The Sun Also Rises (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The Lost Generation

Writers, horrified by the stranglehold of business and the uselessness of Prohibition, expatriated to Paris where the favorable exchange rate enabled them to work for a newspaper or magazine. Yet these writers usually spent most of their time sitting in cafes lost in the aftermath of a war for which they refused responsibility. Disillusioned, they discussed their inherited nineteenth-century values and the provincial and emotional barrenness of America. Fortunately, they found comfort in an older generation. Hemingway, armed with letters of introduction by Sherwood Anderson, joined this group who flocked to Gertrude Stein's Salon, Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company book-store, the apartment of James Joyce, the transatlantic review offices of Ford Madox Ford, or Samuel Putnam's office. The older writers cultivated the members of what Stein labeled, after overhearing her mechanic, as "the lost generation." Of the elders Stein, who was the bridge between past and present, and Ezra Pound, whom Hemingway tried to teach boxing in return for tutelage, were the most important influences on Hemingway.

"The Lost Generation" succeeded in poking through the rubble of civilization and manufacturing art anew. From war's negation comes affirmation as a means to live with disillusionment. T.S. Eliot wove the old myths together into a poem of epic influence, "The Waste Land." A new poetry was created by e.e. cummings. F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, and Glenway Westcott were members of this generation who helped rejuvenate the arts. The most important contribution of "The Lost Generation" was to prove the resiliency of culture and set it moving again with the hopeful idealism that would mark American literature in the 1930s.

The Roaring Twenties

In the Europe of the mid-1920s, life was returning to normal and cities were being reconstructed after the devastation of World War I. Tensions, which still existed between France and Germany over border issues, were quiet, as France became isolated. The French war effort had depended on American loans and their repayment depended on reparations from Germany. These reparations were recovered with difficulty because Britain and the United States were hesitant to force matters. Still, Germany was potentially the most powerful nation in Europe and was quietly being given favorable loan terms by the United States. The French economy worsened when the franc was stabilized at 20% of its pre-war value. This had the effect of making France a collector of gold and brought adventure-seeking Americans, with moderate sums of dollars, to take advantage of exchange rates.

New Leaders

Though a long way off, the leaders who would play a large role in World War II came to power. Josef Stalin assumed his 27-year dictatorship in the Soviet Union. He de-emphasized world revolution in favor of repressing and terrorizing Soviet citizens and Russian neighbors. The Politburo, meanwhile, expelled Leon Trotsky and Grigori Zinoviev. In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumed control of the country and the Fascist party became the party of state without opposition. Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Sun Yat-Sen and began to unify China. In Japan, Yoshihito died and his son became Emperor Hirohito (a role which he retained until his death in 1989).

Economics

For members of the upper middle class or the rich, the twenties were indeed the era of prosperity, debauchery, and bootlegging. For the rest of humanity, life was still a struggle. The 1921 musical "Ain't We Got Fun" encapsulates the period saying, "The rich get richer, and the poor get children." Coal miners in America stretched their meager 75-cents-per-hour wages (roughly $7.50 in 1995 dollars) to feed their families. Public-school teachers made slightly less at $1000 a year. Labor movements were met with brutal force but there were few improvements. The Ford Motor Company introduced an 8-hour day and a 5-day week. The picture for blacks in America was especially hard with 85% of blacks living in the segregated south and 23% of them illiterate. Great numbers of blacks began migrating north to the cities with lasting demographic effects.

Meanwhile, labor relations in Britain were tantamount to class war. A general strike crippled the nation as coal miners belonging to the Trade Union Congress demanded, "Not a penny off the pay; not a minute on the day." Many workers sympathetic to the miners (railwaymen, printers, dockworkers, construction workers, and others) went on strike as well. At the root of the problem was the decision by Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill to return to the gold standard. That decision had the effect of cheapening import prices and thus forcing mine operators to cut wages so as to compete with German and Polish imports. Economist John Maynard Keynes considered Churchill's decision "silly." Matters nearly erupted in violence as the Royal Navy trained its guns on strikers who tried to prevent the off-loading of ships at the docks.

Compare & Contrast

• 1920s: Thomas Hunt Morgan proves his theory of hereditary transmission through experiments with fruit flies and publishes The Theory of the Gene in 1926. Coincidentally, Herman Joseph Mullar proves that X-rays can produce genetic mutations.

  Today: It is no longer speculation that genes provide the source code for life and can be mutated by radiation. In fact, Morgan's ground-breaking experiment is now an exercise in college biology rooms. Moreover, armed with lessons in genetic engineering, biotechnology firms are literally changing the fabric of nature by gene manipulation and the techniques of cloning.

• 1920s: The "Noble Experiment" of Prohibition is in full swing. Backers hope it will make America better by forcing its people to be sober. Instead, average citizens flout the law by patronizing illegal establishments run by the Mafia. Bootlegging is a billion-dollar industry.

  Today: The "War on Drugs" is mounted to stop the sale of hard drugs and urban deterioration in the United States.

• 1920s: The tuna industry is in a crisis as albacore disappears off the California coast. The industry begins harvesting the lower quality yellow-fin tuna.

  Today: The entire fishing industry is in a crisis with vast areas of the oceans fished out. Whole strata of the aquatic food chain have disappeared with lower-level fish, like jellyfish, producing record numbers for lack of predators. The situation is so bad that normally friendly nations (like Great Britain, Canada, Spain, and Portugal) have almost come to blows over fishing rights.

• 1920s: The Spanish ritual of bullfighting is confined to Spain and parts of Latin America. It is purely a male domain.

  Today: The popularity of bullfighting continues to rise and many Americans venture to Pamplona for the bull run. There have been several female matadors and recently a female champion.