The Lost Generation

          "The Lost Generation" has a few different meanings. According to some, it is known as the time from the end of WWI to the beginning of the Great Depression. Others think of it as the people who came of age during and soon after WWI. This generation was generally presumed to be born between 1883 and 1900, and in Europe, it is known as "The Generation of 1914," because this was the year in which World War I began. It is also known to be the people who died in WWI. More recently, it is referred to by some people as the generation of young adults today who do not leave home and begin a career and start a family.
          Today, however, the term is most widely thought of as a very distinguished group of writers, which included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scot Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Apparently, this term originated with Gertrude Stein in France. The story is that she was getting her car fixed, but the job was unsatisfactory, so she asked the garage owner where his workers had been trained. The garage owner replied that the young workers were easy to train, but they were part of "une génération perdue," French for "a lost generation." He believed that these men in their twenties and thirties who had been through WWI were "the lost generation."

"The Lost Generation"

          In 1926, Ernest Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises, which utilized the term as the group of post-war expatriates. Hemingway, however, specified that he believed this generation was merely "battered, not lost." This generation was unified by the war experiences as well as the fact the they were born and raised in a society which had begun WWI.
          The three writers mentioned above were part of this "lost generation." While there were other writers of this time, including Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane and Ford Maddox Ford, the three writers previously mentioned were the most influential. Because the term was mentioned in Hemingway's famous book, it stuck with these writers.
          After the war, people lost faith in the country. They believed that doing good and being good did not lead to goodness, because innocent people fought and died in the war. They had no faith in their previous "moral guideposts," and were therefore "lost."

"WWI soldiers"

Sources:
http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/jbolhofer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/about.htm
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lost-gen.html
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/315
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/sherwood-anderson/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/hart-crane
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/boyle/bio.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Madox_Ford
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/are-todays-youth-really-a-lost-generation/245524/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
http://personal.stthomas.edu/KOEN2121/productionfinal/images/hemingway.jpg
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cagenweb.com/placer/images/WWI_soldiers.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cagenweb.com/placer/military/wwi_draft.htm&h=364&w=500&sz=86&tbnid=1N6fT7eY-OcF7M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3DWWI%2Bsoldiers%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=WWI+soldiers&usg=__xF-moMWM8gc-5X9ZF9TXwk6C54Y=&docid=JNGSocYimlrrCM&sa=X&ei=W8xfUMvJD6_V0gHr5oDwDA&ved=0CCIQ9QEwAA&dur=581