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6/10/2002 Ernest Hemingway is one of the most celebrated American authors. Famed for his descriptiveness and distinctive prose, Hemingway authored numerous poems, short stories, and novels. Various influences including people, places, and events helped shape Hemingway to his achieved prowess. The central ideas contained in his works, both of public interest and close to home for Hemingway himself, contributed to his success as a writer. Hemingway began writing during his junior year of high school for the school’s publication The Trapeze. By graduation he submitted 39 articles and served as chief editor for several issues of the newspaper. Although the prose that made Hemingway a legend is undetectable in his high school writings, in Ernest Hemingway’s Apprenticeship Matthew Bruccoli suggests that there is evidence of a young Hemingway searching for a style and a satiric stance through his imitations of Ring Lardner (xiii). Leaving home at the age of seventeen, Hemingway joined the Kansas City Star as a reporter. As indicated by Carlos Baker, Hemingway hoped that the Star would refine his prose and that his work in Kansas City would show him the unpleasant sides of human experience (30). His time at the Star proved valuable. He regularly questioned older writers at the Star about the art of finding and writing a story. Hemingway learned how to tell an interesting narrative, avoid worn-out adjectives, and write declarative sentences while working at the newspaper (34). C.G. Wellington, Hemingway’s boss at the Star instructed him to “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative” (34). Hemingway would later say that Wellington’s were the best rules for writing he had ever learned. After driving an ambulance for the Red Cross near the Italian front during World War I, suffering an injury, and recuperating for months in Milan, Hemingway returned to America and resumed writing in 1921. Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Toronto Daily Star. While investigating out of town stories for the paper, Hemingway would soothe himself by reading Joseph Conrad. On one such occurrence, as noted by Jeffrey Meyers in “Conrad’s Influence on Hemingway,” Hemingway wrote, “When morning came I had used up all my Conrad like a drunkard. I had hoped it would last me the trip, and felt like a young man who has blown in his patrimony” (123). Hemingway admired the work of Conrad, and complimented the novelist by comparing him to T.S. Eliot: “If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad’s grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear, looking very annoyed at the forced return, and commence writing, I would leave for London early tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder” (123). Conrad heavily influenced Hemingway. Meyers writes that Hemingway’s heroic code of honor, stoicism, the need to test oneself in extreme situations, and finding and trying to communicate the “truth” of one’s own sensations can be accredited to Conrad (124). In The Rover, Conrad describes a Mediterranean landscape much like a wide-angle camera lens zooming in on a particular object. This influenced Hemingway as he imitated Conrad’s style in The Sun Also Rises: There were leaning pines on the skyline, and in the pass itself dull silvery green patches of olive orchards below a long yellow wall backed by dark cypresses, and the red roofs of buildings which seemed to belong to a farm. [The Rover] [The mountains] were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain toward the north. As we came to the edge of the rise we saw the red roofs and the white houses of Burguete ahead strung out on the plain. [The Sun Also Rises] Hemingway also echoed Conrad while writing about stoicism and heroic codes of honor. Hemingway writes, “From nothing else that I have ever read have I gotten what every book of Conrad has given me” (124). In addition to outside influence, Hemingway’s personality, hobbies and physical presence greatly influenced his writing and contributed to his fame. In Ernest Hemingway, Anthony Burgess suggests that if Hemingway had been “an undersized weed, asthmatic or phthisic” and only wrote about his fantasies, he would still be a respected American author (7). However, Hemingway was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and shed the title of warrior, hunter, fisherman, and drinker. The fact that he not only wrote about strongman fantasies, but also lived them added to his appeal and made him “one of the large international myths of the twentieth century” (7). Hemingway’s life directly influenced his writing. This is apparent by just browsing through Hemingway’s book titles and plots. The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War obviously deals with the Spanish Civil War, in which Hemingway participated. He served in many wars, which also led to Across the River and into the Trees and A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway traveled throughout Africa and thus wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories and Green Hills of Africa. Hemingway was an aficionado of bullfighting and Death in the Afternoon is still considered one of the best books ever written about bullfighting. The Old Man and the Sea allowed Hemingway to write about his beloved fishing. Hemingway lived in many different locations throughout his life, including Paris, and he was a heavy drinker. The Sun Also Rises combines many aspects of Hemingway’s lifestyle. The book contains fishing, bullfighting, Paris, Spain, and an infinite amount of drinking. The central ideas incorporated within Hemingway’s novels primarily deal with the lost generation of the 1920s after the war. He writes about many controversial and eminent topics of the time: relationships, women, minorities, and anti-Semitism. Delbert Wylder, author of Hemingway’s Heroes, points out that Hemingway wrote about many types of heroes in his novels. Hemingway writes of the sentimental hero (The Torrents of Spring), the wounded anti-hero (The Sun Also Rises), the guilt-ridden anti-hero (A Farewell to Arms), the self-destructive anti-hero (To Have and Have Not), the mythic hero in the contemporary world (For Whom the Bell Tolls), the tyrant hero (Across the River and into the Trees), and the hero as saint and sinner (The Old Man and the Sea). Mark Spilka writes that one of the most persistent themes of the twenties was the death of love in World War I. This is the central idea in Hemingway’s most prominent novel, The Sun Also Rises. In the novel, “Jake Barnes and Bret Ashley are two lovers desexed by the war; Robert Cohn is the false knight who challenges their despair; while Romero, the stalwart bullfighter, personifies the good life which will survive their failure” (25). Throughout the novel, Robert Cohn obdurately continues a romantic view of life. This angers Brett and Jake, who have realized they are incapable of love and that romantic love as a whole in society is dead (26). The novel hosts many characters with “love” serving as their handicap. Jake’s is his inability to perform sexually, Cohn is the last chivalric knight in a time where romanticism is dead, and Georgette is a prostitute who has reduced the intimacy of sexual intercourse to a monetary exchange. Brett lost her first true love to dysentery and the misfortune releases her from womanly nature and she instead adopts predominantly male habits. She drinks heavily, leads a sexual parade, and refers to herself and male friends alike as “chaps.” The Count Mippipopolous enjoys love, but his deficiency is that he seems to always be in love (29). Mike Campbell, Brett’s fiancé, tolerates her rampant affairs while sober. However, when Mike is drunk he leads rages of resentment, mainly against Cohn and wildly anti-Semitic (32). The group of Jake, Brett, Mike, Cohn, and Bill Gorton, a friend of Jake’s, travel to Pamplona, Spain for the annual bullfights. Hemingway ties everything together masterfully: the death of love, the death of chivalry, and the lonesomeness and solemnest of the lost generation, by setting parallels between the actions of the group and of the daily bullfights. Each of Hemingway’s books zeroes in on important themes and ideas. However, English Professor Sheldon Norman Grebstein writes that most critics have neglected the humor in Hemingway. Different forms of humor are found in Hemingway, including “parody, mimicry, satire, and black humor. A sense of humor is an important trait for his characters – a vital component of the code that allows them to exhibit grace under pressure” (162). Humor also serves as a device that provides a different view of the tragic elements within the novels. Hemingway is arguably the greatest American author of all time. His novels characterize the period in which he lived and emit his perspective on troubling issues. As early as high school, Ring Lardner, Joseph Conrad, his time spent working on the Kansas City Star and the Toronto Daily Star among other authors and events influenced Hemingway and helped shape his writing technique. Hemingway’s own hobbies and interests heavily affected what he wrote and the central ideas incorporated within his writings. From the time of his birth until his suicidal death, Hemingway possessed a literary genius that has since been legendary. Matthew Bruccoli sums it up best when he writes, “Everything Ernest Hemingway wrote is important because he wrote it” (xiii).
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