Ernest Hemingway1899-1961

“Papa”

Early Experience

• Dad- highly successful doctor; committed suicide

• Mom- a singer• 5 siblings

World War I

• Wanted to enter the war but couldn’t 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

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.

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."

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."

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.

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)

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.”

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.”

Hemingway’s 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."

• 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.

Hobbies

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

Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

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.

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.’"

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.

• Hemingway’s 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

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

Hemingway women

Two types:

1) Perfection

2) The 5-lettered word

Hemingway’s 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

Later life

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