Ernest Hemingway Research Paper

In The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway uses Santiago to demonstrate some of the qualities of a Hemingway Code Hero. Throughout the novel, Santiago encounters many trials and tribulations that test his role as a code hero. While reading the novel one will see that Santiago endures many of the rules of a code hero. However, the ones he encounters the most are misfortune, honor, and courage. Hemingway uses these rules in his novel in such a way that one can fully understand the life of Santiago.

Benson, Jackson, J. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Critical Essays. Durham: Duke University Press, 1975. Print.

On September 29, 1929, “The New York Times” published a commentary piece on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, describing his writing style as “so strikingly his own that it may bear his name, and is likely to henceforward” (Love and War in the Pages of Mr. Hemingway). Eighty-six years later, readers can experience this for themselves - in the first paragraph of Chapter XXI of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway uses vivid imagery, staccato-like syntax, and a detached tone through simple diction to create his own unmistakable style. Hemingway’s use of vivid imagery is an aspect of his style that paints evocative pictures in a reader’s mind. One knows that when fall comes, the temperature drops and the leaves change color.

Ernest Hemingway, a literary icon of the early twentieth century, challenged the typical lengthy and detailed prose of authors before him by pioneering a stylistic revolution centered around heavy dialogue and minimalistic details. More specifically, “Hemingway used a journalistic style and unadorned prose to capture the everyday lives of men and women caught up in history’s most momentous events,” without wasting pages establishing the setting or background within a work like most authors of the nineteenth century (The Letters… 442). Often, the mood, setting, and emotion within Hemingway’s stories are established through symbolism and constant dialogue. Hemingway expertly implements his unconventional and unique authorial style to convey the disparity in gender communication and perspectives and its effects on relationships in his 1927 short story, Hills Like White Elephants.

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. You will meet them doing various things with resolve, but their interest rarely holds because after the other thing ordinary life is as flat as the taste of wine when the taste buds have been burned off your tongue." ('On the Blue Water' in Esquire, April 1936)

In Santiago, the central character of The Old Man and the Sea , Ernest Hemingway has created a “ Code Hero” who personifies courage. During Santiago’s time at Sea, Santiago has been through a lot of hardships that include courage. When Santiago was at Sea for 3 days, he ended up catching a Blue Marlin, that ended up being eaten by sharks. Catching that Blue Marlin ended up taking a lot of courage. Santiago has the ability to do things that frightens others.

In Hemingway’s writing, he is always searching for truth, although, he often looks at the world in a nihilistic way. When reading through the authors’ short-stories or novels, he often refers to nothingness and the meaninglessness of existence. However, he also uses a practical application to repair his existential nihilistic viewpoints. Hemingway’s work is often seen as a representation of himself, and I believe that he used pragmatism as a distraction from the meaninglessness of the world. With suicide being prevalent in his family, I firmly believe that Hemingway himself strived for meaning in life, but eventually opted out because life is chaotic and there are too many unknown answers in the world. Hemingway tried to establish values and morals through pragmatism, but in reality, values are constantly changing and everything is temporary. By looking through a philosophical lens, I will demonstrate how Hemingway uses absurdism, nihilism, and pragmatism as a way to understand and interpret the world. In order to do so, I will look through Hemingway’s short-stories and novels and analyze passages critically to showcase the theories that are present in his work. In order to undertake this grand idea, I will also incorporate biographical elements to display Hemingway’s family history of suicide and to showcase his personal struggle to find meaning in the world.

Earnest Hemingway’s work gives a glimpse of how people deal with their problems in society. He conveys his own characteristics through his simple and “iceberg” writing style, his male characters’ constant urge to prove their masculinity.

Ernest Hemingway pulled from his past present experiences to develop his own thoughts concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. One such masterpiece written early in Hemingway's career is the short story, "Indian Camp." "Indian Camp" was originally published in the collection of "in Our Time" in 1925. A brief summary reveals that the main character, a teenager by the name of Nick, travels across a lake to an Indian village. While at the village Nick observes his father, who is a doctor, deliver a baby to an Indian by caesarian section. As the story continues, Nick's father discovers that the newborn's father has committed

Examples of the “code” hero in Hemingway’s work include Manuel the bullfighter, in “The Undefeated” he fights with a noble dignity even when he is jeered by the crowd and gored by the bull, along with Wilson, the big game hunter from “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” who shows no fear when confronted with a charging lion. But perhaps the greatest figure of masculinity found in Hemingway’s work is Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea. He keeps his composure and maintains dignity after the fish that he has been fighting is lost to the sharks.

Hemingway was a master in his field of writing in short stories, novels, and much more. He was a creator of many techniques and had a deep passion for writing and what it takes to be remembered as one of the greats not only in the 20th century but also throughout writing history. Hemingway created writing not ever seen before from previous writers. He was genius in that the techniques he created and revised by authors before him are still near perfection still to this day. Hemingway’s different styles of characterization brought new types of writing in as well, Hemingway did this by showing how characters entered and left the story by ways of new types of narration. Hemingway was one of the most influential 20th century writers due to his

Ernest Hemingway – The Man and His Work 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. Hemingway’s 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

“Hemingway’s greatness is in his short stories, which rival any other master of the form”(Bloom 1). The Old Man and the Sea is the most popular of his later works (1). The themes represented in this book are religion (Gurko 13-14), heroism (Brenner 31-32), and character symbolism (28). These themes combine to create a book that won Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and contributed to his Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 (3).

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago demonstrates the traits of the code hero. The Hemingway’s code hero covers the principal ideals of honor, courage, and endurance in a misfortune life. Throughout the novel, Santiago shows a contrast between opposite attitudes and values which associate his behavior with the guidelines of the code. In this case, the depiction of conflicting values, such as dignity despite humility, perseverance despite despair, and victory despite defeat are aspects that help to describe and understand the role of Santiago in the novel, and reflect the reason why this character is perfectly suited to the heroic conduct established by Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway’s iconic and historic life throughout multiple well-rounded short stories helped represent his life in his way that the reader can discover and understand. In the short story, “Indian Camp”, Nick Adams and his father along with his Uncle George, go out into the forest to an indian camp to help deliver birth of a child, Nick’s curiosity throughout the storyline eventually turns into silence of not wanting to see any type of tragedy again. Throughout the short stories that Ernest Hemingway writes, he includes many pieces of research that involve racism, sexism and coming of age. For example, in Hemingway’s short story, “Indian Camp,” Hemingway refers Native Americans to being described as “half-breeds” which is a racial slur