Hemingway Pop Quiz
Choose the correct letter
(A, B, C, or D)
$ 100
Since the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway liked to
be called…
A: Kiddo
B: Papa
C: Granpa
D: Bro‘
Hemingway Look-alike Contest
Ernest Hemingway
(1899-1961)
$ 200
In the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises,
Hemingway quotes his mentor Gertrude Stein
saying: »You are all …«
A: a beaten
generation
B: a lost generation
C: a generation x
D: fruitcakes
LOST GENERATION
Generation of authors writing after
World War I
(Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Modernist poet
Loss of values (as a result of the
disillusionment after WW I)
Sense of feeling lost
(loss of orientation)
Gertrude Stein
(1874-1946)
Modernist writer, coined the
term “Lost Generation”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Modernist/realist Novelist
The Great Gatsby, 1925
The Great Gatsby (1925)
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Plot in a nutshell:
In the summer of 1922, the narrator Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World
War I veteran, returns to New York City and rents a house on Long Island - next to
the mansion of a mysterious parvenu named Jay Gatsby who has made a fortune
through illegal activities during the Prohibition Era and is still in love with Daisy,
the wife of his archrival Tom Buchanan. Believed to be the murderer of Tom’s
mistress, Gatsby is finally shot in his villa; only few people attend the funeral.
Main themes?
Ending:
The American Dream
Illusions
(Gatsby is a ‘self-made man’ who
makes it from rags to riches)
(Gatsby’s world is a world
of lies and surfaces)
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before
us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our
arms farther ... And one fine morning ---”
What could the “green light” stand for?
Greenback (U.S. dollar) 
the world of money
MODERNISM
Literary movement
(ca. 1900 – 1940s)
“Make it new” (E. Pound)
‘Modern’ world view (personality,
individuality, self-empowerment)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)
Gertrude Stein
Alienation from established values
(1874-1946)
Experimental ways of representation (non-linear
storytelling, play with perspectives)
“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” (G. Stein)
Hemingway – threshold between realism/naturalism
and modernism
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
$ 300
A collection of short stories by Hemingway from 1927
is called…
A: Men without
Women
B: Women without
Men
C: Men and
Women
D: Man or Woman?
Men without Women (1927)
Collection of short stories
by Ernest Hemingway
$ 500
In a 1958 interview, Hemingway told a reporter:
»I always try to write on the principle of the…«
A: iceberg
B: earthquake
C: tsunami
D: volcano
The Iceberg Principle
“I always try to write on the principle of the
iceberg. There is seven-eights 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.”
Ernest Hemingway, 1958
Ernest Hemingway‘s
“Best Piece of Prose Fiction”:
For sale:
Baby shoes,
never worn.
Flush fiction (short short fiction)
Hemingway is a modernist since he …
- plays with our expectations
- challenges the reader in his/her imagination
For sale:
Baby shoes,
never worn.
Hemingway is a naturalist since he …
- restricts his writing to the most necessary aspects
- emphasizes loss of control instead of agency (characters are ‘driven’)
Hemingway’s ‘Naturalism’
- Tradition of Stephen Crane (Maggie, “The Open Boat,” The Red
Badge of Courage)
- Harsh, ‘cruel’ realism, portrayal of ‘real life’ without embellishment
(journalistic style)
- Hemingway was a reporter for The Kansas City Star and later for various
magazines during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)
Main techniques & themes:
- Understatement (focus on ‘facts,’ not on
direct emotions)
- Determinism (in contrast to the notion
of free will)
- Detachment from the depicted events
(nameless characters)
“Hills Like White Elephants”
by Ernest Hemingway
(from Men without Women, 1927)
Plot in a nutshell:
The story takes place on a hot and dry day near a train station in the Ebro
River Valley in Spain. A man (‘The American’) and his female companion
(whom he calls ‘Jig’) have a long conversation apparently circling around the
woman’s pregnancy and a scheduled abortion.
Beginning:
“The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there
was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the
sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the
building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open
door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a
table in the shade, outside the building.”
Main Themes
Characters are designed as archetypes
(“the American” / “the girl”)
 sense of distance
 notion of universality
Notion of being “driven” (the man tells the girl, “I’ve known lots of people that
have done it”) – underlying theme of abortion
Indifference and lack of free will
(The girl says, “I don’t care about me”)
Style
Short sentences / concise dialogue (many aspects remain hidden in the
narrative gaps / “iceberg technique”)
Focus on the unusual details of an incident ( journalistic mode of narration)
$ 1,000
Hemingway was born on the outskirts of…
A: New Orleans
B: Los Angeles
C: New York
D: Chicago
$ 2,000
During World War I, Hemingway served as
an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in…
A: France
B: Austria
C: Germany
D: Italy
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
(Semi-autobiographical novel about an
American serving in the Italian Army)
$ 4,000
Hemingway never…
A: actively
fought in war
C: went on a
hunting trip
B: drank a lot
D: smoked heavily
Participation in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)
Hemingway was a war correspondent during the
Spanish Civil War and actively fought against the
Fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
(Romantic novel about the Spanish Civil War)
Plot in a nutshell:
Robert Jordan, a young American, fights in the Spanish Civil War for the
“International Brigades.” He joins a group of Republican guerilla fighters in the Sierra
de Guadarrama (a mountain range between Madrid and Segovia), where he meets
the cowardish Pablo, his tough wife Pilar, and the beautiful María who was raped by
the fascists and with whom Robert falls in love. When he becomes wounded, in
his attempt to blow up a bridge, Robert tells his friends to continue their escape,
while he, already dying, lies in an ambush waiting for their pursuers.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(dir. Sam Wood, 1943,
based on the 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDeLqYypw8
$ 8,000
In 1931, he moved to…
A: Sydney,
Australia
B: Nuremberg,
Germany
C: Key West,
Florida
D: Johannesburg,
South Africa
Key West, Florida
$ 16,000
»All modern literature«, Hemingway once said,
»comes from one book, …«
A: Jack London‘s
The Sea-Wolf
B: James Fenimore Cooper‘s
The Prairie
C: Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s
The Scarlet Letter
D: Mark Twain‘s
Huckleberry Finn
$ 32,000
Hemingway‘s autobiography of his years in France
is named…
A: Diner
B: La Grand Bouffe
C: Dolce Vita
D: A Moveable Feast
Paris in the 1920s
(Hemingway fictionalized his
years in Paris in his novel The
Sun Also Rises, 1926)
Art Circle
(Gertrude Stein taking care of
Hemingway‘s son)
 Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris, 2010)
$ 64,000
At the end of the movie Se7en, Morgan Freeman
quotes the lines »world, fine, place« from
Hemingway‘s novel …
A: The Sun Also Rises
C: A Farewell to Arms
B: For Whom the Bell
Tolls
D: The Old Man and the
Sea
$ 125,000
Next to a photograph of 2-year old Ernest
Hemingway, his mother wrote …
A: »spring child«
B: »summer girl«
C: »autumn boy«
D: »winter kid«
$ 250,000
Which name did Hemingway give to his boat?
A: Anselmo
B: Primitivo
C: Maria
D: Pilar
$ 500,000
With which author did Hemingway break up
friendship in 1937, despite all warnings?
A: Scott Fitzgerald
B: William Faulkner
C: John Dos Passos
D: Ezra Pound
$ 1,000,000
Who committed suicide with an old Civil War pistol?
A: Hemingway‘s father
C: Hemingway‘s second wife
Pauline Pfeiffer
B: Hemingway‘s hero Robert
Jordan
D: Hemingway himself
Death
as Constant Presence in Hemingway’s Life and Writings
“The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
by Ernest Hemingway
(Cosmopolitan magazine, Sept. 1936)
Plot in a nutshell:
Francis Macomber and his estranged wife Margot are on a
big-game safari in the African plain, together with their
guide Robert Wilson, who has a one-night stand with
Macomber’s wife.
Tortured by his own cowardice in the face of a
wounded lion (from which he ran away), Macomber
decides to play it ‘tough’ next time during a buffalo hunt,
but is shot by his own wife while standing in front of the
wounded animal.
Beginning:
“It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of
the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.”
tense atmosphere
shadow of Macomber’s ‘emasculation’
“The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
by Ernest Hemingway
(Cosmopolitan magazine, Sept. 1936)
Main themes?
Gender
Masculinity vs. Femininity
(Francis oscillates between ‘cowardice’ and ‘courage’)
Power struggle between men and women
(as Francis becomes more courageous, Margot gets more
nervous)
Race
‘Sameness’ vs. ‘otherness’
(all main characters are white
 setting of Africa as terra incognita)
Class
Upper class vs. lower class
(Francis and his wife are rich,
the African laborers are poor)
Important works by Hemingway
In Our Time (1925) (first collection of
short stories which established the
“Hemingway style”)
The Sun Also Rises (1926) (novel about
American expatriates living in Paris)
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
(non-fictional work about Spanish
bullfighting)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
(nobel-prize winning novel)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
by Ernest Hemingway
“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
Man cannot win the battle against
nature, but has to keep his
dignity (“grace under pressure”)
Other ‘Modernist’ Writers
•
John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
especially Manhattan Transfer (1925)
(on the desperation of immigrants in New York)
•
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
especially The Sound and the Fury (1929)
and Light in August (1932)
(on the abysses of American society in the South)
Typical features:
- Harsh portrayal of social reality (no embellishment, claim to authenticity)
- Characters are controlled by external forces or fate (determinism)
- Many different perspectives (even that of a mentally handicapped person)