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.