Transcript Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (18991961)
 Focus of
Study :
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Life Experience
Literary Career
Point of View
Writing Style
Major works
Significance
Life Experience
1899: In Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest
Hemingway is born on 21 July, the
second child of six.
1905-1917: Ernest attend grade
school in Oak Park and Oak Park
and River Forest High School .
1918: Hemingway enlists with the
American Red Cross as an
ambulance driver. In June he is
wounded in Italy and sent to the
Milan Red Cross hospital where he
falls in love with his nurse, the
prototype of Catherine in A
Farewell to Arms.
1921: Ernest and Hadley are
married in Sep. Advised by
Sherwood Anderson, the couple
moved to Paris in December.
Young Hemingway (far right) with his family, 1906
 1922: In February and March,
Ernest meets Sylvia Beach, Ezra
Pound, Gertrude Stein.
 1926: In October The Sun Also
Rises is published in New York.
 1927: In April, Hadley and Ernest
are divorced. In May he and
Pauline marry in Paris. In October,
Scribners publishes his Men
Without Women.
 1928: On 28 June his second son
is born. On 6 December his father,
Clarence Hemingway, commits
suicide in Oak Park.
 1929: In September A Farewell to
Arms is published in New York.
1937: In March he is in Madrid, where he is joined by
Martha Gellhorn and he returns to the Spanish War in
August. To Have and Have Not is published on 15 October.
1938: On 22 October The Fifth Column and the First
Forty-Nine Stories is published in New York.
1940: At the end of July, Hemingway delivers to Scribners
the finished draft of For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is
published on 21 October. In November, Hemingway
divorces Pauline and marries Martha.
1941: At the end of January, Ernest and Martha set out
as journalists to the China-Japan War zone. Between
February and April, they
are in Hawaii, Hong Kong,
Canton, Chungking.
1943: In September, Martha leaves for England to report on
the war. Hemingway refuses to join her, their marriage
having become a series of arguments and accusations. Alone
at Finca, he is morose, lonely, and drinking too much.
1945: In March, Hemingway departs from Paris to return to
Cuba, where he is joined by Mary Welsh in May. In Dec. he
divorces Martha.
1946: In the first half of the year, Hemingway sinks into one
of his recurring depressed periods. In June he and Mary are
married in Havana.
1947: On 13 June, Hemingway is awarded a Bronze Star for
his several activities during War II.
1948: After returning to Cuba, the Hemingways sail in
September from Havana to Italy, where they revisit Ernest's
War I sites and experience Venice for the first time.
1951: On 28 July, Hemingway's mother, Grace, dies in
Memphis, Tennessee. He does not go to the funeral.
 1952: The Old Man and the Sea is published on 1 Sept.
It becomes an immediate best-seller.
 1953: On 4 May, Hemingway is awarded the Pulitzer
Prize.
 1954: On 21 July, Hemingway's fifty-fifth birthday, he is
awarded the Order of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes by the
Cuban government. On 28 October he is told that he has
received the Nobel Prize in literature, but he pleads ill
health as a reason not to attend the ceremony.
1959: In January and February, Hemingway works steadily
on The Garden of Eden. Throughout the summer his erratic
behavior puts an added strain on his marriage with Mary
threatening to leave him. The year ends with Ernest becoming
more and more withdrawn and paranoid.
1960: In August, Hemingway flies to Spain to collect more
information for his book. There, Ernest's mental condition
grows steadily worse. He returns to N.Y. in Oct., after which
he and Mary return to their house in Ketchum. That fall his
erratic moods, paranoia, and despondency become worse. On
30 November, Ernest is flown to Minnesota to accept
electroshock treatments.
1961: After being released from the Mayo Clinic, he remains
withdrawn and morose, feeling that he cannot write. On 21
April, after attempting suicide, Hemingway is sedated and
hospitalized in Ketchum. Three days later, a second attempt to
kill himself is thwarted. The next day he is flown back to the
Mayo Clinic for more electroshock therapy. On 26 June, and
he and Mary return to the Ketchum house. At 7:30 A.M. on 2
July, he takes his life with his favorite shotgun.
Writing Career
 1923 Three Stories and
Ten Poems 1925 In Our
Time
 1926 The Torrents of
Spring (Novel)
 1926 The Sun Also
Rises (Novel)
 1927 Men Without
Women (Short Stories)
 1929 A Farewell to
Arms (Novel)
 1932 Death in the
Afternoon (Novel)
 1933 Winner take
Nothing (Short Stories)
 1935 Green Hills of
Africa (Novel)
 1937 To Have and
Have Not (Novel)
 1940 For Whom the
Bell Tolls (Novel)
 1942 Men at War
 1950 Across the River
and into the Trees
1952 The Old Man and
the Sea (Novel)
Point of View
His illusions being destroyed
early by his experience in the
war, he needed to create a new
code for his existence. The
establishment of his new code
is based on his disillusioned
conviction that the old
Christian concepts and values
could not save people from the
catastrophe of the War. Here is
a world of “waste land”
permeated with wars, wounds,
violence, death, dead love,
hedonism.
Two Types of Hero: 1. the Code Hero
Hemingway wrote all his life about one theme—“grace
under pressure” and his code hero with stoic courage
lives by a pattern which gives life meaning and value.
His code hero lives constantly with the idea of death. He
lives intensely when he is in the direct presence of death.
He is often restless, staying awake at nighttime and
sleeping during the day, because the darkness of night for
him suggests the darkness man has to face after death.
He realizes human dignity and integrity cannot be
bargained for with the forces of darkness. In such chaotic
and meaningless world, man fights a solitary struggle
against a force he does not even understand. The
awareness of his final defeat and inevitable death,
however hard he strives against it, engenders a sense of
despair—despairing courage—a code of honor. This
enables a man to behave like a man, to assert his dignity
in face of adversity.
 His code hero often devotes himself to all types of
physical pleasures as rewards of this life.
 The code hero possesses his disciplines to manage
any difficult situation, his code of honor and courage
to face the forces of the enemy. He is a hero because
he teaches us how to live.
 He is highly competent at a particular skill and
intentionally alienates himself form the ordinary
person.
 He is reticent, never talking about his concepts. He
is a man of action rather than a man of theory, which
leads to the concept of loyalty that he feels for other
people.
 He cannot feel a sense of loyalty to sth. abstract, he
is more concerned with a smaller and more personal
relationship.
2. The “student” character
is blessed or condemned
with his self-consciousness
or mind. He is simple and
shallow, trying to
understand the experience
of the code hero.
To sum up，
Hemingway’s fictional
world is comparatively
limited. His characters are
stereotyped and always
confined in a small world
of war, blood, violence and
death.
Writing Style
I always try to write on the
principle of Iceberg. There
is seven-eighths of it under
water for every part that
shows. Anything you know
you can eliminate and it
only strengthens your
iceberg. It is the part that
does’t show.
--Ernest Hemingway 1958
One must go deep beneath
the surface to understand the
full meaning of his writing.
General Qualities of his
fiction: the regular
appearance of the simple
declarative sentence, a
concrete, non-abstract diction,
repetition of words and phrase,
the concentration on an image
of physical sensation and
masterful control of dialogue.
1. His use of the simple
declarative sentence is in
keeping with his avoidance of
adj.s and adv.s.
2. One of the effects of
repetition is that it helps
drive home a point by
insisting to the reader that it
is important.
3.Hemingway’s commitment
to the life of physical
sensation is persistent in his
fiction.
4. The dialogue or
conversation is equally
remarkable because
Hemingway had an
excellent ear for the accents
and mannerisms of human
speech.
Major works
The Sun Also Rises
The most important text to
understand the “lost generation”.
A group of young English and
American expatriates caught in
the war and cut off from the old
values and unable to come to
terms with the new era when
civilization had gone mad. They
wandering pointlessly and
enjoying various pleasures.
Jake Barnes, wounded in the war,
the Fisher King, whose physical
impotence is a token of modern
man’s spiritual impotence.
Main idea: Nothing leads
anywhere.
A Farewell to Arms(1928)
Henry goes to the war and
discovers the insanity of the
universe. He becomes an
embittered man, fighting single
handed against overwhelming
odds. There is nothing sacred and
glorious but the slaughterhouse.
Theme: It stresses the normality
and righteousness of the malefemale relationship. Anything
which distorts or destroys it will
ends in a kind of tragedy.
Hemingway dramatizes the
conflict between personal
happiness and the larger drama of
war that is a miniature of an
absurd world.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (40)
The novel is permeated with a
sense of involvement in the lives
and sufferings of others, a loyalty
to brotherhood.
It enriches Hemingway’s heroic
codes in striking a more confident,
affirmative and optimistic note.
Jordan: a wounded man living
all the time in the shadow of Fate
and doom. He is keenly aware the
losing battle but keeps on striving.
He grows up in learning that there
are causes that are worth dying
for(the Spanish people), as the
novel ends with his words: “I
have fought for what I believed in
for a year now. If we win here we
will win everywhere.”
The Old Man and the Sea
(1952)
Santiago and his battle
with big Marlin. He is
contending with a force he
knows it is futile to battle
with and living with such
belief that “a man is not
made for defeat… A man
can be destroyed but not
defeated.” He begins to
experience a feeling of
brotherhood and love not
only for his fellowmen but
for his fellow creatures in
nature—a proof of the
change of Hemingway’s
vision of the world.
Significance
 Hemingway is interested in conveying a deep
emotional feeling. This is the goal of many
modernist writers—recreate proper feelings of
the situation or experience in the reader, arouse
an involuntary subjective response.
 Hemingway deserves “the attention of posterity
as he captured in his works the uncomfortable
realities of his age and forced into public
consciousness a realization of the brutalities of
war and their lingering psychological effects”.
(Martin, James)
Study Questions
 A Farewell to Arms is one of the most famous
war novels ever written. Unlike many war stories,
however, the novel does not glorify the
experience of combat or offer us portraits of
heroes as they are traditionally conceived. What
is the novel’s attitude toward war? Is it fair to call
it an antiwar novel?
 Discuss religious symbolism in The Old Man and
the Sea. To what effect does Hemingway employ
such images?
 What is the role of the sea in The Old Man and
the Sea?
Reference
 Donald, Miles. The American Novel in the
Twentieth Century. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and
Noble, 1978.
 Monteiro, George, ed. Critical Essays on Ernest
Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. New York: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1994.
 Reynolds, Michael S. Ernest Hemingway. Detroit:
Gale Group, 2000.
 Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Ernest Hemingway:
Seven Decades of Criticism. East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1998.
Thank You Very Much for
Attending This Lecture