From Lost Generation to Beat Generation: The change of masculinity concept in The Sun Also Rises and On The Road

The aim of this thesis is to examine the historical and social transformation of the concept of masculinity from the Lost Generation to the Beat Generation. In the thesis, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are discussed. By examining these canonical literary works, it has been tried to illuminate how wars, changing social beliefs and values and economic conditions had an impact on the representation and formation of masculinity in a period of about forty years starting after the First World War. The method is based on the ideas of the main theorists of Masculinity Studies, such as Connell, that emerged in the 1980s. The novels The Sun Also Rises, about a group of Americans going into self-imposed exile to Europe, and On the Road, about random travelers in America, deal with white American and middle-class characters. The characters and writers who display a modernist perspective in the first novel and a postmodernist point of view in the second novel have chosen a travel-based lifestyle in order to overcome their post-war traumas, escape from changing social phenomena, forget their troubles, explore their individuality and be as free as possible. Characters/authors who take a stand on everything traditional and old reveal the modern and postmodern situation. Unfortunately, these people, who waste time pursuing universal values to believe, connect and feel belonging, cannot find the ideal world they hoped for. Many members of the Lost Generation in the 1920s were deeply disillusioned and abandoned traditional values after the First World War. The Sun Also Rises is a prism of Hemingway's post-war representation of masculinity. The male protagonists of the narrative are foreigners living in Europe, all trying to cope with the turmoil and desolation of their lives as a direct result of the First World War. The novel, Lost Generation is discussed in terms of the threat to traditional masculinity. On the way, he deals with the Beat Generation of the 1950s, opening a window to another period in which countercultural groups and dominant norms were rejected. With the depiction and analysis of Kerouac's male characters, deviation from traditional norms and ongoing search psychology are shown as the dominant masculinity pattern. The masculinity phenomena depicted in the two selected novels also reflect generational changes.