Ernest Hemingway

1
Ernest Hemingway

• 1899-1961

2
Life

• Adventurous life a reporter, ambulance driver
  in WWI Europe, war correspondent in WWII
• Father hunter fisherman
• Personal hobbies bullfight watching, hunting
  (expeditions in Africa), fishing (in the
  Caribbean)

3
Major novels

• The Sun Also Rises (1926)
• A Farewell to Arms (1929)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
• The Old Man and the Sea (1952) (Pulitzer Prize in
  1953)
• Winning Nobel Prize in 1954

4
Wound ??

• Physical wound
• Spiritual wound
• Symbol of the age

5
The Lost Generation

• Gertrude Stein
• WWI
• The 1920s expatriate writers
• Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos
  Passos
• Nihilism(????) disillusion, frustration,
  hopelessness

6
Hemingway code

• Code hero displays grace under pressure
  conviction, self-control, courage, capacity and
  dignity in face of nothingness, pain or despair
• - A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
  (from The Old Man and the Sea)
• Hemingway hero a tough guy who values honour and
  skill in profession, human dignity, courage and
  endurance masculine but sensitive learns from
  code heroes

7
Writing style

• Economy of words simple but suggestive
• Reliance on dialogues showing rather than
  telling, highly suggestive of personality
• Repetition foregrounding the theme
• Antithesis binary oppositions used to contrast
  different values and forces

8
Economy of words

• Simple diction monosyllabic / two syllable
  words
• Short sentences
• Vital lines highly suggestive, decisively
  simple, expressively symbolic
• concise language like the tip of an iceberg

9
Reliance on dialogue monologue

• Little authoritative statement few adj. adv
  more nouns verbs
• (Free) direct speech or thought showing, least
  intrusion from the author, no comments, objective

10
HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS

• Ernest Hemingway, 1927

11
Discussion Questoins

• modernistic elements in
• - relationship between the characters
• - narration
• - theme
• - style
• - symbols

12
Relation between the characters

• Strained
• Alienated
• - The girl feels deep disappointment and
  despair about the man and behaves emotionally and
  dramatically towards him.
• - The man remains calm and rational,
  unaffected by the girls hysteria.

13
Meaning of the Title

• Womans imagination vs. mans insensibility
• Barrenness of the hills (white color) in relation
  to abortion
• Pregnancy form of the big and heavy body
• The woman feels herself expensive but useless to
  the man.

14
Antithesis (contrasting values)

• Fertility vs. Sterility
• Pregnancy / Birth vs. Abortion
• Imagination vs. Insensibility
• Stability vs. Restlessness

15
Narration

• Reliance on dialogue free direct speech
  (objective showing)
• No revelation of the characters inner world
• - external focalization (???)

16
Style

• Colloquial language
• Simple words and sentences
• - superficial dealings with life seem easier
  than serious thinking and conviction
• Repetition
• - water, try

17
Theme

• Failure to communicate
• - Jig and the American disagreed upon the
  issue of Jig getting an abortion and have
  difficulty convincing each other.
• Frustration
• - Disillusioned with the American, Jig feels
  hopeless about their future.

18
Symbols

• White elephants
• Abortion
• Train station
• River, trees, grain
• Curtain beads
• Beer vs. Anis del Toro

19
Assignments for Dry September

• Find Gerard Genettes definition and
  categorization of focalization (??) and compare
  the different modes of focalization used in
  Hills Like White Elephants and Dry September.
• Identity crisis is the common experience of the
  three major characters in the story. Identify
  their identity problem and the way they deal with
  the problem.
• What important symbols are there in the story?
• What is the theme of the story?