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An examination of works from both authors which closely examine American realities through characters that pursue wealth, drunkenness and sex with the hope that they will provide at least the possibility of some sort of meaning.

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""The Great Gatsby" and "The Sun Also Rises" by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Wealth, Drunkenness and Sex

Like other writers of the 1920's, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were fascinated by what had become of the American Dream. The impact of World War I on both Fitzgerald and Hemingway and on their generation was tremendous. Indeed, many writers in the postwar period took on the unpleasant task of exposing the degradation of the American Dream; of covering the grossest aspects of selfishness, hypocrisy and moral vacuum. Fitzgerald and Hemingway's characters are a careless, aimless, pleasure-seeking crowd which is clearly emblematic of a generation of lost souls. Before Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, opens, he quotes Gertrude Stein who names the generation that came of age during the First World War as the "lost generation." Indeed, the pre-war values of love, faith, manhood and womanhood, which previously gave meaning to life, fail to offer an adequate answer to Fitzgerald's and Hemingway's characters who try to produce meaning in a world seemingly lost to rampant, amoral consumerism and loveless-ness. Both authors closely examine American realities through characters that wander through endless experiences of wealth, drunkenness and sex with the hope that they will provide at least the possibility of some sort of dependable meaning. "

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