Date of Submission

Spring 2016

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Historical Studies

Project Advisor 1

Sean McMeekin

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The conventional wisdom of the Great War is that it was a disaster on all fronts and that the terrors of the war overshadowed any redeeming qualities. The Great War was an epoch of mass infrastructural damage, civilian life turmoil, reckless political and economic decisions, and the horrors of modern warfare. The literature and memoirs on the Great War were dominated by the idea of “The Lost Generation”. “The Lost Generation” encompasses the broken and the fallen. The fallen soldiers were those who tragically died by the grips of the battlefield. The broken soldiers are defined as the ones who survived the war, but remained disillusioned by the futility of a destructive international war. I will be examining and referencing the memoirs of those who survived and remained disillusioned. There will also be memoirs of those who had found the Great War an exhilarating experience and the mentioning of those who have found the silver linings of a time and space of war who will be called the resilient. I want to present the argument that the war was not entirely negative, and highlight some of the positive attributes that came out of the Great War.

Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Share

COinS