ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Introduction

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century. His rich personal life, critically praised fiction, and declarative and unsentimental prose style all exerted a profound influence on twentieth-century American literature and shaped twentieth-century notions of manhood and masculinity.

Thesis statement

Most of the stories of Ernest Hemingway portrayed his experiences of his own life.

Creative Material and Pure Imagination

Rather than rely simply on pure imagination for creative material, Hemingway lived a life that was in many ways influenced by the early twentieth-century ideal of the “strenuous life.” He sought out traditionally masculine adventures (often risking death in war, bullfighting, and hunting), and these dangerous experiences shaped and defined him and his works. Neither an armchair writer nor bookish intellectual, Hemingway was a man of action—he was an avid outdoor sportsman, big-game hunter, heavy drinker, bar brawler, boxer, bullfight enthusiast, and, over his lifetime, either a volunteer or correspondent in five wars.

War, in particular, defines Hemingway's literary legacy, serving as the backdrop for three of his best known and most popular novels: The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). In these early novels, Hemingway delineates a particular model of twentieth-century masculine literary hero: the man of action, a lone individualist with primitive emotions who struggles bravely against personal or cosmic circumstances. Jake Barnes, the protagonist of The Sun Also Rises, loses both sexual potency and psychological balance because of his experiences in World War I. Jake seeks both to consummate his love for Brett Ashley and to find existential meaning in the postwar world, telling himself, “I did not care what it [the world] was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it” (Hemingway 1996, 137). He achieves neither goal, yet survives both failures. Although Jake is unsuccessful in the end, Hemingway instills in him the unshakeable and unsentimental quality of grace under physical and psychological pressure.

Such qualities are readily evident in Hemingway's other young protagonists as well. Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls and Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms are both American war volunteers (also in World War I) who suffer internal and external injuries and loss only to find disillusionment and death. For Hemingway, man is always at war with himself—the internal struggle is always paired with external warfare. His model of male heroism is grounded more in the fight itself than in the final outcome.

In Hemingway's works, this struggle continues to play out at all stages of a man's life. In the highly regarded The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the elderly protagonist Santiago's four-day struggle to catch, kill, and bring home a huge marlin serves as an extended metaphor for male perseverance in the face of powerful natural forces. Having gone eighty-four days without a catch, Santiago is nearly killed by his fight with the fish, and later by the sharks, despite all his skill, experience, and ...