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Written in 1949, George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four portrays a dreadful futuristic human condition under a repressive regime. The setting is Oceania, where individual free thought is banned. “Big Brother Is Watching You” becomes the moto of dictatorial policies that aim at controlling not only people’s behaviour but also their unorthodox thoughts.
Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story, works for the Ministry of Truth, and his mission consists in revising the country’s history by rewriting newspaper articles to manipulate the population and further repress individual liberties. However, Winston later engages in writing a secret diary in which he starts expressing his desires and yearning for freedom. This punishable “thoughtcrime” leads him to Room 101, where he endures severe “re-education” to readjust his seditious thoughts in such a way that his love for Julia turns into loyalty to Big Brother.

Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece The Sun Also Rises (1926) is one of the most widely read novels in American literature. It showcases the plight of the post-war generation—the ‘Lost Generation’—, facing disillusionment and anxiety. Embodied by a group of American expatriates in Europe, namely Brett, Jake, Mike, Cohn and Bill, the sense of loss is emphasised in the novel by showing that love is ephemeral and pain and death are inevitable in life.
Many critics consider The Sun Also Rises as an autobiographical novel. Indeed, many features and events concerning the character Jake Barnes remind of the author’s own war experience and personal life (1899-1961). However, the term ‘Lost Generation,’ which was coined by the American poet Gertrude Stein, one of Hemingway’s contemporaries, applies to the post-war era and youth entirely in the aftermath of World War I, as portrayed by many other authors.

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Such is the message that Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea forcefully sends to the reader. When Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman, undertakes his fishing exploit, he hopes to reverse the 84-day streak of bad luck, but he heroically comes back with the greatest catch of his life. Mocked by his fellow fishermen and abandoned by Manolin, his young apprentice and friend, Santiago endures extreme pain caused by the cord around his body, and resists attacks of fierce sharks, alone amidst the vast sea, to bring a giant marlin to the shore.
The Old Man and the Sea is written in plain but forceful language. Published in 1952, it earned its author the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and played a major part in awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.