Ugly city
In the first chapter, Hemingway talks about the city he is in and describes it using numerous details. The city where he is in is Paris and while many would expect Hemingway to describe the city as being charming and full of beauty, he describes it as being the complete opposite. The city is cold and dirty, with people walking from one place to another drunk and without a purpose in life. The city and its people are hopeless and they transmit the same state of mind to the writer who feels just like the people around him. However this state of mind is what makes the author feel even more productive and it makes it easier for him to write and compose pieces of literature.
Cheap books
In the fourth chapter, Hemingway walks along the Seine and meets with vendors selling cheap books. The cheapest books are the English ones, and one of the vendors tells Hemingway that the reason that the books are cheap is because they are not properly bound and this makes them look cheap. The image of the cheap-looking books is important because it shows just how superficial the society in which Hemingway lived was. While for Hemingway what mattered was the way a book was written, for many what mattered was the way they looked on the outside.
Those who do me good
Hemingway mentions Stein often in his writings but she is not always portrayed in a positive way. Stein is a woman who knows what she wants and who doesn’t hesitate to profit from others when she can. This bothers Hemingway as he has the belief that a person should read and write for the simple joy of doing so and not because they have an ulterior motive. Thus, Stein is portrayed here as a fraud, someone who is willing to praise someone only if it benefits her and only if that person helped advance her career at one point in her life.
The lost generation
Stein calls Hemingway’s generation the ‘’lost one’’, an image that bothers Hemingway because of the things it implied. By calling his generation lost, Stein implied that Hemingway was without a purpose in life. She also implied that Hemingway’s generation was inferior to the generations before it and that in some ways, his generation was worthless.
