Time Rebels

"The Lost Generation"and"The Beat Generation"emerged respectively after two wars—the First and the Second World War.Although the two Schools emerged in different historical periods and cultural contexts.But when we put them in specific historical period, through the comparative analysis on their historical background, realistic situation, thought foundation, development course and so on, we can find they have the same primary intention, which is against mainstream values, vent individual feelings and cause society's attention in special ways. When we put the two Schools in longitudinal development of American literature history together, we can comb their clear spiritual inheritance relationship, that is, the American Spirit of freedom and independence.In order to analyze them thoroughly, we established the foundation of comparing them. Through observing their attitudes on war, we see that"The Lost Generation"had experienced an obvious transformation from the hope before the First World War to maze it. For example, Henry (a leading character in Hemingway's novel) ran into battlefield with full sense of justice, but what he saw and felt during the war and the social reality after war made him see clearly into the war's essence. The War destroyed the old value and the youths couldn't find new value, so they lost direction, got gaming and idling life every day, became indifferent to life and not interested in everything."The Lost Generation"have no explicit counter-social behavior, they behaved like everything had nothing to do with them, and immersed in their own spiritual world."The Beat Generation"is not like this, they had no any fantasy with society and completely understood society from every beginning. They tried to arouse the society's attention with unusual behavior. Their behaviors are even more profligate and incredible, They took drugs, roved everywhere, lived together with different men and women, stole, seemingly approached the crime, their behaviors can't be even accepted by convention. Toward society, The two Schools also sent different voices,"The Lost Generation"expressed individual voice by"coding man's spirit", but"The Beat Generation"called out directly. As referred to their writing methods, Hemingway's"Iceberg Principle"hid thoughts and emotions description in extremely succinct words, which is very important in traditional literature. On the contrary, Kerouac's"Spontaneous Writing"takes a direct way to vent feelings.