Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in July of 1899. His full name was Ernest Miller Hemingway. His father was a physician and his mother was very artistic and responsive to the culture of her day. In high school Ernest participated in many sports. He participated only because he was expected to not because he wanted to or enjoyed playing. However, from the beginning his only true love was for writing. At the young age of eighteen, Hemingway began a promising career in writing, that would provide for him for years to come.
He contributed regularly to the Tabula, a literary magazine, and he worked riefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Hemingway had a very unique style, which was by no means spontaneous. It came from many years of reporting that gave him his crisp language. He has been defined as the master of dialog. He developed a plain, yet forceful prose style characterized by simple sentences and exact descriptions. He also created a! type of male character who faces violence and destruction with courage. This is often referred to as Hemingways “code hero”.
He had a huge influence on twentieth century writers and his style has been imitated by a large number of authors. He learned to write objectively from Lionel Calhoun Morse, a family journalist of the day. Many of Hemingways themes refer to death and the difficulties in the lives of men. Hemingway, later decided he wanted to fight in the war in Europe. Yet after being turned down twelve times by the health examiner, he volunteered for the Red Cross Ambulance Service. In May of 1918, he was shipped to Europe as “honorary lieutenant” to see service with the Italian Army.
Hemingways experience with the Italian army and his first experience at war gave him substance for his second novel, A Farewell To Arms (www. library. com). Hemingways most famous works were two of his first: The Sun Also Rises(1926) and A Farewell To Arms(1929). When Hemingway returned to America in 1927, he began to write his collection of short stories, which included: “A Clean-Well Lighted Place”; “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”; and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. He also wrote nonfiction. His Death in the Afternoon deals with bullfighting, which he enjoyed.
In Green Hills of Africa(1935) he describes his experience on an African Safari. When he went to Spain, he used the war setting to compose, For Whom the Bell Tolls. By the 1940s he was internationally famous. Across the River and Through the Trees showed his quickly increasing bitterness for life. Further, The Old Man and The Sea exposed Hemingways concern for presenting a tough, masculine image. Hemingway suffered both mental and physical illnesses during the 1950s which caused his suicide on July 2, 1961. “A Movable Feast” was published after! his death.
It has been defined as a notebook he kept in the 1920s, while in Paris, France. Baker 1988). Although Hemingway is dead, he was a remarkable man, and his style and notorious works live on through he writers of today. 3. When Frederic meets Catherine we know nothing about her except that she is an English nurse whose fianc has died in the war. She is first portrayed as being beautiful and somewhat distant. As we get to know her we begin to see her concern for love and its expression. She ends up giving herself completely to Frederic. This makes her a static character and causes us to notice the significant changes in Frederic throughout the novel.
Catherine fits the description of Hemingways code hero very well. This is because he finds meaning in her world, denies formal religion as a sort of comfort, and faces both life and death with little to no self pity. With her extreme “goodness and constancy to Frederic, she has been criticized as a dream image, as a bland creature with very little personality, and as an unrealistic image of a woman (www. elibrary. com)”. Cat and Frederics love for one another seems somewhat strange and unreal. However we as readers must also consider! the harsh and abnormal circumstances in which the two live.
They therefore must base their relationship ith and love for one another around their jobs and the war that contains them. Frederic is a confused man who is somewhat unfit for and in some ways not prepared to live in the war setting. Having left everything he knows back in America, Frederic has much trouble finding any real meaning in life. He is a disillusioned man who is looking for values to believe in. However, he also finds no comfort in formal religion, such as Christianity. He has decided to come to Europe, placing himself in a dangerous position, and having no plans or visions of his future.
He is an American ambulance driver who s not taking a gun into his hands, but trying to help others in a time of need. Frederics friend Rinaldi introduced he and Catherine and they started dating. While in the hospital with a blown-out knee, he realizes that he is crazy in love with Catherine and she instantly becomes all that is important in his life. He finds commitment and feelings in his relationship with Catherine, which is unlike anything he has experienced in the past. Then he g! oes off to the front and sees his friends being killed. With all of the chaos he cant stand to be away from the woman he loves.
He decides to abandon the war and his job to safely live with Catherine. In Frederics relationship with Catherine we can also see the hero in terms of Hemingways “code”. In the beginning of their relationship, Frederic is a hero, free of women. He is playing a mind game in which he believes he has control. But once he considers Cat as a sacred object, he no longer adheres to the code, in respect to women. During the story as Cat lets him dominate her, he still remains within the boundaries of the code. He is still Hemingways man that must show masculinity and control.
Catherine, however proves to fit the code” more precisely than Frederic, because she remains within the boundaries throughout the entire novel. In contrast, Frederic seems to follow others and only towards the end of the novel does he truly qualify as a model “code hero”.! Though Catherine Barkley and Frederic Henry have many abstract qualities and are different in many ways, they both qualify as being Hemingways “code hero”. 4. The primary attribute of the code hero is courage: “the hero must act honestly in terms of reality and establish his own values or beliefs by acting courageously (www. elibrary. om)”.
Hemingway implies that there is no “alternative” in life and that those who seek one come to find inner as well as outer disaster. The hero can not be found turning to any abstract ideal such as religion or politics and he does not pretend that people or places are other than they really are. He avoids self pity, knowing that it is a form of dishonesty. The hero must not make trouble for others and does not know of a thing called human nature. Thus there are no rules or guidelines in life. Also the hero must not view himself as better or worse of than another person (www. elibrary. com).
He is a man of action not theory. A code hero has the concept of death that “when youre dead youre dead” and he has no clear view of heaven. He believes that “life is all” and that he must receive! constant gratification. Hemingways hero must be self disciplined and have grace under pressure. Finally Hemingway states that only in the face of death can man discover his own “sense of potentiality(Cliff 1993)”. Throughout the novel, the two main characters, Catherine and Frederic have shown a great deal of courage. Frederic left his family and home behind to venture into a world with many uncertainties.
He watched many of his expectations turn sour after entering the war. Through all of this however, Frederic never once felt sorry for himself or opened his emotions to anyone. At the hospital, Frederic challenged his fate and lost, yet he never really broke down. He was outwardly calm as he accepted the struggles that fate delivered upon him, just as the Hemingway code dictates. Catherine displayed just as much if not more courage than Frederic. While in labor, after the delivery and before her death Cat showed a type of courage unknown to most others.
She did not mourn for her complications, yet faced them with an understanding that she could not stop them. Catherine was mentally as well as physically brave. She proved to be a true heroine through the many sacrifi! ces she gave of herself. Through these many examples, it is clear that both Catherine Barkley and Frederic Henry adhere to Heminways “code hero”. 2. Throughout his novel, A Farewell To Arms , Hemingway presents many World War 1 antagonists. He also illustrates the jobs of the two main characters and discusses the time and place where the action unfolds.
The entire novel is based on the harsh realities of the war and the complicated lives of those which it entraps. The author is very descriptive in his introduction of characters and development of meaningful settings. There are many World War 1 antagonists in Hemingways powerful novel that are open in expressing there beliefs about the war. The priest shares his moral disagreements with war and the actions that are taking place. Rinaldi, being a surgeon, sees victims of the war first hand and views the war as being nothing but a tremendous cause of pain, destruction, and corruption.
He tells Henry that it is only when he is operating to fight the “ravages of war wreaked on the bodies of soldiers”, that he feels his true manhood. Catherine Barkley is opposed to the war because it separates she and Frederic from being together and only gets in the way of their relationship. She has seen the wounds it has given Frederic and how it has injured and killed many innocent soldiers. Frederic also complies with the fact that the war is no less than a wall standing between he and Cat. Therefore he makes the decision to abandon his job to live with her (Cliff 1993).
Although they are both antagonists of the war, Frederic and Catherine both have specific jobs they must do to make money and help others. Frederic is an American ambulance driver and a second lieutenant. Catherine is an English nurse who transfers to different hospitals in order to take care of needy patients. Having these titles, both characters serve as preservers of life. Frederic preserves life by delivering bodies to the hospitals and Cat helps to save injured soldiers after they are delivered. Both have unselfish jobs and commit themselves fully to their work in order to spend time together.
