Author: Arti Devi Verma, Prof. Charu Mehrotra

Abstract: World Wars have been occurred such a terrible incidents in the human history that led to a drastic change in the entire scenario of the world, whether it is social and political issues, intellectual standards, economic, religious, and mental concerns, and academic perspectives. After these milestone events, the focus of intellectuals was changed from imagination and innovative progress to existential despair. For the first time, People started to search the relevance and meaning of life instead of materialistic prosperity. The writers of this era were exploring the themes of despair, nostalgia, identity crisis, meaninglessness, alienation and existential subjects. On this foundation, the current paper will analyze the thematic presentation of post-war disillusionment and existential emptiness in the chosen short stories of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s fiction portrays the psychological fragmentation and moral ambiguity of the post-war era, especially in the characters who represent alienation, loss of faith, and emotional numbness. Through the textual and thematic analysis, the research will investigate how narrative minimalism, symbolic topography, and muted dialogue are used as stylistic elements to represent inner emptiness and repressed trauma. Through an exploration of key stories such as “In Another Country,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Soldier’s Home,” and “The Killers,” the study examines how Hemingway portrays the fractured self, the rupture of traditional values, and the existential void that defines the post-war era and show how the aftermath of war alters the individual’s identity, interpersonal relations, literary trends and worldview.

Keywords: Alienation, identity loss, inner conflict, emptiness, skeptic self.

Article Info: Received: 20 Feb 2026; Received in revised form: 21 Mar 2026; Accepted: 25 Mar 2026; Available online: 28 Mar 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.112.41