The Sun Also Rises

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Using this resource from the University of Oxford, explore the concept of the “lost generation,” a Gertrude Stein coinage that Hemingway uses as an epigraph to the novel. If this generation is so disillusioned and adrift, why is this time period marked by a proliferation of literature and art? How can death on such a huge scale also foster a moment of tremendous artistic exploration and creativity?

Teaching Suggestion: Explain that “lost” functions in two ways in the term “lost generation”: first, to explain the very real absence of men of that generation who “lost” their lives in the war; and second, to indicate how “lost” the survivors of the war felt when their core beliefs—formed by patriotism, religion, and modern civilization—disintegrated, failing to preserve the world from mass bloodshed. Introduce the six defining features of literary modernism:

 I. Autonomy. Art is no longer didactic; rather, it exists for its own sake, to feed the notion that art can transcend the world.

II. Radical break in culture. The rapidity of post-war cultural changes—technological advances, urbanization, immigration, women’s rights, the emergence of sociology as an academic discipline—creates a brand new world for everyone to navigate.