ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

Introduction

Ernest Hemingway is an American writer whose style is characterized by crisp dialogue, laconic and emotional description. His life and his work exerted a great influence on American writers of the time. Many of his works are considered classics of literature in English. Hemingway was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois (Meyers, 1997). He worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, but after a few months, volunteered to drive ambulances in Italy during the First World War. He was later transferred to the Italian army, and was wounded seriously. After the war he was correspondent for the Toronto Star who went to live in Paris, where the exiled writers Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein encouraged him to write literary works. From 1927 he spent long periods in Key West, Florida, Spain and Africa. He returned to Spain during the Civil War as a war correspondent, a position he also played in the World War II. He was later a reporter for the U.S. First Army, and covered several battles for the army.

After the war, Hemingway settled in Cuba, near Havana, and in 1958 in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway used his experiences as a fisherman, hunter and lover of bullfighting in his works. His adventurous life brought him several times at the gates of death in the Spanish Civil War when bombs went off in his hotel room in World War II, when collided with a taxi during the blackouts of war, and in 1954 when his plane crashed in Africa. However, he died in Ketchum on July 2, 1961, by shooting himself with a shotgun (ibid).

Discussion and Analysis

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel, which is written by American writer Ernest Hemingway ...