Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961

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Ernest Hemingway1899-1961Papa
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Early Experience

• Dad- highly successful doctor committed suicide
• Mom- a singer
• 5 siblings

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World War I

• Wanted to enter the war but couldnt because of a
  bad eye
• Very disappointed b/c he saw war as exciting and
  adventurous
• Joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver on
  the Italian front
• First day- had to carry mutilated bodies out of a
  factory explosion

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World War I cont.

• Within weeks, he was wounded while passing out
  chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers in
  the trenches near the front lines. The explosion
  knocked Hemingway unconscious, killed an Italian
  soldier and blew the legs off another.

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WWI cont

• Some say that he saved a wounded man. He
  received the silver medal of valor that read
• "Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel
  from an enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of
  brotherhood, before taking care of himself, he
  rendered generous assistance to the Italian
  soldiers more seriously wounded by the same
  explosion and did not allow himself to be carried
  elsewhere until after they had been evacuated."

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WWI cont.

• Hemingway described his injuries to a friend of
  his
• "There was one of those big noises you sometimes
  hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or
  something coming right out of my body, like you'd
  pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one
  corner. It flew all around and then came back and
  went in again and I wasn't dead any more."

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WWI cont.

• While in the hospital, Hemingway met a nurse,
  Agnes von Kurowsky.
• His relationship with her
• and his recovery in the
• hospital inspired his
• novel A Farewell To Arms.

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A Farewell to Arms

• WWI on the Italian front
• Seems to have inserted his experience as an
  ambulance driver (book- Lt. Frederic Henry)
  love story with a nurse (real life- Agnes book-
  Catherine)

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Hemingway quotes on war

• But in modern war you will die like a dog for no
  good reason.
• Never think that war, no matter how necessary,
  not how justified, is not a crime.

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Journalist

• Wrote for the Kansas City Star
• Was a war correspondent for the Spanish Civil War
  and WWII
• Style is simple, clean, short came to distrust
  adjectives
• My aim is to put down on paper what I see and
  what I feel in the best and simplest way.

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Hemingways style

• Mix of realism and romanticism
• Iceberg theory
• "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he
  is writing about he may omit things that he knows
  and the reader, if the writer is writing truly
  enough, will have a feeling of those things as
  strongly as though the writer had stated them.
  The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to
  only one-eighth of it being above water."

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• If it is any use to know it, I always try to
  write on the principle of the iceberg. There is
  seven-eighths of it underwater for every part
  that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate
  and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the
  part that doesn't show. If a writer omits
  something because he does not know it then there
  is a hole in the story.

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Hobbies

• Often reflected in his writing- hunting, fishing,
  bull-fighting, boxing, nature

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Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
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Safari

• One of the finest pictures to come out of the
  expedition is this image showing Hemingway with a
  downed leopard. The problem was, however, that it
  was not quite clear whose bullet had actually
  killed this leopard--Hemingway's or that of one
  of his hunting companions--and Mary Hemingway was
  adamant that it not run in Look unless her
  husband bagged another leopard that he could
  unambiguously call his own. Much to the benefit
  of Look's picture spread, he did.

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Lost Generation

• Generation that came back from the war feeling
  aimless, disillusioned, and lost
• The World War seemed to destroy for many the
  idea that if you acted properly, good things
  would happen. But so many good young men went to
  war and died, or returned damaged, both
  physically and mentally, that their faith in the
  moral guideposts that had given them hope before,
  were no longer valid...they were Lost."

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Lost Generation

• A name to describe all the disillusioned young
  men who had survived World War I and who seemed
  to end up in France with no real purpose, but
  because of its relatively low cost of living.
• Hemingways novel The Sun Also Rises- a novel
  about The Lost Generation
• Hemingway himself lived abroad with other authors
  and artists- Fitzgerald, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound,
  James Joyce

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Hemingway Hero

• Someone for whom life is a battle
• Someone who displays grace dignity under
  pressure
• Usually wounded physically or mentally
• Plays the game well, even in defeat

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Hemingway women

• Two types
• Perfection
• 2) The 5-lettered word

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Hemingways works

• The Sun Always Rises- Lost Generation, Paris,
  Spain, bull-fighting
• For Whom the Bell Tolls- Spanish Civil War
• Old Man and the Sea- won the Pulizer Prize in
  1952
• Won the Nobel Prize in 1954
• Snows of Kilamanjaro- book of short stories of
  adventures in Africa Short Happy Life of Francis

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Later life

• Four marriages, all ended in divorce
• Major health issues, alcoholism
• Committed suicide at age 62