There has never been a better period for literature like the 1920s. The Roaring Twenties
have been a time in the history of America like no other. The 1920s was a period so full of
history with much prosperity and drastic changes in society. Personally, the Roaring Twenties
was a time of much inspiration and life. But History books can only capture so much of this life.
Authors became the first hand accounts of the lifestyle of the Twenties, from the changes in
lifestyle and morality levels to prohibition to the Jazz age and even affairs and infidelities. The
greatest accounts of this experience were no other than Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Cather. After
reading three amazing books by these writers, one thing could be made very evident, their
writing reflected the era they lived in. For example, Hemingway reflected the lost generation,
Fitzgerald depicted the prosperity and wealth of the Jazz age and Cather exemplified the
infidelities and affairs that became normal amongst society in the Twenties. Willa Cather’s A
Lost Lady is a novel set in the 1890s but characterizes society in the 1920s. Cather truly
represented the life and spirit of the 1920s. She captured the proper mood of a corroding society
through the eyes of Niel, the protagonist. Niel is a young boy who sees richness and infidelity at
its peak. The entre book is filtered through his eyes, thus through Cather’s perspective.
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in the other hand was already set in the pinnacle of the 1920s. The
book is told by a man named Nick Carraway who experienced the prosperity of this society but
always stood on the outside looking in. He was a man who experienced the Jazz age personally
and all the riches it brought along with it. But the greatest defect with this society was how they
did not care about what was once considered bad. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s novel,
screams the lifestyle of the so called “Lost Generation”. The generation that came during WWI
and through this novel, the term became popular. This book is told in the eyes of Jake, who lived
in the 1920s and exemplified this lost generation. He has fallen in love with a woman called
Lady Brett Ashley. Lady Brett Ashley is the essence of a perverted and lost generation. The
heavy inclination of drinking and smoking plays a huge theme and Lady Brett hangs out amongst
the people who do not really belong to her crowd. All of these books feature three different
settings and various characters but all have the same reality. A lost generation who indulged in
infidelity, love, richness, Jazz age. The three books describe a time in this world that didn’t
matter where you were, society was the same thing.
This society is what Cather so very much despised. Cather when she was 9 years old,
moved west to Red Cloud, Nebraska where she grew up until she moved out when she was 23. In
A Lost Lady Cather portrays her view in regards to this change in society. She strongly believed
it had contaminated and ruined her beloved west. She exposed this society in such a faithful
