Ernest Hemingway is a very interesting author. His life and work can be studied from multiple angles and many facets of them are interesting. I will investigate and research three main aspects of Hemingway: his writing style and how it was influenced by his beliefs, his views on gender and how they manifest themselves in his writings, and his views on death and how it is portrayed in his work. I will analyze these aspects of Hemingway with respect to his life, asking myself questions relating his personal experiences to topics that show up in what he writes. For example, I might consider the question: How did Hemingway’s multiple marriages and divorces affect how he wrote about married females? An interesting place to start when answering this question might be to examine the character Jig in his story “Hills Like While Elephants,” reading such articles from the Literature Resource Center from Gale as “’Hills Like White Elephants’: the jilting of Jig” by Nilofer Hashmi, which explores the possibility that Jig will agree to have an abortion but her lover will abandon her after it is over anyway. Other relevant criticism comes from Diane Andrews Henningfeld, which related “Hills” to other Hemingway stories. In addition to referencing “Hills,” I could compare Hemingway’s treatment of Jig to his treatment of female characters in other stories such as the female Indian in “Indian Camp,” Nick’s mother in “Nick Adams” stories, Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms, or Santiago’s wife in The Old Man and the Sea. Another question I might pose: How does Hemingway’s characteristic dialogue reveal his idea on gender? For this I could read Robert Paul Lamb’s critical essay “Hemingway and the Creation of Twentieth-Century Dialogue” and look at the parts referring to gender. Using these ideas and criticism as a starting point, I will focus my research on a more specific topic and formulate my own ideas on Hemingway with respect to a more narrow question.

An E! True Hollywood Exclusive: Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He first started writing in high school and in 1917 he took a job as a junior reporter writing for the Kansas City Star. As a junior reporter, he received training for newspaper writing which has been said to help form his writing style. He said about his training for newspaper writing: "in writing for a newspaper you told what happened and with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day." Hemingway’s style of writing can be described as simple or direct, but somehow without saying very much or used fancy words it communicates the story he is writing.

Hemingway worked as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross on the Italian Front during World War I. Supposedly he was the first American to be wounded during World War I when he was hurt by mortar fire. He and the nurse who took care of him when he was injured during the war fell in love, but she left him for an officer. This was his first serious relationship and probably influenced his writing of A Farewell to Arms, in which a soldier, injured in World War I, and the nurse who takes care of fall in love.

When the war was over, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson and moved to Paris for a honeymoon and also to work as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. In Paris, Hemingway met many other American expatriate writers, including Gertrude Stein, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. Pound acted as somewhat of a mentor for Hemingway. It was in Paris and surrounded by these other American expatriate writers that he became associated with the “lost generation,” a term coined by Stein after she overheard a French mechanic call the generation of young people without automotive repair skills, “une génération perdue,” which refers to American writers who were disillusioned with their country.

After writing many stories about Europe, many of them related to things such as fishing or bullfighting or wars such as the Greco-Turkish War, he left in 1927 with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. This was in the wake ofgetting an injury in a Paris bathroom when he thought he was flushing the toilet but in reality caused a skylight to fall on his head, giving him a large scar. Rumors about how he might have gotten this scar in less mundane ways than how he actually did exemplify the mythos of Hemingway being a manly man, which was also fostered by his enjoyment of activities such as wartime reporting, big game hunting, and drinking hard liquor.

Hemingway married Mary Welsh, his third wife, in 1946. He had covered World War II and many of his friends were dying, including Fitzgerald and Stein, and he had many health problems, which caused him to be depressed. He didn’t write very much, and his last work, The Old Man and the Sea, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, was published in 1952. He committed suicide in 1961 in Idaho after returning to America after years of living abroad.

The Old Man and the Blog Post

Many themes and qualities of Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an old fisherman, Santiago, and his attempt at catching a marlin off the coast of Cuba after 84 days without a catch, are typical of literature by Hemingway, and one can draw parallels between the story and others written by Hemingway. One theme that Hemingway greatly draws upon is the idea of showing grace under pressure, or how one does not show their emotions and fear even when confronted with the impossible or inevitable, such as death itself. This can be seen in stories such as “Indian Camp,” in which Nick Adam’s father does not falter even in the most difficult surgery on a woman in childbirth, or in the first chapter of his novel A Farewell to Arms, in which the narrator calmly describes the landscape of Italy in peaceful and detailed works, even when surrounded by the fighting of World War I and the sickness of cholera. This theme of grace under pressure can, too, be seen in The Old Man and the Sea. In the first couple pages of the book, Santiago, the title character, is described.

The old man was thin and haunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection of the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. (3-4)

Santiago has been through many hardships in his life and done a lot of hard work to survive, as evidenced by his tan cheeks and many scars from roping in marlins and other fishes. However, the scars are old, and he hasn’t caught a marlin in many days. While someone else might find despair in the circumstances of being an old man who can’t provide for himself anymore and is slowly dying of hunger, Santiago does not give up, looks 84 days with no catch in the eyes, and dares to be “cheerful and undefeated.” By not completely breaking down and giving up, Santiago exemplifies showing grace under pressure.

Indeed, Hemingway writes Santiago as someone who he believes to be deserving of the most honor and respect. Similarly to how Ole Andreson in Hemingway’s short story “The Killers” refuses to fear death and have his life changed by that fear, Santiago also faces death head-on and treats it with extreme casualness, in order to make sure that he has done everything he can to catch the marlin he battles with for more than three days. Even after he has caught the marlin, he still must make it back to shore without sharks eating the fish lashed to his skiff. In reference to the sharks he swears: “‘Fight them, I’ll fight them until I die’” (90). Unafraid of death, Santiago refuses to compromise his goal—to finally catch another fish—just because he could be killed.

One aspect of Hemingway’s social beliefs that manifests itself in much of his writing is his intense misogyny. It is readily apparent in “Indian Camp,” where Nick’s father helps a American Indian woman through childbirth when all the old women of the village could not, showing that Hemingway believes men can do what women cannot and are superior in their scope of what they can accomplish. It also is demonstrated in “Hills Like White Elephants,” where the main characters, a couple, are known as “man” and the diminutive “girl.” And, it can also be seen in The Old Man and the Sea, even though no female character is ever actually present. When Santiago departs on his fishing voyage, he contemplates the sea in which he has made his life, considering how in his native tongue of Spanish he calls it the feminine la mar, instead of the proper masculine el mar, and the reason behind this.

…the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought. (20)

When Santiago points out why he considers the sea to be feminine, every comparison between the sea and women are very generalizing, demeaning, and offensive. Not only does he say that women are fickle and unreliable, people who just decide to “give or withhold great favours” at their own whim, but that they are not responsible for their own actions, since they just “[can]not help them[selves].” As a final dig at women, Hemingway compares a woman’s menstrual cycle to the cycle of storms and bad weather in the sea. This passage is perhaps one of the most openly misogynistic of all Hemingway’s works, and that’s saying something. Another place in which misogyny, although slightly more subtle, can be found is when Santiago determines the sex of the hooked marlin to be female: “[The marlin] took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it” (35). Santiago believes that if the marlin had been a female, it would have been immediately noticeable due to some trait of females which causes them to pull weaker and with panic. Although he may be just talking about fish, that Hemingway would generalize females of any species is not an accident. His ideas about females panicking and being unable to contain themselves in the face of danger run right along with his concept of the “stoic male,” one who exemplifies the idea of grace under pressure and does not allow himself to be influences by outside forces or by emotion, but rather logically and intelligently weighs the situation and selects the best course of action, as does the male marlin in this passage, pulling with strength in order to break free.

Not only can demonstrations of Hemingway’s beliefs be found in The Old Man and the Sea, but one can also find examples of his distinct writing style that is consistent through many of his works. In many of his short stories, including “The Killers,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Indian Camp,” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” dialogue is a major component, often consisting of small-talk and during meal times. An excellent example is “The Killers,” in which much of the story is talk over lunch between men ordering food at Henry’s lunch-room. While The Old Man and the Sea may contain little dialogue because throughout most of the book only one character is present, when there are two characters present, the fisherman, Santiago, and his more-or-less disciple, Manolin, the dialogue is abundant, free-flowing, and decidedly Hemingway.

‘Your stew is excellent,’ the old man said.

‘Tell me about the baseball,’ the boy asked him.

‘In the American League it is the Yankees as I said,’ the old man said happily.

‘They lost today,’ the boy told him.

‘That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again.’

‘They have other men on the team.’

‘Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and these great drives in the old park.’

‘There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen.’ (13)

The casual banter between Santiago and Manolin about baseball, while eating dinner, is very typical of Hemingway dialogue. Near the end, names identifying the speakers are dropped, a convention carried over from Hemingway’s “iceberg” writing, in which he needs not tell the reader whom is speaking since it should be obvious from context if the writer does a good job.

Some Analysis of Hemingway

In “The Killers,” by Ernest Hemingway, Nick informs Ole Andreson that some men were planning on killing him. Instead of reacting like Nick thought he would, Ole only remarks, “there isn’t anything I can do about it” (287). When Nick says, “Maybe it was just a bluff,” Ole tells him “No. It ain’t just a bluff.” Obviously Ole and Nick have very different points of view. While Nick is an example of someone who lives in fear of death, Hemingway has created Ole to be a person who knows that death is a reality but will not resign himself to being controlled by his fear of death. If Ole reacted strongly to Nick’s warning and immediately made plans to run away, he would be giving in to his fear of death and letting it stop him from living his life normally and peacefully. Instead of letting this happen, Ole acts as if nothing is different, allowing him to be unchanged by his fear. This, Hemingway believes, is a strong quality to have. By fearing death, Nick would be considered by Hemingway to be flawed.

“Indian Camp,” another short story by Hemingway, also shows Nick’s view and fear of death. After seeing an American Indian commit suicide, Nick asks his father about death.

“Is dying hard, Daddy?”

“No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. (21)

At the end of this story, Nick has experienced death, and he certainly must know that everyone must die. However, he feels that somehow he will not die. This can be explained by the fact that Nick greatly fears death—the antithesis of what Hemingway believes to be correct and honorable behavior—because Nick must fear death so greatly that he pushes all thoughts of it from his head and acts like it doesn’t exist for him. His fear of death is also apparent from how he asks his father “Is dying hard, Daddy?” That he would ask is dying is hard shows that he anticipates death to be a terrible and difficult thing, and he asks his father, whom he trusts and loves, for comfort from the alien idea of death.

“Indian Camp,” in addition, demonstrates another aspect of Hemingway’s writing: the subordination of women. Most of the story centers on Nick’s father helping an American Indian woman birth a baby, performing a caesarian section. Nick’s father turns childbirth, a job that is identified with women, into an operation which women depend on men for help with. When Nick, his father, and his uncle George arrive, Hemingway writes that “Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her” (17). A job that could not be done by “all the old women in the camp” is achieved by a single man, Nick’s father, clearly showing that Hemingway believes women to not be as useful or capable as men. During the actual operation, the woman is restrained and treated as if operating on her is the same as operating on any farm animal.

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, “Damn squaw bitch!” and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. (18)

In both Uncle George’s and Hemingway’s minds, the woman is just a “damn squaw bitch,” who is treated as more of a troublesome problem who is making it harder to perform the operation on her than as a person who is in severe mental and physical stress. During the entire trip, Nick’s dad treats his work as simply a job that needs to be done, and not a kind deed of assisting people who need their help. This is shown in the way he describes the list of steps and preparations he must make to Nick very methodically, like telling someone a recipe. He hardly mentions to Nick what stress the woman was under, simply calling the childbirth “exceptional.”

In “Hills Like White Elephants” one too sees women portrayed as subordinate to men. The general premise of the story is that a man is trying to convince a woman to have an abortion. Throughout the story, Hemingway refers to the male character as “the man,” and the female character as “the girl.” Giving the female character a more diminutive name is one manifestation of Hemingway’s belief that females are inferior.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything. (3)

Here the man is trying to convince the girl to have an abortion. The girl isn’t saying anything, intimidated by the emotional pressure he is placing on her. (“If I do it you won’t every worry?” “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”) Instead of having the girl voice her opinion like the man, Hemingway writes for her to keep silent, like he believes women should be.

While “Hills Like White Elephants” makes use of dialogue for almost the entire story, the first chapter of A Farewell to Arms is completely devoid of dialogue. In it, Hemingway once again writes about death, but he gives it only a mention in the last sentence, the rest of the chapter is about the scenery in which the story takes place. “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.” Hemingway doesn’t write very long about the death due to cholera because he feels that one should not focus on one’s fear of death and worsen one’s life because of it. This is expressed in the passage by the brevity with which the narrator mentions death. Seven thousand deaths is a lot, but the narrator still holds himself about an irrational fear of it.

Some Theme and Structure in Hemingway

There are a number of themes that find themselves in multiple short stories by Ernest Hemingway. One is the idea of men being stoic and, in the face of death, not allowing themselves to be affected with the knowledge of an unstoppable fate. In the story “Fathers and Sons,” about Nick Adams reflecting on his life as a teenager and his father, Nick’s son asks him, “Why do we never go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather?” (498). Nick’s reply is that his father’s tomb is too far away to visit; this seems more like an excuse for Nick to not have to remind himself that, like his father before him, he will die. This theme is also seen in the first chapter of A Farewell to Arms, in which Hemingway writes four paragraphs describing the scenery at the Italian front of World War I and only briefly mentions seven thousand deaths due to cholera in the last two sentences. In this chapter, Hemingway spends as little time as possible writing about death as he can, and in this way even his narrative contemplates death for as short a time as possible, forcing it out of mind.

Besides the theme of death, the structure of Hemingway’s short stories also repeats itself, and not be coincidence. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” almost the entire story is dialogue. It is all about interactions between two people, a couple, and how they feel about getting an abortion. Another story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” is also almost completely dialogue. This story is about how two waiters have differing opinions and discuss how they disagree. A third story, “The Killers,” is similarly rife with conversing between various characters: Nick Adams, employees at a lunch-counter, cold-hearted criminals, and their intended victim, Ole Andreson. In all three of these stories, human communication plays a large part in the pacing and tone of the piece. So does the diction of the characters. For the most part, communication in short stories by Hemingway does not consist of emotional realizations between characters or deep understandings of each other’s emotions. Communication is casual and largely made up of small talk. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the couple first talks about what drinks they are going to order, and then attempt to discuss whether or not to get an abortion. However, they do not manage to see eye-to-eye and at the end still both feel uncomfortable about the subject. This lack of mutual understanding is also seen in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”: while the older waiter does not mind staying up late to keep his café open, the younger waiter wants to get home to his wife. Even though the older waiter tries to explain to his younger counterpart, the younger waiter is not convinced and goes home before closing time. Simple diction or small talk between characters is illustrated in “The Killers,” where most of the dialogue is about ordering and eating and food, and casually discussing the plan to kill Ole Andreson.

Literature Lightly Examined: "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Richard Feynman, PhD., is full of wit in this collection of taped and transcribed conversations between him and his friend Ralph Leighton. Each enthralling anecdote will make you want to read the next, and then the next, and before finishing the book, you will regard Feynman as truly a curious character. Although Surely you're joking is written from the point of view of a theoretical physicist, Feynman is essentially a human before all else, and his frank testimony produces an extremely unbiased analysis of the human condition. "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" is an essential read for anyone, science enthusiast or not. The only grief you will feel while reading it is the realization that you have finished it.

Los Alamos From Below

New, from Universal Pictures:

What happens when a man who was judged “deficient” in a psychiatric evaluation has access to all the plans for the atomic bomb? What if he helped make that bomb?

What if he can open any lock and crack and safe? What if locks only encourage him?

Would it surprise you that this man was the only person to have both thwarted a German espionage agent and to have had a PhD and a Nobel Prize for his work in theoretical physics? That he was the only man to see the first atomic bomb test with his own eyes?

This summer, come to your neighborhood theater and experience the spectacle that is Micheal Cera as Dr. Richard Feynman in Los Alamos From Below: Adventures of a Curious Character. Learn more about this beloved, yet mysterious, American hero, including about his fraternity days at MIT, his drug use, and his romance with Brazil and samba music.

Opening August 6, 2010.