Transcript Slide 1

Overview of
Hemingway’s
Reputation
and Historical
Legacy
 Ernest Miller Hemingway (1898-1961), American
Nobel Prize-winning author, was one of the most
celebrated and influential literary stylists of the
twentieth century.
 Ernest Hemingway was a legend in his own
lifetime— in a sense, a legend of his own making. He
worked hard at being a composite of all the
masculine attributes he bestowed upon his fictional
heroes—a hard drinker, big-game hunter, fearless
soldier, amateur boxer, and bullfight aficionado.
 Despite sensational publicity and personal
invective, Hemingway presently ranks among
America's great writers.
 His critical stature rests solidly upon a small body
of exceptional writing, distinguished for its stylistic
purity, emotional veracity, moral integrity, and
dramatic intensity of vision.
Analysis of
Hemingway’s
Literary Style
 Because the man and his fiction often
appeared indistinguishable, critics have had
difficulty judging his work objectively.
 His protagonists — characterized as virile
and laconic — have been alternately praised
and denounced throughout literary history.
 In his obsession with violence and death,
the Hemingway creation has been rivaled
only by the Byronic myth of the 19th
century.
Hemingway's fiction typically focuses on
individuals living essential, dangerous lives
— soldiers, fishermen, athletes, bullfighters
— who confront the pain and difficulty of
their existence with stoic courage.
 His celebrated literary style, influenced by
Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, is direct,
terse, and often monotonous, yet particularly
suited to his elemental subject matter.

Description of Hemingway’s
Childhood in the Midwest and
Familial Relationships
 Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois
on July 21, 1898.
 His father, a country physician, instructed his
son upon the fundamentals of hunting and fishing;
his mother was a religiously puritanical woman,
active in church affairs, who led her son to play the
cello and sing in the choir.
 Hemingway's early years were invested largely in
combating the repressive feminine influence of his
mother and nurturing the masculine influence of
his father.
 Hemingway spent the summers with his family in
the woods of northern Michigan, where he often
accompanied his father on professional calls.
 The discovery of his father's apparent cowardice,
later depicted in the short story "The Doctor and
the Doctor's Wife," and his suicide several years
later left the young boy with an emotional scar.
Hemingway’s Military Experience in World War I
Despite the intense pleasure Hemingway
derived from outdoor life, and his popularity
in high school—where he distinguished
himself as a scholar and athlete—he ran away
from home twice.
 However, his first real chance for escape
came in 1917, when the United States entered
World War I. Eager to serve his country in the
war, he volunteered for active service in the
infantry (foot soldiers), but was rejected due
to vision impairment (eye issues).
 After spending several months as a reporter for the Kansas City
Star, Hemingway enlisted in the Red Cross medical service, driving an
ambulance on the Italian front.
 Hemingway was severely wounded in the knee at Fossalta di Piave;
however, still dodging amidst heavy mortar fire, he carried a wounded
man on his back a considerable distance to the aid station.
 After having over 200 shell fragments removed from his legs and
body, Hemingway subsequently enlisted in the Italian infantry, served
on the Austrian front until the armistice, and was decorated for
bravery by the Italian government. Hemingway soon returned home
(to his native United States), where he was hailed as a hero.
 Shortly after the war Hemingway worked as a
foreign correspondent in the Near East for the
Toronto Star.
Hemingway’s
Introduction
to and
Development
of Fiction
Writing
 Upon his return to Michigan, Hemingway had
already decided to commit himself to fiction writing.
 His exemplary journalism and the publication in
magazines of several experimental short stories had
impressed the well-known author Sherwood
Anderson (1876-1941), who, when Hemingway
decided to return to Europe, granted him letters of
introduction to expatriates Gertrude Stein (1846–
1946) and Ezra Pound (1885–1972)—two American
writers residing in Europe during that time period.
A Glimpse into
Hemingway’s
Early Years of
Adulthood
 Despite the abject poverty in
which he and his wife lived, these
were the most satisfactory years of
Hemingway's life, as well as the
most artistically fruitful.
Hemingway’s
Literary Strife
and Military
Role during
World War II
 Following the critical and popular success of his
novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway lapsed
into a literary silence that lasted a full decade and
was largely the result of his strenuous, frequently
reckless, activities during World War II.
In 1942, as a Collier's correspondent with the 3d
Army, he witnessed some of the bloodiest battles in
Europe.
Although he served in no official capacity, he
commanded a personal battalion of over 200 troops
and was granted the respect and privileges normally
accorded a general. At this time he received the
affectionate appellation of "Papa" from his admirers,
both of the military and literary realms of society.
 In 1944 while in London, Hemingway
Hemingway’s
Marital History and
Residence in Cuba
met and soon married Mary Welsh, a Time
reporter.
 His three previous marriages—to Hadley
Richardson, mother of one son; to Pauline
Pfeiffer, mother of his second and third
sons; and to Martha Gelhorn—had all
terminated in divorce.
 Following the war, Hemingway and his
fourth wife purchased a home, Finca Vigia,
near Havana, Cuba.
 Hemingway's only literary work was
some anecdotal articles for Esquire; the
remainder of his time was spent fishing,
hunting, battling critics, and providing
material for gossip columnists.
 In 1950, he ended his literary silence
with Across the River and into the Trees, a
narrative, flawed by maudlin self-pity,
about a retired Army colonel dying of a
heart condition in Venice and his dreamy
love affair with a pubescent girl.
Hemingway’s Literary
Masterpiece: The Old
Man and the Sea
Hemingway's remarkable gift for
recovery once again asserted itself in 1952
with the appearance of a novella about an
extraordinary battle between an elderly
Cuban fisherman and a colossal marlin.
 The Old Man and the Sea, immediately
hailed a masterpiece, was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.
 Although lacking the emotional tensions
of his longer works, this novella possesses
a generosity of spirit and reverence for life
which make it an appropriate conclusion
for Hemingway's career.
In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize
for literature, based upon The Old Man
and the Sea.
 Hemingway's rapidly deteriorating physical
condition and intense psychological
Hemingway’s Physical
disturbance drastically curtailed his literary
Demise, Departure
capabilities during the final years of his life.
from Cuba, and 1961  A nostalgic journey to Africa planned by the
author and his wife in 1954 ended in their
Suicide
plane crash over the Belgian Congo.
 Hemingway suffered severe burns and
internal injuries from which he never fully
recovered.
 Additional strain occurred when the
revolutionary Cuban government of Fidel
Castro forced the Hemingways to leave Finca
Vigía.
 After only a few months in their new home
in Ketchum, Idaho, Hemingway was
admitted to the Mayo Clinic to be treated for
hypertension and emotional depression and
was later treated by electroshock therapy.
 Scornful of an illness which humiliated him
physically and impaired his writing,
Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun on
July 2, 1961.
Hemingway’s Published
Posthumous Novels and
Other Literary Works
 Shortly after Hemingway's death, literary
critic Malcolm Cowley and scholar Carlos Baker
were entrusted with the task of sifting through
the writer's remaining manuscripts to determine
what material might be publishable.
 The first posthumous work, A Moveable Feast
(1964), is an elegiac reminiscence of
Hemingway's early years in Paris, containing
some phenomenal writing as well as brilliant
vignettes of his famous contemporaries.
 One year later the Atlantic Monthly published
several insignificant short stories and two
longer, rambling poems.
 In 1967, William White edited a collection of
Hemingway's best journalism under the title By-
Line Ernest Hemingway.
Analysis of Hemingway’s Literary
Style and Thematic Trends
Analysis of Hemingway’s
Literary Style and
Thematic Trends
Brief Summaries of Hemingway’s
Published Novels and Additional
Literary Works
In 1923, Hemingway published his first book, Three Stories and Ten
Poems. Although the poems are insignificant, the stories themselves
provide strong indications of his emerging genius.
 "Out of Season" already contained the psychological tension and moral
ambivalence characteristic of Hemingway’s mature work.
 With In Our Time (1925) Hemingway's years of apprenticeship
concluded. In this collection of stories, he drew on his experiences while
summering in Michigan to depict the initiation into the world of pain
and violence of young Nick Adams, a prototype for subsequent
Hemingway heroes.
 The atrocities Hemingway had witnessed as a journalist in the Near
East became the brief vignettes about intense suffering that formed inter
chapters for the collection; the majority of this compilation of stories is
written in Hemingway's characteristically terse, economic prose.
 "The End of Something" and "The Three Day Blow" deal with Nick's
disturbed reaction to the termination of a love affair.
 "The Big Two hearted River" describes a young man just returned from
war and his desperate attempt to prevent mental breakdown.
Brief Summaries of Hemingway’s
Published Novels and Additional
Literary Works
Brief Summaries of
Hemingway’s Published
Novels and Additional
Literary Works
 Success in fictional craftsmanship and in
portraying the mind of an era was again
achieved in A Farewell to Arms (December
1929), the poignant love story of an English
nurse and an American ambulance lieutenant
during World War II.
 The novel’s illustration of this tragically
terminated love affair – silhouetted against the
bleakness of war and a collapsing world order –
contains a philosophical expression of the
Hemingway code of stoical endurance in a
violent age: "The world breaks everyone,"
reflects the protagonist, "and afterward many
are strong in the broken places. But those that
it will not break it kills. It kills the very good
and the very gentle and the very brave
impartially. If you are none of those you can be
sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no
special hurry."
Brief Summaries of
Hemingway’s
Published Novels
and Additional
Literary Works
 Hemingway's second volume of short stories,
“Men without Women” (1927), contains "The
Killers," about a man who refuses to run from
gangsters determined to kill him; "The Light of the
World," dealing with Nick Adams's premature
introduction to the sickening world of
prostitution and homosexuality; and "The
Undefeated," concerning an aging bullfighter
whose courage and dedication constitute a moral
victory in the face of physical defeat and death.
 After contracting anthrax while on his
honeymoon in Grau-du-Roi with his second wife,
Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway revealed his
passionate interest in bull-fighting in Death in the
Afternoon (1932), a humorous and inventive
nonfiction study.
 In 1933, Hemingway authored his final collection
of short stories, “Winner Take Nothing”; this
volume, containing his most bitter and
disillusioned writing, deals almost exclusively
with emotional breakdown, impotence, and
homosexuality.
Brief Summaries of Hemingway’s
Published Novels and Additional
Literary Works
Hemingway's African safari in 1934 provided the material for another
nonfiction work, The Green Hills of Africa (1935), as well as two of his finest
short stories, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of
Kilimanjaro." Both stories concern attainment of self-realization and moral
integrity through contact with fear and death.
According to additional evaluation, Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon
and Green Hills of Africa, an account of big‐game hunting with digressions
on literary matters, demonstrate a further cultivation of the primitive and
brutal levels, contrasted with the hollow culture that had cheated his
generation.
 In To Have and Have Not (1937), written in
response to the 1930s depression, Hemingway
Brief Summaries of
exposed an interest – for the first time — in a
Hemingway’s Published possible solution of social problems through
Novels and Additional collective action.
Literary Works
• (The novel, inadequately conceived and poorly
executed, deals with a Florida smuggler whose
illegal activities and frequent brutalities mask his
sense of ethics and strength of character. Mortally
wounded by the gangsters with whom he has been
dealing, the individualistic hero comes to the
startling realization that "One man alone ain't got
no—chance").
 This attitude continued in newspaper
articles from Spain about its civil war, whose
espionage was the subject of his realistic play,
“The Fifth Column,” adapted for the stage
(1940) by Benjamin Glazer, and printed in
“The Fifth Column and the First Forty‐Nine
Stories” (1938).
Brief Summaries of Hemingway’s Published
Novels and Additional Literary Works
 His longest and most ambitious novel, it describes an
American professor's involvement with a loyalist guerrilla band
and his brief, idyllic love affair with a Spanish girl.
 A vivid, intelligently conceived narrative, it is written in less
lyrical and more dramatic prose than his earlier work.
 Hemingway deliberately avoided having the book used as
propaganda, despite its strained attempt at an affirmative
resolution, by carefully balancing fascist atrocities with a
heartless massacre by a peasant mob.
 In 1942, Hemingway edited an
Brief Summaries of
anthology titled: Men at War.
Hemingway’s Published
Novels and Additional  However, he issued no new novel until
Literary Works
“Across the River and into the Trees”
(1950), which was considered to reveal
that Hemingway had become bitter and
defeatist like his tale's protagonist, an
aging colonel.
 With “The Old Man and the Sea”
(1952), a parable of man against nature
in a poignant novelette, Hemingway
recaptured his critical acclaim,
recognized in a Pulitzer Prize for fiction
(1953) and a Nobel Prize for literature
(1954).
B r ief S u m ma ries o f
H emingw ay’s P u bl ished
N o v els a n d A d d itio na l
L i t e rary W o rks
 In his last years, Hemingway
published nothing, due to his severely
ailing physical condition throughout
the final stages of his life, prior to
committing suicide by gunshot.
 However, several posthumous works
followed, most notably Islands in the
Stream (1970), a novel in three parts
that illustrated a painter's
unsatisfactory marriage, his affection
for his sons, their deaths, his bravery in
war, his pleasure in deep‐sea fishing,
and his loneliness.
Another novel, written previously by Hemingway in the 1940s, edited and
published in 1986, titled The Garden of Eden, begins with the honeymoon of an
enticing young couple, David and Catherine Bourne, he a reputable author, she an
heiress, who separate over serious sexual differences.
 Subsequent compilations include The Wild Years (1962), his journalism for the
Toronto Star; By‐Lines (1967), selected journalism of four decades; The “Nick Adams
Stories” (1972), eight of them previously unpublished; and three collections of
verse, the last and most inclusive being “88 Poems” (1979).
 Furthermore, “Selected Letters” was issued in 1981.