American Literature

BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR, the war that held tight grip over Europe from 1914 to 1918 was considered the Great War, a war to end all wars.   Many thought that it was indeed, the end of the world.  The flower of Englishas well as French and German, Irish and Flemishliterature died in the trenches.  Poets and artists donned uniforms and experienced first-hand the devastation of total war.   Those who survived came home scarred, unable to reintegrate to society.   And this feeling influenced their writing, until an entire generation echoed a spirit of loss and emptiness, and the conflict of past and present.

Ernest Hemingway, one of the great literary writers of this period, devoted an entire series of short stories to the war experience, both in the battlefield and coming home from it.   Perhaps one of the most subtle, yet powerful story in the series is Big Two-Hearted River.  This is the story of a soldier, having returned home, trying to make sense of his present.   At first glance, it may seem like an ordinary story.   But we see the conflict of past and present in his vision of the burned down town and the river the burned-down town represents the war he left behind, and his efforts to walk as far upstream of the riveris him trying to escape his memories.   We even see that eventually the vision of the town fades from sight.

Throughout the narrative, the character is of two minds while he tries to enjoy the sights and relive a life before the war, his actions and thoughts soon betray him.   He takes in the landscape in too great a detail.   The repetition of thought within the narrative seems like the character trying to focus away from nagging thoughts in his head.   His walk further and further upstream is almost like an instinctive march and he pitches his tent and cooks dinner in the manner of a soldier living in a foxhole.   This internal conflict distracts him, and he goes about the routine of fishing half-heartedly, and almost mechanically.  

This feeling of loss and distance to the present is largely echoed by Fitzgerald, one of Hemingways contemporaries.   In his story Babylon Revisited, it takes on a different and more personal context the main character, Charles Wales, is seeking the road to redemption after having lived a life of carefree extravagance that hurt everyone he ever loved.   Like the soldier in Hemingways story, there is also the conflict of past and present.    While he tries to redeem himself to the presenthis efforts to win back his daughter also represents him seeking a personal confirmation that he has changedstill there is the past in the form of Marion, who was witness to the worst of him and old friends who also represent the past he is trying to leave behind.

And, like the soldier in Hemingways story, he is still very much a work in progress, with the past retaining some control over him.   His limiting himself to one drink implies that it still holds power over him.   Though he insists that he has been sober for three years, he lets slip the fact that he actually was in the company of his old friends on the first year.

To the men who survived the trenches of the First World War, there was no going back.   Having seen the devastation of artillery, the death rattle of a machine gun, or the silent death of a snipers bullet, the survivors can no longer reconcile themselves to the seemingly unreal images of everyday life.   In the field, the world seemed to end for them how can it be the same when they return   This is the experiences that echo out in the works of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and an entire generation of writers.   These writers will spend the entirety of their lives being better, and going back.  

But then it will always eventually hit them that the world that seemed to end in the trenches, did end for them. And the life they return to, and the world they return to, is really not the same.    Theres no going back, because there really is nothing to go back to.