The Great Depression lasted for 10 years between 1929 with the fall and crash of the American stock market and ended with the onset of World War II. The Great Depression is credited with hardening Americans and American values due to the amount of suffering the country endured together. Most of the upper and middle class along with the lower class collapsed. Americans gained a new set of morals which after the fact were followed until the later 1970’s.

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 and committed suicide on July 2, 1961. He is a very well known and influenced to America’s 20th century literature. He grew up in Illinois and then in 1918 he enlisted as a ambulance driver in WW1. He was seriously wounded on the Italian front and returned home. He is famous for works such as A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, both books discuss thoroughly the lifestyle and mentality of the lost generation.

This was a term coined by two demographers, William Strauss and Neil Howe. They determined that the lost generation ranged in birthdates from 1883-1900. The reason of why they were called the lost generation was because of the onset of WW1 where most of the men aged 18-26 were drafted or volunteered for war. It also empathized the mentality of no sense of direction they had after the war due to the fact that the war had broken them.

The Roaring 20’s refer to the post war prosperity and a “Mass-Culture” event that took place from 1920 to 1929’s onset of the Great Depression. The roaring 20’s brought on new experiments on race, gender, music, and lifestyle. Women suffer age was in its most popularity since its existence, the nations wealth had doubled, and America became a party. However with the onset of prohibition Americans began to push the limits of the law and government while taking matters into their own hands.

The Jazz age occurred from the 1920’s to the 1930’s where Jazz music gained nationwide popularity. Jazz originated in New Orleans but then began to spread north and west as black soldiers in WW1 facilitated its growth and spread among all ethnic backgrounds. This was also the first time black artist and black women really hit the national stage.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, short for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24, 1896 and died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood, California. Fitzgerald is the most well known and read 20th century American author. He is know for for his 4 novels; The Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Nigh. He focuses on the themes of the life of the roaring 20’s, the Jazz Age, and his own lost generation. He dropped out of Princeton University to commission into the US Army as an 2nd lieutenant and studied under future General of the Army and president, Dwight Eisenhower. In the worried state that his literary dreams may die with him in the war he rushed to finish The Romantic Egotist a few weeks before reporting for duty. The war ended before he deployed, many suggest that much of his inspiration for writing about the lost generation came from the wounded and tired soldiers that returned to the base. After the war Fitzgerald married Zelda after he proved with his success The aside of Paradise, a recast of the Romantic Egotist. He continued through his life to write about the time period and often reflected on the impact it had on him and the country.

World War 1 as we know it today, also known as The Great War during the time period in the duration and the immediate aftermath time. World War 1 was undeniably the reason why the economy could facilitate the roaring 20’s. It is credited with creating the wealth of the country which has come at the cost of the lost generation. Many of the lost generation served in the Great War and were lost physically or were robbed of their prime years of life.