Modernist Vision of History and Society in E.Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"

The devastated after the World War I country with thousands of disabled, crippled, maimed, mentally retarded, and abandoned people, was claiming to be still one of the most authoritative and prosperous world powers. And it was all the same to the mighty rulers that their subjects were not the ones of full value any more, that their possible values were shaken and that their perception was already different. Politically, the postwar era was “the epoch of disarmament talks, peace pacts, peace conferences”1. Moreover, “America was in the full sweep of a tremendous economic boom, leading many to believe that this country was paving the way toward a new era of unprecedented world prosperity”2. But otherwise, no one really took into account what was the price that those miserable people were paying, or rather, have paid already. The tragedy is made even more acute if to take into account that people living in the imposed circumstances were very scarcely aware of their own idleness, futility and uselessness. Moreover, it was really true that nobody took care of them, so that the problem was left for them to solve it. But indeed, there was no solution due to one simple reason: postwar people were unaware that something was wrong. There was no any particular aim or purpose. In other words, “life had become mostly meaningless”3. But there was the same aspect about it: they were absolutely unaware of it, though. Sheer ignorance was one of the characteristic traits of contemporary society, then disguised by the conventional historians, because that was not for their own benefit to reveal ugliness and defects of one of the most powerful countries…