On July 2, 1961, a writer whom many critics call the greatest writer of this century, a man who had a zest for adventure, a winner of the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, a man who held esteem everywhere on that July day, that man put a shotgun to his head and killed himself. That man was Ernest Hemingway. Though he chose to end his life, his heart and soul lives on through his many books and short stories. Hemingways work is his voice on how he viewed society, specifically American society and the values it held.
No other author of this century has had such a general and lasting influence on the generation which grew up between the world wars as Ernest Hemingway (Lania 5). The youth that came of age during this time came to adopt the habits, way of life, and essentially the values of Hemingways characters. The author , however, was just depicting his characters as he saw the typical American in the 1920s. In his mind this meant a people filled with melancholy denial. Hemingway became the chief reporter of what became known as the Lost Generation.
This phrase is attributed to Gertrude Stein, a friend of Hemingways, who meant youth, angry with life itself after the war; drowning themselves in alcohol; sleeping away the days and sharing their beds with a new partner each night. Thus, Hemingway depicts America as a society with a profuse amount of twisted values. A constant theme runs through all of Hemingways work. That man can be defeated but not destroyed. Once such novel that depicts this, as well as American values, is A Farewell to Arms.
During the course of the story, the two main characters lieutenant Frederick Henry and nurse Catherine Barkley, become the victims of a cruel and hostile age. Their love story, which starts in a field hospital where the lieutenant is being treated for severe leg injuries, ends with Catherines death. She dies in childbirth but it is actually the war that condemns them both to destruction. After the Italian defeat at Caporetto, the lieutenant becomes a deserter. He flees with his now impregnated lover to Switzerland, but they cannot escape the despair and horror of the war.
Their attempts to wipe it out by consuming bottle after bottle of alcohol has only ill effects. This novel is a drawn out definition of Steins generation. It is the story of a man torn apart by the reality of war and love. In the beginning of the war Frederick is disappointed at the lack of action. When his first test on the field of battle occurs, however, he sees the truth of war as a friend dies in his arms. At first the reader may think that the lieutenant was insensitive, but his true feelings show in these two lines: I wiped my hand on my shirt and another floating light came very slowly down and I looked at my leg and was very afraid.
Oh, God, I said, get me out of here. (Hemingway 55) From this point on the war begins to break him down. The lieutenants increasing consumption of alcohol lets on that he is trying to avoid thinking about what has happened to him. The wine flows so freely that the porter at the hospital carries out the lieutenants trash by the sack load. The drinking causes him to have jaundice as well as happy thoughtsthe price he pays for the liquor. Hemingway shows American drinking habits in this book which coincide with Steins idea.
Frederick, like many men and women in the 1920s, sought to avoid his problems by turning to alcohol to make him feel better about himself and his situation. Along with a drinking problem the bedridden man decides to take his nurse as his lover. Lieutenant Frederick convinces himself he is in love with her and thinks nothing of it when he finds the nurse is with child. To avert his attention from the war he takes responsibility for Catherine and in the end becomes a deserter only to have his lover die in the end. Sex without marriage plays a major role in the book, as it was a characteristic of Americas youth during that time.
All that was considered was feeling good and having fun, not having an emotional attachment to the person that slept with you. A Farewell to Arms is a modest chapter from Hemingways own life. Not only does the lieutenants fate correspond with his own from the trenches, through injury, to the hospital but Catherines death was also inspired by personal experience. Hemingways second son, Patrick, was born while writing the first draft of the novel. The delivery was difficult and the mother had to have a Cesarean delivery, like Catherine in the novel.
Then, just as Hemingway was starting on his final draft, his father committed suicide. This greatly influenced the authors views on death. The fact that the book was a tragic one, Hemingway wrote, did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could only have one end. Along with the numerous novels he wrote, Ernest Hemingway was also a devoted short story writer. His stories covered every subject from fishing to hunting to death. One story that continues the man cannot be destroyed theme, is The Macomber Affair, also called The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
There are three main characters in this story of courage and cowardice: Francis Macomber, his wife Margot, and their English guide Wilson. Macomber is a weakling, completely dominated by Margot. Fundamentally, the marriage is breaking apart, and is only held together by the fact that Margot is reluctant to part with her husbands wealth. She takes Wilson as her lover and does not even attempt to conceal the affair, for she knows her husband is too weak and cowardly to do anything about it. Hemingway examines again the separation between emotional attachment and sexual acts in this short story.
Margot does not feel anything for the guide but sleeps with him to show Francis her domineering power. Macombers weakness causes him to suffer greatly. Twice he makes himself look ridiculous in front of Wilson by running away from a wounded lion on the attack. These episodes cause him to lose even the last bit of his self-respect. However, Macomber makes up for the occurrences when tracking down a buffalo. When a wounded animal decides to attack, Francis fires continuously at it, fearlessly staring death in the face. It is in these few moments that he finds himself at last a happy man. Finally he has conquered his weakness.
His happiness is short lived, for Margot shoots him a few minutes later. She begrudges Macomber the triumph of having proved himself as a man. He must die, as he threatens to escape from her domination. The destructive power of wealth, the senseless greed for money and its harmful effects on relationships and on American life were subjects which occupied Hemingway greatly at the time he wrote this story. In The Macomber Affair he portrayed a marriage which he felt was typical of the corruption found in certain parts of wealthy American society. In these places, marriage was a business devoid of any sincere feeling or passion.
A key to understanding Hemingway can be found in the characters of his heroes and in their beliefs. The leading character appears in various roles in the many novels and short stories, although he is always the same type. Whether an ordinary soldier, smuggler or gambler, black man or journalist he is a man scarred by experience. He has always been seriously wounded physically or mentally, either during war, in the sports ring, during his childhood or in the fight for existence. At some time or another something terrible has happened to him, and the memory constantly haunts him.
However strong and tough he seems, he is centrally a sick man. He must prove himself to himself: his strength and his courage are nothing but a victory over fear. Hemingways world is a world at wareither in the literal sense or the unforgiving, brutal fight for existence. A hostile and unsympathetic world. Those who wish to survive must know how to kill. In The Old Man and the Sea, the old Cuban fisherman triumphs through the devoted determination of his fight with the great fish. In the end, however, the sharks eat away his prey and deprive him of the reward for his sacrifice. The part played by women in Hemingways work is significant.
He handles sex without being sensitive or finicky. His lovers have nothing in common either spiritually or intellectually, nor do they seek it in each other. They are not partners not even enemies. As a result their relationship is neither exalted or pitiful. It always has a flavor of rape or harlotry. The heroine is either a man-eater, an aggravating, even dangerous element in a mans world, or a passive creature, completely submissive to man, a willing instrument in the pouring out of his desire. These types of women are found in The Macomber Affairs Margot, and A Farewell to Arms Catherine respectively.
Hemingways women seem unreal and hollow to the reader but they are how the author perceives American females. Behind his portrayals of characters, his reports, and his fiction there is the beat of a suffering heart and the fight of a wounded soul -the heart and soul of Hemingway himself. The hero of a Hemingway novel is Hemingway. His life unfolds to the reader and explains the enigma in his literature. Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. A small town close to Chicago where Hemingways parents were members of high society.
His father, Clarence Edmunds Hemingway, was a busy doctor who enjoyed hunting and fishing. He took more pride in the animals he killed than in the patients he saved. Ernests mother, Grace, was interested in religion and music, two interests she was unable to pass on to her son. Unsatisfied with life at home, ( later Hemingway remarked that the best schooling for a writer was an unhappy childhood),Ernest ran away from home twice before finding his love sports. He participated in boxing, swimming, and football, excelling in all three. His thirst for action was not quenched, however, until he joined the Italian army with the Red Cross.
Hemingways service experiences later became the basis for many short stories and novels. In fact his injury shortly after joining the Red Cross became the story line of A Farewell to Arms. Two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, a grenade landed a few feet from Hemingway on one of his daily trips to the trenches. He was severely wounded. When he came to, Ernest hauled a screaming comrade onto his back and began dragging himself away. An enemy spotlight found him, however, and rained machine gun fire down on him. When he regained consciousness he was on a stretcher and his comrade was dead.
This is exactly what happens to lieutenant Frederick Henry in the novel, and it is the point of the story where he begins to fall apart. On his return to America after the war, Hemingway suffered from insomnia and horrible nightmares. Attempting to rid his mind of war memories, he wrote about his experiences in many short stories and best novels. He described his horror of war, never making it sound wonderful or full of glory, on the other hand he never brings up any complaint or protest against it. It is Hemingways belief that the horrors of war are unavoidable (Hotchner 117).
The travels of Hemingway are another source of influence on the authors work. Many, in fact most, of his short stories and novels take place in a foreign country. France, particularly Paris, Spain, and Africa are Hemingways treasured spots. The author always seemed to come back to America, but left after only a short while, being disgusted with the society. It is interesting that Hemingway became the best chronicler of the lost generation, for he hated them and took no part in it. (Hotchner 188) Perhaps the one situation that had the most effect on Ernest Hemingway was his father committing suicide.
Ernest had never had a good relationship with father. In the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, the hero Jordan touches on the subject of his fathers suicide and says: Ill never forget how sick it made me the first time I knew he was a coward. Jordan continues: If he wasnt a coward he would have stood up to that woman and had not let her bully him. I wonder what I would have been like if he had married a different woman. This passage, as well as several domineering women characters in Hemingways work, makes you question how he felt towards his mother.
Ernest Hemingways literature is work in which happiness is short lived, caused temporarily by alcohol then destroyed by the reality of death. He did not glorify love affairs, but make them cheap and unemotional. Wealth is described as evil and corrupting in his novels. Though not delightful stories, the author makes the reader think and question values in a different way. Hemingway looked down upon American society during the 1920s, yet he himself was overcome by denial in the end. Though the unsympathetic world, and diseased mind, destroyed Ernest Hemingways flesh, his heart and soul were placed upon the page and will never be defeated.