CP English II
April 1st, 2014 In Our Time Assignment Gertrude Stein was quoted as saying that “… those who went to war missed civilizing and apart of the “Lost Generation.” The Lost Generation is considered the generation of men who were involved in World War I and as a result of their war experiences it caused disruption within the human mind, causing cultural and emotional instability. The term civilized or civilizing is another term for maturing throughout life through experiences. But many of the young soldiers were thrown out in to the world, without maturing, which caused people of the “Lost Generation” to be, uneducated, or rude, unable to comprehend the ideas of the social and private life. Throughout the novel In Our Time by Earnest Hemingway, he utilizes the Lost Generation, through the character of Harold Krebs, and shows his transformation throughout life.
Harold Krebs is one specific character that is a part of the “Lost Generation”, someone who hasn’t gone through the civilizing process of life. Harold Krebs was at first a scholar, but then was drafted to go fight in the army. “Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas… he enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return until 1919.” Readers can see the disruption caused here. At first Krebs was a part of a fraternity, meaning that he was excellent within school, and then suddenly he was joining the Marine core. This was someone who was actually doing something in his life, but then was blinded by the horrors and experience of the War. Also within the novel, Krebs mentions that the “only thing that has changed was that the young girls had grown up, and lived in a such complicated worlds of defined alliances and shifting feuds, that Krebs didn’t have the energy to break into it. Its profound the way the author says that the only thing in town that change was the growing up of the young girls. During World War I