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ERNEST HEMINGWAY BIOGRAPHY On the date of July 21, 1899 Ernest Hemingway, a
now known brilliant writer, was born. Hemingway was conceivably the only writer
to achieve the combination of international celebrity and literary stature in
the twentieth century. Hemingway was brought up in the village of Oak Park,
Illinois, close to the prairies and woods west of Chicago. Both here and in
Michigan, he could explore, camp, fish and hunt with his father, Dr. Clarence
Hemingway. In Chicago he would attend concerts, operas and visit art museums
with his mother, a musician and an artist. Hemingway attended Oak Park and River
Forest High School, where he was an active writer. He wrote articles, poems and
stories for the school’s publications largely based on his own experiences. The
year Hemingway graduated he quickly secured a job with the Kansas City Star.
There he received a writing style sheet that instructed: “Use short sentences.
Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English.” (Parshall 1). These were
rules he never forgot to incorporate into his works to get to the heart of a
story. The following year he entered World War I as a volunteer with American
Red Cross ambulance unit as a driver. There he was wounded near the
Italian/Austrian front. Hospitalized, he fell in love with his nurse, who later
called off their relationship. After World War I, Hemingway returned to northern
Michigan to read, write, fish, and later to work for the Toronto Star in Canada.
In 1921 married his first wife and moved to Paris.
In Paris he continued to
write for the Toronto Star as a foreign correspondent. During his stay in Europe
through the 1920’s, Ernest was influenced by eccentric writers like Gertrude
Stein and Ezra Pound their literary compression. Hemingway’s use of these
methods in short stories and novels that captured the attention of critics and
the public. In the 1930’s, he turned to writing for causes, including democracy
as he knew it in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In each conflict he
sought support for the side he favored. But he insisted on impartially
describing the truth of both wars, which he knew from firsthand experience. In
the years following World War II, many critics said Hemingway’s best writing was
past. He surprised many of the critics when the novel, The Old Man and the Sea,
was published.. This work led to his Pulitzer Prize in 1952. Two years later he
received the Nobel Prize for his “powerful, style-making mastery of the art or
modern narration” (Griffin 1) for The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway’s years
following these awards saw few works as successful as his novel or earlier
writings. Hemingway was devastated that he could no longer write as he once did.
During 1961 Hemingway, troubled by high blood pressure and mental depression,
received shock treatments during two long confinements at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota. He died July 2, 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, as a
result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds and was buried in Ketchum. But as he had
hoped, his writing lives on. His works continue to sell very well and are
translated in an amazing variety of languages around the world. HEMINGWAY HERO
“For Ernest Hemingway, the secondary world which he constructed in his many
stories and novels served as a mirror to reflect his beliefs about the world in
which he lived” (Relations to Fact Through Fiction 1). Even though he reflected
his beliefs in his works he never portrayed himself as the hero. Instead
Hemingway created a hero that followed the same general code in all of his
works. We generally, call this man the code hero—this because he represents a
code according to which the hero, if he could attain it, would be able to live
properly in the world of violence, disorder, and misery to which he has been
introduced and which he inhabits. The code hero, then, offers up and exemplifies
certain principles of honor, courage, and endurance which in a life of tension
and pain make a man, as we say, and enable him to conduct himself well in the
losing battle that is life. The Hemingway hero of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is
Harry. Harry is self pitying and views his present diseased state as the
culmination of poor choices and false, convenient values. However, through
final, confrontation with his own mortality, he achieved self-redemption. In
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” Francis is the Hemingway hero because
he had courage and faced his fears. If Francis would not have went out on the
safari the last time and had so much courage his wife would not have shot him.
Mrs. Macomber killed him because she could no longer rule him. With Francis
gaining so much self-esteem he no longer sat back and let his wife cheat on him,
without confronting her. The Italian soldiers in “In Another Country” are the
heroes because they were not afraid to die. The three boys went to war and
returned back to Milan with medals for their bravery for facing death. Santiago
from “The Old Man and the Sea” is a hero because he was courageous and was not
afraid of death. Santiago went out to sea, never gave up, and knew he could
survive anything that happened. Ole Anderson of “The Killers” does not whimper.
He takes the medicine quietly and is not afraid of death. In “A Farewell to
Arms” Henry is not afraid to face death. He went to war. Later he deserted the
Italian Army, knowing that he faced death.
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