Biography
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. Serving at the front, he was
wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals.
After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American
newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.
During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in
Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally
successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's
disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a
reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom
the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old
Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle
with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.
Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough,
at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern
society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare
dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories,
some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First
Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.
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Thibo
H English 9
Story #3 - (Replaces story 3 on original handout)
Reading activities for “The Chrysanthemums”
1. After reading the description of Elisa on page 283, draw a sketch of her. Use all the details
from the text to recreate her image into a picture on paper.
2. After reading the description of the old spring wagon on page 285, draw a sketch of this
wagon. Use all the details for the text to recreate this image into a picture on paper.
3. Write a three paragraph essay about Steinbeck’s use of symbols and symbolism to create this
story. What does the symbolism tell you about Elisa’s character? What more is being said
behind the words because of the use of symbols to represent more than the literal meaning of
words?
Essay organization:
Paragraph 1 - TAG, introduction to story, identify the focus of symbols and symbolism,
end paragraph with a thesis statement.
THESIS - combines a subject (symbolism) with a claim (educated opinion)
i.e. Steinbeck’s reference to Elisa’s flower garden symbolizes her inner desire for a
healthier relationship with her husband.
Paragraph 2 - Prove your thesis using the 11 sentence paragraph structure.
sentence 1 - Topic sentence - main idea to prove thesis
sentence 2 - Reason sentence - why is main idea true?
sentence 3 - Textual evidence - quote from text (Steinbeck 238).
sentence 4 - Explanation sentence - proves why quote supports reason 1
sentence 5 - Reason sentence 2 - why is main idea true?
sentence 6 - Textual evidence 2 - quote from text (Steinbeck 239)
sentence 7 - Explanation sentence - proves why quote supports reason 2
sentence 8 - Reason sentence 3 - why is main idea true?
sentence 9 - Textual evidence - quote from text (Steinbeck 240)
sentence 10 - Explanation sentence - proves why quote supports reason 3
sentence 11 - Closing sentence - restates main idea of paragraph
Paragraph 3 - Conclusion - summarize main point of essay, raise a question, apply topic
to beyond the text, leave the reader with something to think about.
Format guidelines - Modern Language Association (MLA) style including a work cited page See Writers Inc. pages 249 (thesis), 259-260 (in-text citation), 265 (work cited), 277 (same
header and page set up), and 283 (sample work cited page).