The Man and Writer: Ernest Hemingway, Research Paper Example

In contemporary literature, few writers were able to successfully leave behind a type of literature that Ernest Hemingway did. His writings, even now, are arguably one of the most creative and effectively written works America has ever seen. To date, Hemingway was able sustain his lasting memory by his brilliant writings which were so simple, yet so artistic that they have continued to be read and analyzed, and at times critiqued. Hemingway’s style is quite distinct from other writers; his literature was to go hand in hand with the lingua franca of a common man, to be understandable by all and simultaneously make the reader dwell and linger in imaginary thoughts. In contrast to other writers, Hemingway has never tried to create complex literature with twisting ideas but primarily focused on discerning apathy  by his readers. All in all,  the aim of this paper is to present the biography of Ernest Hemingway’s life and its relation to his writings (which have influenced many of his pieces that are hitherto popular), analyze his major works that are known to the average reader and to ultimately present critical views about his major writings and about his general style of writing, which through time has remained unaltered.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, witnessing the dying of the  19th century, 1899. His mother, Grace-Hall Hemingway was well known musician in the town and was very eager to have young Ernest  accept music as his métier. This long-inspired dream by his mother was of no avail, though he played in the high school orchestra. Among other things, Hemingway was involved in boxing, water polo, etc.. He later used these hobbies to portray his male characters in a very manly way. Furthermore, he was also quite involved in journalism, which eventually became his initial career after high school. He took a job at The Kansas City Star  where he was to learn his renowned style of having short sentences and striving to have more positive language than negative.  But his life took a sudden turn to the unknown when he signed up to be a driver in Italy during the Great War. During one of his rides he got seriously wounded and was forced to go to a hospital in Milan where he remained for six months. There he fell in love with a local nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. Even though the relationship had gotten serious, they never ended up marrying since Agnes found someone else around the time of Hemingway’s absence. All of these events naturally matured him to a new level. In addition, the events in reality inspired him to write A Farewell to Arms, one of his bestselling semi-autobiographical works. He later went back to America to seek for a job and was hired in Toronto as a journalist and later in Chicago. While working there, he met another girl named Hadley Richardson, whom he later married. They both moved to Paris where Hemingway was exposed to a great deal of American writes and novelists such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound.  After Paris, Hemingway moved to  Spain where he became fascinated at bullfighting and it had a profound effect on his writing. In fact, The Sun Also Rises was deeply inspired by the fiesta that he witnessed for a few days. He ended up finishing the book in 8 weeks and moved to Austria. That’s when he began to have an affair with other woman, and this came to show the weakness Hemingway experienced when it came to women: he was never quite satisfied. One might rationally say that he was simply young and getting married at a young age is nothing but absurd, but Hemingway had recidivistic sentiments when it came to marriage. And indeed, they divorced in January 1927 and Hemingway did not lose his mind an married the girl whom he was cheating Hadley with. But it can be said that this marriage was more important than the latter two since two profound things happened in his love which can be seen as radical transformations in life. One was that he converted to Catholicism since Pauline, the girl whom he married, was  Catholic. And two, Pauline gave birth to his first son, Patrick in 1928. Within the same year Hemingway began working on his new novel called A Farewell to Arms which won him popularity since it was brave and had more imagination and creativity involved. 1930s for Hemingway were full of visits to Key West, Florida where he spent his summers. He also spent time in African safari which inspired his Green Hills of Africa. By late 1930s he met Martha Gellhorn who was to become his third wife. Martha, in fact, was the inspiration for Hemingway’s famous For Whom the Bell Tolls. Later in his life he fought in WWII in Europe for which he was awarded a bronze medal for bravery. In 1954 he amazed the world when he got the Nobel Prize for Literature  but the timing was quite bad since Hemingway abused drinking and frequently got drunk.  Later he began working on A Moveable Feast, his memoir which was revised by him several times. In 1961, he ended up shooting himself with his favorite shotgun. He left the way his sister and father left.

Hemingway’s bibliography can arguably start with The Sun Also Rises, which is his most important piece; this novel granted him the freedom to write more and secured him financially ¹. His most important characteristic in this novel was that he used certain imagines without a proper explanation and without elaboration. Modernist style was vastly borrowed from European style.

His next novel, written in 1929 was A Farewell to Arms   which more mature than the previous book yet it incorporated  more maturity from the writer who based the story from his life and changed a few (but important) events that has happened to him during the First World War and made it into a book.  It is interesting to know that A Farewell to Arms had vulgar language in the book and so upon his publication controversial words were replaced by “—“, something Hemingway himself hated.

In his 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway received somewhat negative  reception for his use of old language since he was more or less reading medieval literature at the time. Another important style that Hemingway used was the third narrative which was not used in  The Sun Also Rises nor A Farewell to Arms ².  It is also important to note that For Whom the Bell Tolls was the main book to be nominated for Pulitzer Prize, but it didn’t (there was no nomination that year.

Later in 1940s he began to work on short novels and short stories. It is believed that Hemingway was not so good in 1940s since when he finished Across the River and Into the Trees he it was tarnished by the critics. This, however, did not dissuade the famous writer who made a comeback with  The Old Man and the Sea which would lead his way to the Nobel Prize³.

As already mentioned, one of the biggest criticisms that Ernest Hemingway got was his portrayal of his characters more manly and with masculinity.  Some claim that his masculinity is more or less the minimization of women’s role in his stories⁴. However, if one looks thoroughly in his novels, Hemingway actually makes his own character in his head: women are to be short haired and men more into bullfighting, boxing, etc.  This particular criticism was very much overlooked earlier but now it has fully recovered.  In another case he is criticized for using more Spanish translations for his stories which does not fully and correctly translate to its compatibly meaning . The issue is especially present in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

All in all, regardless of all the criticism that Ernest Hemingway received throughout his life about his style of writing or about some differences he had with the popular mainstream writing, he is still considered to be one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century.

Works cited

Wegner- Martin, Linda, A Historical Guide To Ernest Hemingway, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, page 1

Wilson, Edmund, “Return of Ernest Hemingway,” New Republic 28 October, 1940. Page 3

Llosa Mario and Ullmann Thilo, “Hemingway”, Salmagundi, Fall 2000-Winter 2001, pp 41-42

Fore, Dana,” Life Unworthy of Life? Masculinity, Disability, and Guilt in The Sun Also Rises,” The Hemingway Review, page 78