Ernest Hemingway
1899-1961
About morals, I know only that what is
moral is what you feel good after and what
is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest Hemingway
Biography Timeline
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1899: born in Oak Park,
Illinois
1917: receives job on
Kansas City Star
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1918: becomes a Red
Cross ambulance driver
and is sent to Italian
front during First World
War where he is
wounded; meets
Agnesvon Kurowsky in
Milan
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1919: sails home to
America;
1920: accepts job at Toronto
Star Weekly; meets Hadley
Richardson; leaves Toronto
for Chicago to write for The
Cooperative
Commonwealth
1921: Hemingway marries
Hadley Richardson; moves
to Paris
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1923: Three Stories and
Ten Poems and In Our Time
(only 170 copies) published
in Europe; first son, John,
born
1925: In Our Time,
American edition, is the first
of Hemingway's books to
appear in his own country
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1926: The Torrents of
Spring and The Sun
Also Rises;
Hadley and Hemingway
separate
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1927: Hemingway
marries Pauline
Pfeiffer; Men Without
Women
1928: moves to Key
West, Florida; father
commits suicide; birth
of second son, Patrick
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1929: A Farewell to
Arms
1930: Hemingway is
severely injured in an
automobile accident
(1st of three serious car
crashes)
1932: Third son and
last child, Gregory,
born; Death in the
Afternoon
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1933: Winner Take
Nothing
1935: The Green Hills
of Africa
1937: To Have and
Have Not
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1940: marries Martha Gellhorn; For Whom the
Bell Tolls
1945: he and Martha divorce; marries Mary
Welsh
1950: Across the River and Into the Trees
1951: mother dies
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1952: The Old Man and
the Sea; wins Pulitzer
Prize; survives two
plane crashes
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1954: wins Nobel Prize for literature
1961: commits suicide on July 2
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All good books have one thing in common - they
are truer than if they had really happened.
Ernest Hemingway
Themes & Issues
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In his early years, Hemingway was very close to Sherwood
Anderson, a writer he highly admired.
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Anderson found a willing, enthusiastic pupil in Hemingway.
Not long after the relationship that started with Anderson, people
began labeling Hemingway as Anderson's disciple.
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Hemingway didn't like this because he wanted to be his own man.
What resulted was The Torrents of Spring in which Hemingway
"ridiculed and parodied Anderson's style of writing, his characters,
and his most cherished ideas about life."
Obviously, their friendship ended.
Themes & Issues
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Hemingway was greatly disturbed by his father's
suicide.
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He questioned his father's courage, or lack of courage.
His father had taught him to admire courage.
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Once, Hemingway defined courage as grace under pressure.
Yet his father could not handle this extreme pressure.
He felt his father had somehow failed him.
Soon, Hemingway assumed the nickname Papa, which he
held to the end of his life.

He was taking on the burden of being the person, or ideal
papa, that his own father had failed to be.
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By 1952, Hemingway had become the most
publicized writer in America.

Gurko notes that "everything he said and did was
avidly recorded by the columnists" and "his
emphatic personality supplied newspapers and
magazine editors with endlessly colorful copy"
(Gurko 48).
Style
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Hemingway has had an enormous influence
on American writers, mainly because of his
unique writing style.
He used simple nouns and verbs and was
still able to capture the scene precisely.
He provided detached descriptions of action
in that he avoided describing the thoughts
and emotions of his characters in a direct
way.

In an interview from Modern Critical Views:
Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway was asked
how detached from and experience must he
be before writing about it in fictional terms;
i.e., the African air crashes. Hemingway
responded:

“It depends on the experience. One part of you
sees it with complete detachment from the start.
Another part is very involved. I think there is no
rule about how soon one should write about it. It
would depend on how well adjusted the individual
was and on his or her recuperative powers.
Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash
in an aircraft which burns.” (135)
“In Another Country”
Theme of the Story and, and its relation to
the Title:

“In Another Country”
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Literally: An American in Milan, Italy.
Metaphorically: Look at the themes:
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Loss
Ruin
Detachment
Disability
Fear of death
Theme of the Story and, and its relation to
the Title:
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Many of the characters grapple with a loss of
function, a loss of purpose, and a loss of
faith.
It appears contagious.
Two characters lose the normal use of a limb-the narrator (leg) and the major (hand).
Almost all the characters in the story are
portrayed as casualties of some sort.
Theme of the Story and, and its relation to
the Title:
For the soldiers, courage is not
just facing enemy fire on the
front line but also picking up
the pieces of their damaged
lives and facing the prospect of
tomorrow.
 War, it seems, is forever.

Theme of the Story and, and its relation to
the Title:
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So how do the themes in the story relate to
the title?
Determine the Plot
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“In Another Country” is a character driven
plot.
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It focuses on the psychological conflicts and
development of the American and the Major.
The action is usually the character’s inner
thoughts and feelings.
The climax of the story is a psychological turning
point.
Characterization
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Look at and interpret the American’s feelings
and thoughts:
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How does he feel about his injuries?
What is his view of the machines?
Does he believe the doctor?
Look at and interpret the Major’s actions:
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Does he believe the Doctor?
What has he lost?
What will he regain?
Recognize the Point of View
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First Person Limited:
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How does this affect the tale?
What impact does it have on the themes?
Is the Narrator reliable?
Images, Details, and Symbols:
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The Machines:
The Bridges:
The Wounds:
The War: