ERNEST HEMINGWAY Heming way ’s 1958 statement about his writing : 1.“I always try to write on the principle of the 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 doesn’t show.” 2. “There is seven - eighths of it under water for every part that shows .” American writer Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants was first published in 1927. Known for his concise style, Hemingway was one of America’s great fiction writers. His work, like Hills Like White Elephants, often drew on his experiences in Spain and his understanding of humanity to address what it means to be a man and to act ethically. The Old Man and the Sea, short heroic novel by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1952 and awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was his last major work of fiction. The story centres on an aging fisherman who engages in an epic battle to catch a giant marlin. The central character is an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who has not caught a fish for 84 days. The family of his apprentice, Manolin, has forced the boy to leave the old fisherman, though Manolin continues to support him with food and bait. Santiago is a mentor to the boy, who cherishes the old man and the life lessons he imparts. Convinced that his luck must change, Santiago takes his skiff far out into the deep waters of the Gulf Stream, where he soon hooks a giant marlin. With all his great experience and strength, he struggles with the fish for three days, admiring its strength, dignity, and faithfulness to its identity; its destiny is as true as Santiago’s as a fisherman. He finally reels the marlin in and lashes it to his boat. However, Santiago’s exhausting effort goes for naught. Sharks are drawn to the tethered marlin, and, although Santiago manages to kill a few, the sharks eat the fish, leaving behind only its skeleton. After returning to the harbour, the discouraged Santiago goes to his home to sleep. In the meantime, others see the skeleton tied to his boat and are amazed. A concerned Manolin is relieved to find Santiago alive, and the two agree to go fishing together. • Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. • Ernest Hemingway was a fiction novel and short story writer, working in the Modernist genre. • Among many great American writers, Hemingway is famous for his objective and terse prose style. As all the novels Hemingway published in his life, The Old Man and the Sea typically reflects his unique writing style. The language is simple and natural on the surface, but actually deliberate and artificial. • Ernest Hemingway's signature style broke the mold. His short, declarative sentences, intentional repetition, and general absence of adjectives were a departure from the style of every previous novelist. • Late in his life, Hemingway struggled with deteriorating health, four different marriages, and a deep depression which eventually caused him to commit suicide in his home in Katchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961 at the age of 61. In 1916 Hemingway graduated from high school and began his writing career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. Six months later he joined the Ambulance Corps in WWI and worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, picking up human remains. In July 1918 he was seriously wounded by a mortar shell, which left shrapnel in both of his legs causing him much pain and requiring several surgeries. He was awarded the Silver Medal. Back in America, he continued his writing career working for Toronto Star . At that time he met Hadley Richardson and the two married in 1921. Hemingway participated in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the D-Day landings during the invasion of France during World War II, in which he not only reported the action but took part in it. In one instance he threw three hand grenades into a bunker, killing several SS officers. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for his action. His military experiences were emulated in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940) and in several other stories. He settled near Havana, Cuba, where he wrote his best known work, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1953), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was adapted as the film Старик и море (1958), for which Spencer Tracy was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, and Dimitri Tiomkin received an Oscar for Best Musical Score. In 1926 he published The Sun Also Rises, a novel with which he scored his first solid success. A pessimistic but sparkling book, it deals with a group of aimless expatriates in France and Spain— members of the postwar Lost Generation, a phrase that Hemingway scorned while making it famous. This work also introduced him to the limelight, which he both craved and resented for the rest of his life. Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring, a parody of the American writer Sherwood Anderson’s book Dark Laughter, also appeared in 1926. The writing of books occupied Hemingway for most of the postwar years. He remained based in Paris, but he traveled widely for the skiing, bullfighting, fishing, and hunting that by then had become part of his life and formed the background for much of his writing. His position as a master of short fiction had been advanced by Men Without Women in 1927 and thoroughly established with the stories in Winner Take Nothing in 1933. Among his finest stories are “The Killers,” “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” At least in the public view, however, the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) overshadowed such works. Reaching back to his experience as a young soldier in Italy, Hemingway developed a grim but lyrical novel of great power, fusing love story with war story. The term “lost generation” refers to a group of writers—but also to an entire generation—who came of age during World War I. Here is why they are called “lost.” Why Do They Call It the Lost Generation? It Started with a Quote The term “lost generation” came from a statement. “All of you young people who served in the war. . . . You are all a lost generation,” writer Gertrude Stein said to a young Ernest Hemingway in the years after World War I, according to his account years later in A Moveable Feast. The phrase “lost generation” described the disillusionment felt by many, especially intellectuals and creatives, after the death and carnage of World War I. The loss of faith in traditional values and ideals led many who came of age during World War I to become hedonistic, rebellious, and aimless—“lost.” This cynicism and disillusionment defined the literary and creative landscape of the 1920s. Who Were Part of the Lost Generation? The term “Lost Generation” became associated with a group of writers and artists with whom Hemingway worked in Paris, France, during the early 1920s. However, the term also refers more broadly to all those who reached adulthood during World War I. In Europe, they have also been called “the generation of 1914.” The “Lost Generation” of World War I Worldwide, about 20 million people died in World War I (or the Great War, as it was known at the time)—and another 20 million or so were wounded. Those born in the last two decades of the 1800s were heavily impacted. Young people served in the military in large numbers and figured highly in those casualties. Many who survived the war emerged with deep physical or emotional wounds. Young adults lost friends and often saw their careers and family plans disrupted. In war-torn regions, family homes and livelihoods were sometimes destroyed. During a season of life when they would typically anticipate joyful rites of passage—graduations, new jobs, weddings, parenthood—many instead felt alone, disabled, unmoored from traditional values, and uncertain or pessimistic about the future. In regard to survivors, the phrase “lost generation” suggests that even though their lives were physically spared, many still felt lost. The famous core of Lost Generation writers was a group of American expatriates who lived in Paris, France, during the 1920s. Among them was Hemingway, who had driven ambulances in Italy during the Great War. In Paris, he associated with mentor Gertrude Stein and other friends who profoundly influenced his work. His novels The Sun Also Rises and Farewell to Arms were both written in the late 1920s and follow the turbulent lives of characters living through World War I or in its aftermath. F. Scott Fitzgerald turned the literary spotlight on another Lost Generation theme. His 1920s novels (This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby) center on the empty, decadent, materialistic lifestyles pursued by his characters after the Great War. These books also explore how these choices affected marriages and relationships. Other writers included in the circle of the lost generation include Sylvia Beach, E. E. Cummings, Max Eastman, T. S. Eliot, Ford Maddox Ford, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. Questions What did Ernest Hemingway write? How did Ernest Hemingway influence others? What was Ernest Hemingway’s childhood like? When did Ernest Hemingway die?
