Friday, October 9, 2015

France and the Lost Generation




I applied because it is a wonderful once in a life time opportunity. I am an avid reader and writer and this will broaden my horizon and help me be a better writer. I would not be able to go to France without this scholarship. You see my family does not have a lot of money my parents have been working very hard to provide for their four children, but have had a few setbacks. My dad works long hours, sometimes six days a week. My mom was laid off from two jobs and went back to school to get a better job. My parents are also helping support my sister who just started college. I also applied because one of the only teachers who really pushed me towards success and supported me loved France.  Since she was so influential to my success, it would mean a lot to me to see and experience the same awe inspiring feelings she experienced in France.  I look forward to having an exciting experience by trying new foods, learning new facts, adding pictures and experience to previous knowledge, getting to know more people, making lifelong connections, and being influenced and apart of another culture. Some of the new foods I look forward to trying are   formage, pain au chocolat, and crepes. The new pictures I would like to add are Sainte Chappelle (Figure1), Eiffel Tower (Figure2), and Louvre (Figure3).  









The new facts I would like to learn are how people in France respond to the biggest tourist attractions, if people who live in France ever visit some of the attractions in France, and do people all tend to have the same answer with what is their favorite sport. Some people I plan on getting to know are: the person that wins with me, the docents that teach me, and the chaperons that watch me.  Lifelong connections I want to make are with the Context Travel docents. I would like to be influenced by the fashion, morales, and outside views of America.

                      The most interesting topic discussed at the seminar, Wednesday October 7, 2015 was the lost generation. The lost generation is the generation after world war one happened, which includes the people that were in the war, the people that were at home during the war, and the people that were born after the war.  The lost generation had no morales and no order.  It lead to no use of common sense, there was no common knowledge of right from wrong. The people that came back from war did not want to talk about what happened or what they had seen, so any knowledge that they had, they kept to themselves. They had seen and experienced so much devastation they couldn’t work up enough strength to tell what they had been taught before the war because during the war it had been crushed. The people that did not go to war yet saw the destruction from it decided to abandon their morales realizing there was no need for following something that was constantly being broken and saw people coming home devastated or dead. People born right after the war were born with no direction any guide lines to follow. When they looked for direction they would constantly look up and see people gorging themselves with alcohol and parties, most of the time people tend to turn towards alcohol or a new art form in order to cope with what happened after a war. Ernest Hemingway the author of the novel The Sun Also Rises, wrote, “The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals.” This means that when people choose to leave innocence behind or when innocence is left behind it tends to lead people to destruction. In the bible it says one has to be like a child in order to get accepted in to the kingdom of heaven. In the quote stuff animals can be seen or interpreted as childhood innocence. If one does not buy a stuff animal it can be seen as not having innocence or leaving innocence behind. If one does not have innocence than one cannot be like a child. If one is not like a child then they cannot be accepted into the kingdom of God. If someone is not accepted to go into the kingdom of God then they go to Hell.  Hemingway writes this in order to guide the lost generation. He knows they have no morales and no common sense of what is right and what is wrong. What he also knows is their innocence is constantly being left behind or destroyed by the previous generations mess. Hemingway is guiding them to keep their innocence. He is trying to tell them do not try to grow up fast and drink or party your life away enjoy being innocent.  He is also telling the people who lost their innocence that they can still get it back all they have to do is start doing what they know is right in their heart and tell others their knowledge of what didn't work in the past and what should be done in order to not repeat the past mistakes and ultimately lead to another war. The lost generation was interesting because the generation today seem to be similar to that generation. A lot of young people today have no guidance and give up their innocence easily not by choice but because society chooses to keep them in the dark. If we had more writers like Hemingway, would we have another lost generation? Did Hemingway write to help the lost generation, or to mock their ignorance? Would Hemingway consider himself as a religious person? Is Hemingway even aware of the correlation between what he said and what it says in the bible? Has he ever read the bible? Did the ideal subconsciously pop up out of his mind or did he think about that verse directly and write it? 

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