Sea, a tale of the struggle of a single, old fisherman against the powers of fate and the ocean. It was the story he had been trying to write all his life, and it brought him the Pulitzer Prize for 1953. In the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Suffering from injuries in plane crashes while hunting wild game in Africa, Hemingway could not go to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize but in a letter to the Academy he declared that the writers life was a lonely one, and that if he shed his loneliness, his work would deteriorate. Still living in Cuba, Hemingway continued writing short stories, novels, and magazine articles. But he also began to take life easier, spending more time on his fishing boat with his wife, whom he called Miss Mary. â€Å"No one can work everyday in these hot months without going stale,† he wrote during this period. â€Å"To break up the pattern of work, we fish the Gulf Stream in the spring and summer months and in the fall. 2.1.9 A Life of Adventure: Hemingways sixty-two years were packed with excitement. Living through adventure after adventure, he told stories of his life and love on jungles, the two World Wars in which he played a part in Europe, and a giant 1000-pound fish he battled off the Coast of Cuba. But his writing was more than just adventure stories; he helped to set the style for the modern novel. His lean, muscular prose and dramatic plots have, perhaps, been copied more than any other modern authors and his work has been translated into all the worlds major languages. 2.1.10 Ill Health and Suicide: But Hemingway was growing old. His hair and beard had turned white. His old wounds were bothering him. He had to keep standing while writing, and he was frequently unwell. Then Castro took over in Cuba, and Hemingway and Miss Mary returned to America, living in Idaho. He spent a few months in hospitals, began losing weight, and saw his creative ability declining. Early one morning on July 1961, he slipped on the stairs in his home and, not wishing to prolong his suffering, killed himself with a gun. Perhaps he had concluded, like the old fisherman in his novel, that he had no luck anymore. 2.2 His Works: Influenced by Ezra Pound and particularly by Gertrude Stein whose style strongly affected him, Hemingway published Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923 and In Our Time (a collection of short stories) in 1925. These early stories exhibited the attitude of mind and technique for which Hemingway later became famous. As the leading spokesman for the â€Å"lost generation†, he expressed the feelings of war-wounded people disillusioned by the loss of faith and hope, and so thoroughly defeated by the collapse of former values that they could turn only to a stoic acceptance of primal emotions. The stories are mainly concerned with â€Å"tough† people, both intelligent men and women who have dropped into an exhausted cynicism or such primitives as frontiers-men, I Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry 1.1 Introduction: When World War1 broke out in 1914, it ended almost 100 years of relative peace in Europe. America at that time adopted a policy of neutrality and isolation regarding war. This approach was fully supported by the people of America at that time but later, in 1917 the German submarines entered the US marine territories against which the US government finally had to break the ice. So, as a reaction to German invasion America finally launched a counter attack and consequently the whole nation plunged into the great World War1. Unaware of the consequences America unwillingly had to participate in the greatest holocaust of the world known as the World War1. America would never have become a part of World War1 and have stuck to its neutral policy but the German submarines defied the US marine laws and entered the US territories on January 9th, 1917. Woodrow Wilson the US president at that time finally asked congress to declare war on Germany and it was April 2nd, 1917. As a result of this legitimate order America joined the war along with the other Allies. On the other hand the continent of Europe was under the attack of war where World War1 rose like a wall of blood red mountains. Despite having massive military and great weapons war killed ten million Europeans, most of them were young soldiers, nurses and subjects and all became the victims of ultimate death brought by heavy war weapons, flying jets and bullets swimming in the air. It was deaths command everywhere and when death comes to its empire it kills all what it finds. Similar was the situation in America where men, women and children all were on the mercy of a single bullet. Four million American soldiers were killed in war and almost equal number of civilians got killed and injured men, women and children left homeless due to the great wreckage all around with the spread of epidemic disease that resulted in the cause of further deaths of many civilians. It was a chaotic situation after the war ended in 1919. People were completely disillusioned and stunned by the aftermaths of the World War1. They were hopeless and unaware of their futures. The basic matrix of life was completely dissolved by the cruel war and human civilization became a victim of demolition. People lost their faith in basic norms and values of life as war took away with it their hopes, happiness and loved ones too. They seemed completely lost with having no basic aim behind being alive. Young men and women of America started living like herds of sheep and were spending life just for the sake of killing time. Eventually the war ended but it left behind its impact on the mind of masses and its terror got stored into the minds of the post-war generations. People became mentally sick and even after the war was over they felt its aftershocks later on in their lives. World War1 was the greatest trauma of the lives of a great number of Americans who survived the brutal attack of the war. The post-war American race became a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental disorders which were the result of the shocks given by the World War1. PTSD is a severe kind of state of mind after a great shock or accident that leads a human being to become a patient of insomnia and several other mental retardations. Almost each community and every class in Americas post-war society became a victim of PTSD which became a cause of disbelief and disgracing of the traditional life style on part of American generation. Watching all the above mentioned events and incidents in the midst of the battle fields and among the victims of the World War1 was present Ernest Hemingway, an American Red Cross ambulance driver who witnessed and used all these war events and post-war condition of the society as a backdrop of his literary works. Hemingway represented the American society and a post-war perturbed American generation which is known as the Lost Generation of America. Hemingway being a spokesman of the lost generation, masterly managed to give a unique account of events and incidents that took place in the war and changed the lives of millions of Americans. Hemingways main concern was the American society and its members who were suffering from a post-war disturbed psychological state of mind. Aiken (1926) writes in his essay as edited by Meyers (1982) as follows: The half dozen characters, all of whom belong to the curious and sad little world of disillusioned and aimless expatriates who make what home they can in the cafes of Paris, are seen perfectly and unsentimentally by Mr. Hemingway and are put before us with a maximum of economy 1. (90) As we know wars have always been a cause of destruction, devastation and demolition on a great scale since the descent of mankind on earth. There is no doubt that wars shatter the matrix of human civilization and bring forth despair, death and disease for mankind. Surpassing all the previous wars, the great World-Wars dismantled the hopes, dreams and races on a large scale and nations falling victims of disillusionment, aimlessness and mental stress and physical disorders. One of the greatest diseases that damage the brain after a war is ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a severe state of human mind after a shock or a trauma. Durand and Barlow (2000) comment on PTSD as follows: In recent years we have heard a great deal about the severe and long-lasting emotional disorders that can occur after a variety of traumatic events. Perhaps the most impressive traumatic event is war, but emotional disorders also occur after physical assault (particularly rape), car accidents, natural catastrophes, or the sudden death of a loved one. The emotional disorder that follows a trauma is known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2. (131) Then I. Sarason and Sarason (2006) in their book on Abnormal Psychology comment: PTSD involves an extreme experience, such as war, a natural catastrophe (for instance an earthquake), a physical assault, or a serious car crash. The traumas range from those that are directly experienced (e.g., being threatened with death) to those that are witnessed (e.g., family member being threatened with death). The onset of the clinical condition in posttraumatic disorders varies from soon after the trauma to long after it has occurred. Most studies have found higher rates among women than men. The prevalence of PTSD in the general population is about 0.5% in men and 1.2% in women (Andreasen and Black, 2001). Because life today is considered to be high in trauma for the population in general, it is estimated that Americans currently have a 5 to 10% chance of developing PTSD at sometime during their lifetimes. The combination of vulnerability factors and exposures earlier in life to traumatic experiences increases the likelihood of PTSD. For instance, having been abused as a ch ild or have had other previous traumatic experiences increases the risk for PTSD, especially for individuals who generally have emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression 3. (256) Now keeping in mind the American society which is the sole area of our research, we found the reason behind PTSD in American society and the characters introduced to us by Ernest Hemingway in his works. And that reason was the First World War and its aftermath. The lives of millions of people were badly influenced by World War I in America and in Europe as well. The great holocaust changed the whole concept of life by destroying the basic norms and traditional beliefs in all parts of the world. Priestley (1962) comments on World War I as follows: In the very middle of this age the First World War rises like a wall of blood-red mountains. Its frenzied butchery, indefensible even on a military basis, killed at least ten million Europeans, mostly young and free from obvious physical defects. After being dressed in uniform, fed and drilled, cheered and cried over before they were packed into their cattle-trunks, these ten million were then filled with hot lead, ripped apart by shell splinters, blown to bits, bayoneted in the belly, choked with poison gas, suffocated in mud, trampled to death or drowned, buried in collapsing dugouts, dropped out of burning aero planes, or allowed to die of diseases, after rotting to long in trenches that they shared with syphilitic rats and typhus-infested lice. Death, having come into his empire, demands the best, and got it 4. (321) Almost all the works of Ernest Hemingway are a result of his first-hand experience of war and his staunch observation of life around him. Most of his works prove to be autobiographical in nature and Cooperman (1964) comments on autobiographical nature of Hemingways works as follows: Three elements in Hemingways life shaped many of his attitudes, and indeed shaped much of his works: the fact that in World War I, he suffered a painful and terrible mortar wound, which made him conscious of the dread possibilities of the loss of manhood; the fact that his father committed suicide; and the fact of his growing old†¦ and the fears created by old age itself. Similar to Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms, Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was afflicted with the fear of letting go and the fear of thinking. The nightmare of chaos, of passivity, loss of will, loss of initiative, loss of masculine role was a terrible nightmare, and one to be avoided at all costs 5. (85-92) It has already been observed that all the Hemingway fiction comes from his war experiences and the aftermath of the war. Many critics have commented on this experience-based technique of Ernest Hemingway. According to Putnam (2006), Tobias Wolff at the Hemingway centennial celebration said, â€Å"Hemingways great war work deals with aftermath. It deals with what happens to the soul in war and how people deal with that afterward.† Putnam (2006) further comments: No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it firsthand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable works 6. Ernest Hemingway is best known as the representative of the â€Å"Lost Generation† of America. He as an artist and writer of literature selected characters from the post-war American society as he was himself a member of that society and he observed it staunchly. Most of his works are based on his personal experience of the society and that is why he is often himself present in his novels as a leading character. Asselineau (1980) comments on Hemingways fiction as follows: It was indeed a â€Å"lost generation† in more senses than one. Yet, Hemingway among others survived the Great War for over forty years and, after appearing as the cynical and disillusioned Byron of twentieth century, ultimately turned into a new â€Å"teacher of athletes† and a â€Å"professeur d energie† a la Barres. A rather surprising change and a very spectacular recovery, which we can follow step by step in his works, since his novels make up an interminable Bildungsroman whose hero is always himself 7. While going through the works of Ernest Hemingway one realizes that Hemingway has very skillfully managed to present before us a group of expatriates who had left their homeland America after getting disillusioned by the war and were living as useless people in different parts of Europe under a special code of life. Asselineau (1980) comments as follows: All the veterans of foreign wars who appeared in Hemingways fiction are united by a common belief in an unwritten code. They are morally and physically very tough. They can take it. They keep a stiff upper lip. They grin and bear it. They refuse to discuss their own emotion and despise loquacious swaggerers like Robert Cohn. They hate gushing. They believe in self control and self imposed discipline. They have reached true wisdom in the etymological meaning of the word â€Å"wisdom†. They are those who know- who know that they are mortal and that sooner or later life ends in death. They know that man- whatever he does- will sooner or later be crushed by the hostile forces which surround him and is bound to be defeated- defeated, but not vanquished, for, like Pascal, they believe in the dignity of man, â€Å"a mere reed, and the weakest that can be found on earth, but even when the universe crushes him, man is still nobler than what kills him, for he knows that he is dying, wh ile the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe is unaware of it.† 8 (1844) High (1986) has also commented on the lost generation as follows: Man young people the post-World War 1 period had â€Å"lost† their American ideals. At the same time America â€Å"lost† many fine young writers- like e.e. cummings and Hemingway- because they had moved to Paris. Fitz Geralds first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), describes this new generation. They had â€Å"grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.† Two concerns now filled their lives: â€Å"the fear of poverty and the worship of success.† 9 (143) Hemingways The Sun Also Rises proves to be the best of his works and it was also his first proper novel on lost generation of America. The novel stands as a monument over which the whole drama of the lost generation of America has been carved. It was Gertrude Stein the American authoress and Hemingways mentor who for the very first time told E. Hemingway: â€Å"You are all a lost generation.† Hemingway was struck by the comment and used it as an epigraph and also the theme of his first novel, Fiesta (called The Sun Also Rises in US. Ousby (1979) in his essay The Lost Generation comments as follows: Today the ‘lost Generation has come to seem an over-worked catchphrase. Used indiscriminately in its own era, the title has been claimed by successive generations of writers and applied retrospectively to earlier schools, such as the American naturalists. Yet the term remains useful in discussing the novelists of 1920s, if only because epitomizes the way they liked to see themselves. 10 (205) Ousby (1979) further explains the characteristics of the writers of lost generation in following words: Their unique and common experience was a disillusion bred by the First World War. They returned from that conflict to a society whose values seemed hollow and artificial by comparison with the harsh realities of the battle-field. Their alienation from America often took the form of exile and expatriation: Hemingway and Dos Passos spent most of their early adult lives in Europe, while Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe were frequent visitors. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Paris became the extra-parliamentary centre of American culture in 1920s. It was the shrine to which most ambitious young writers of the era made their pilgrimage. 11 (206) Ousby (1979) in the same essay tells us the factors which affected the writings of the writers of lost generation in the following words: Disillusioned with society in general and America in particular, the novelists of the Lost Generation cultivated a romantic self-absorption- a deliberate retreat into private emotion. They became precocious experts in tragedy, suffering and anguish. The early novels of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald are peopled by sad, bitter young men who have lost all illusions at an early age; Amory Blaine of This Side of Paradise and Jake Barnes of Fiesta are the prime examples. They are haunted by war memories and by images of violence, cynical about idealism in any form, and given to only the most cryptic and laconic expressions of feeling. 12 (206) Ousby (1979) also comments on the characters introduced to us by the writers of lost generation as follows: The characters of Lost Generation novels live in restless pursuit of excitement and pleasure. Their Europe is not the gallery of cultural objects found in Hawthornes and Jamess fiction: it is a Europe of elegant restaurants, picturesque bars and intriguing local customs. They delight in kicking over the conventional traces (and in the resultant cries of middle- class horror), indulging in heavy drinking and casual sex. 13 (207) It was only Ernest Hemingway, who among the most famous writers of lost generation of America has been able to won the title of the avant-garde writer of the lost generation. His novel The Sun Also Rises was recommended all over the world as a true story featuring real people from the lost generation. This novel also made Hemingway a world-known celebrity. Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments: This book made him, almost instantly, an international celebrity identified with an entire generation, torn by war and grieving throughout the Roaring Twenties for their lost romantic idealism. Although he was somewhat ill-suited for the role, because he was a hard-working young writer with a wife and a son to support, he came to be regarded as the spokesman for American expatriates, those disillusioned and disaffected artists, writers, and intellectuals who spent the decade on the Left Bank in Paris. 14 (87) In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway uses Jake as a puppet, a narrator and also his famous code hero. Jake narrates the whole story which Hemingways eye saw sincerely. Nagel (1996) again in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on the character of Jake Barnes as follows: He is certainly one of the most isolated and vulnerable figures in American literature, and he narrates out of his disillusionment and pain, his grief evident throughout. As he says about himself, all he wants is to figure out how he can live in the world. It would seem that telling what happened is part of the process of learning how to live in the special circumstances of his world. 15 (90) Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on Jake being a representative of lost generation in following words: Hemingway humanized this dichotomy in the character of Jake Barnes by creating a man who bears the wounds of the war in a profoundly personal way yet combines his disillusionment with traditional American values of hard work and just compensation. It is surely an oversimplification to see Jake as an uncompromised representative of lost generation radicalism, for he exhibits much of the midwestern values he sometimes satirizes†¦ Above all, it is his judgment that provides the normative sensibility for assessing the people and events of the novel. But to grasp the meaning of what he relates, it is essential to understand the psychological context in which he tells it. 16 (91) Lady Ashley Brett is another important character from the lost generation. She is pure nymphomaniac sort of a woman and is a true representative of the women of the early 20th century. According to Nagel (1996), â€Å"Brett is by no means the first representation of a sexually liberated, free-thinking woman in American literature but rather an embodiment of what became known as the â€Å"New Woman† in nineteenth-century fiction.† Nagel (1996) further says: Brett is not only a women but an extraordinary woman for the age, a point not clear unless she is considered in historical context. Form this perspective, the women in The Sun Also Rises might be regarded as more interesting then the men. The role of women in society had been changing with each decade for a century, always with a good deal of social conflict and ideological struggle. 17 (92) Keeping in mind the agony of Jake due to his relation with Brett, we may easily nominate him as the most suffering person in the novel. His love with Brett makes him feel the pain of his wound which he got during the war, because he could not physically fulfill what he felt. According to Nagel (1996): From the beginning, the world is out of sexual order, the social evening is a parody of erotic potential, and the deeper irony is that this pathology is at the very heart of Jake and Bretts relationship. Their conversation in the taxi reveals the central problem of the novel: that they one another, that they feel that there is nothing they can do about it, that it is painful and destructive for them to be together. Whatever else happens is driven by this fact, and it is impossible for them to change it. The central dilemma for Jake is whether he can change the situation by finding some satisfaction in life. The problem for Brett is that she needs companionship of a man, and no one but Jake can offer her much beyond fleeting sexual pleasure. 18 (94) Jake truly deserves pity because he is the one who lost the most he had during war and even afterwards. His love with Brett gives him nothing except pain and he is also unable to sleep at night due to the agony brought by his love for Brett. Nagel (1996) comments: The â€Å"loss† in the â€Å"lost generation† is sustained primarily by him, and it makes for powerful fiction. The novel works, ultimately, because Jake, in anomalous circumstances, nevertheless presents a normative sensibility in the story he tells. He emerges as a man of intelligence, humor and good sense who lost more than he deserved in World War 1 but learned how to make a life for himself. 19 (105) According to Martin (1987): Jake Barnes and his friends- all of them- are a group because they share the same beliefs and experiences. Except for Robert Cohn, whose differences are less heinous than Jake sometimes thinks them to be, the displaced Americans and Britons are moving through a festival period in their lives, punctuating their aimless existence abroad with an organized visit to Spain for the bullfights. 20 (07) The characters introduced to us by Hemingway live under a peculiar but yet an extraordinary code of life. They behave like a community of people sharing similar set of thoughts and beliefs. Martin (1987) in her New Essays on The Sun Also Rises says: A key theme is the notion of community: These are people who understand each other, the rules they live by, and the reasons for their choices. Only someone outside that community will have difficulty with the social code. Count Mippipopolous may be a stranger to the group, but he understands the code and fits into the society. Robert Cohn, although he spends much time with the members of the group and thinks himself a special friend of both Jake and Brett, never manages to assimilate the rules. Jake, however, is clearly in charge- of the plans, the guest list, the activities, and the emotional nuance. He is the apparent hero of the novel, and his approval or disapproval sets the pattern for the other characters reaction to things. 20 (08) All the characters in the novel The Sun Also Rises seem dissatisfied and unhappy and most of the time they feel themselves useless. Martin (1987) comments on this condition of the characters in following words: There are many reasons for these characters unhappiness. To dwell on â€Å"irony and pity† is just a pastime; the real issues are the lack of alignment between profession and occupation, between lovers, between vacation and work, between ideals of Spain and France, between nature and the commercial. As full of disjunctures as a picture puzzle, The Sun Also Rises still presents a story whole, its fragments necessarily scattered throughout the narrative, and readers accept the fragmentation as one the marks of Hemingways truth. They seize on the purity of Pedro Romero, the wit of the bemused Mike Campbell, the taciturn acceptances of Jake Barnes, the flip bravado of Brett Ashley as the symbols of the characters who survive the onslaught of real life. 21 (16) Chapter 2 Life and Works of Ernest Hemingway 2.1 Birth and Parentage: Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21st, 1899. His father was a doctor. He spent much of his time in his early days roaming about in the woods, rifle on his shoulders, or rowing out across the water of a large lake in quest of big fish. Although his family owned a cottage on a lake, he usually slept outside in a tent, the dim light of a kerosene lantern flickering long hours into the night over his temporary cot as he laid reading. 2.1.1 His Schooling: In June 1917, Hemingway graduated from Oak Park High School toward the bottom of his class. Meanwhile, war had broken out in Europe and, preferring fighting to college, he tried to get enlisted in the army but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Frustrated, he went away to live with an uncle in Kansas City where he found a job as a reporter in a newspaper. He liked his writing job, but he still had a compelling urge to get into the war, and the opportunity came soon afterwards. On learning that Italy was recruiting ambulance drivers to serve on the Italian front; he gave up his job and became an ambulance driver in Italy. 2.1.2 Injuries of War: Hemingway had been driving behind the lines for only a few days when he found that his work was too safe, in fact, dull. He wanted to serve on the frontlines in the thick of things. So he volunteered for canteen service and was soon riding a bicycle, handing out mail, tobacco, and chocolates to soldiers in the trenches. On his tenth day in Italy as he was handing a chocolate bar to a soldier, a large mortar shell fell near by. Hemingway was almost buried. His body was filled below the waist with over 250 pieces of shrapnel, but after regaining consciousness, he rescued a badly wounded Italian soldier and was turning to help others when he was hit again, with a machine-gun bullet, below the left knee. 2.1.3 Falls in Love with a Nurse: He spent several weeks in a Red Cross hospital and there he fell in love with an English Nurse Agnes. While in Europe, he received several medals for bravery, and then was sent home, limping on a cane. The Hemingway who went back to America was different person from the young man who had left. War, death, suffering, new people, a new language and love had all been crowded into a short period of time. 2.1.4 Disappointment in Love: While his feet and legs healed, he read a lot and impatiently watched the mail until, one day after receiving a letter, he suddenly became ill. He retired into seclusion and for days hardly left his room. Finally, on being repeatedly asked by his family, he revealed that the letter has came form Agnes informing him that she was not coming to America and that she had married an Italian army major. 2.1.5 Failure and Fame: Sad and disappointed, Hemingway went to Paris for study and to make a living by writing. There, he met and became friendly with some of the worlds greatest literary figures of that day- James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and others. But despite their advice and help, he could not sell his literary attempts. Manuscript after manuscript kept coming back from editors, usually without a single word of encouragement, and with only a printed rejection slip. One day, he was sitting at a side walk cafà © on the Left Bank in Paris and complaining to a friend about his ill luck. The friend observed that perhaps the reason why Hemingways writings did not sell was that he had not suffered enough and that he did not know misery. Hemingway bitterly replied, â€Å"So I have not known misery! So thats what you think!† Then at first seemingly lost in memory, he narrated the story of his lost love, Agnes, the English nurse. He told his friend about the suffering he had endured in World W ar 1. Later, he put the story on paper in the form of a novel, A Farewell to Arms. The book proved to be immensely popular and Hemingway found himself famous. We could probably say that an unhappy love affair and his unhappy experiences in war were the motivating factor which made him being a great author. 2.1.6 Reporting in Spain: He went on writing and was now a successful and established writer. He traveled extensively, hunting in Africa and the Far East, fishing in numerous oceans and seas. He felt greatly attracted by bull-fighting in Spain and spent several years in that country. He covered the Spanish Civil War for American newspapers and could not resist getting into the fight in Madrid. By then, he was known as â€Å"Papa†, a bearded huge figure of a man who joked and swore with the best of the soldiers. 2.1.7 World War II: When World War II began, Hemingway, then living in Cuba, armed his own boat as a submarine chaser and patrolled the Atlantic Coast off the United States. But in 1942, he was in the thick of battle again as a magazine correspondent. He flew from England on bombing missions and became an expert on German rockets. Near the end of the war, he was among the first wave of troops to storm the Normandy beach in 1944. After the war, he retired to Cuba to fish and write. One book proved a failure, and his critics remarked that Papas carrier was over. 2.1.8 The Nobel Prize: Then, in 1952, after years of work, he brought out The Old Man and the Sea, a tale of the struggle of a single, old fisherman against the powers of fate and the ocean. It was the story he had been trying to write all his life, and it brought him the Pulitzer Prize for 1953. In the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Suffering from injuries in plane crashes while hunting wild game in Africa, Hemingway could not go to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize but in a letter to the Academy he declared that the writers life was a lonely one, and that if he shed his loneliness, his work would deteriorate. Still living in Cuba, Hemingway continued writing short stories, novels, and magazine articles. But he also began to take life easier, spending more time on his fishing boat with his wife, whom he called Miss Mary. â€Å"No one can work everyday in these hot months without going stale,† he wrote during this period. â€Å"To break up the pattern of work, we fish the Gulf Stream in the spring and summer months and in the fall. 2.1.9 A Life of Adventure: Hemingways sixty-two years were packed with excitement. Living through adventure after adventure, he told stories of his life and love on jungles, the two World Wars in which he played a part in Europe, and a giant 1000-pound fish he battled off the Coast of Cuba. But his writing was more than just adventure stories; he helped to set the style for the modern novel. His lean, muscular prose and dramatic plots have, perhaps, been copied more than any other modern authors and his work has been translated into all the worlds major languages. 2.1.10 Ill Health and Suicide: But Hemingway was growing old. His hair and beard had turned white. His old wounds were bothering him. He had to keep standing while writing, and he was frequently unwell. Then Castro took over in Cuba, and Hemingway and Miss Mary returned to America, living in Idaho. He spent a few months in hospitals, began losing weight, and saw his creative ability declining. Early one morning on July 1961, he slipped on the stairs in his home and, not wishing to prolong his suffering, killed himself with a gun. Perhaps he had concluded, like the old fisherman in his novel, that he had no luck anymore. 2.2 His Works: Influenced by Ezra Pound and particularly by Gertrude Stein whose style strongly affected him, Hemingway published Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923 and In Our Time (a collection of short stories) in 1925. These early stories exhibited the attitude of mind and technique for which Hemingway later became famous. As the leading spokesman for the â€Å"lost generation†, he expressed the feelings of war-wounded people disillusioned by the loss of faith and hope, and so thoroughly defeated by the collapse of former values that they could turn only to a stoic acceptance of primal emotions. The stories are mainly concerned with â€Å"tough† people, both intelligent men and women who have dropped into an exhausted cynicism or such primitives as frontiers-men, I