The Lost Generation

Fernando Santiago

Professor: Francia Rojas

North-American Authors

August 12th, 2013

Can Alcohol and Literature Fit Together?

A Paper Response Based in the Life and Work of William Falkner, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wine, liquor, a drink and all the others alcoholic substances that alter the perception of men and women, making them, in some of the cases, confuse reality. For the French poet Charles Baudelaire, they are antidotes that men has used since living in society, either to celebrates happiness or calm down anxieties. Alcohol is the most used drug in the world. It is present in almost all historical records in a huge variety of cultures especially those that are the cradle of Western civilization. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had their alcohol and their literatures speak of different alcoholic beverages, intoxicating effects and disinhibition. In the bible for instance, there is a lot of verses where mention the alcoholic beverages and it is used as a ritual, pleasure or as a source of self punishment, it has a large list of uses and manners. According to Klaus Mâkelâ: “Alcoholic beverages have multiples objective uses that can be analyzed to some degree independently of prevailing cultural attitudes.” (Mâkelâ 1) However, what concerns us here is the combination between alcohol-literature either working as a driver for some writers or as a necessary ingredient for making famous characters in their works. This combination has a large history and it had more influence in North America. The greatest influence that alcohol had on literature was not exactly in Europe but in the United States, a nation that was called by Europeans as the alcoholic nation. The prohibition of alcohol in the twenties during a long period, caused as any other prohibition, the opposite effect and it is seen in the characters projections made by the American writers as in their personal lives. Most of them have always been convinced that a good way to approach...