Hemingway 's Writing : A Philosophical Lens Essay

Wagner-Martin, Linda, Reynolds, David S., and Myerson, Joel, eds. A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000. Print.

Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms, a celebrated historical fiction, amidst a time of war and personal suffering. Hemingway believed at this time that “life is a tragedy that can only have one end” (Hemingway, VIII). He continues further, calling war a “constant, bullying, murderous, slovenly crime” (Hemingway, IX). Hemingway also suffered at home, in addition to his issues regarding the state of the world. His wife had just endured a difficult pregnancy and delivery, which contributed to the last bitter chapter of his story. Keeping in mind the tortured and surly mental state of Hemingway, it is difficult to swallow the idea that he would write a wholesome, well founded love story that attracts people. To some readers, A Farewell to Arms tells of a whirlwind romance between an ambulance driver and a nurse that is based on an unbreakable foundation of love, trust, magnetism, and compassion. Anxious modernists, like Trevor Dodman who are cited in Joel Armstrong’s nonfiction text, will come up with a remarkably different outlook on this tragedy. With aid from “‘A Powerful Beacon’ Love Illuminating Human Attachment in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms”, the loveless relationship between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley will be seen as rushed, meaningless, and mentally destructive to the parties involved.

Killinger continues to highlight the presence of “the bifurcation of life into the authentic and the unauthentic; the moment of existential choice, in which a man decides to be either authentic or unauthentic; and in nontheistic existentialism, the exaltation of a humanistic ethic and the transmutation of aesthetics to the level where it becomes confused with ethics and a low kind of spirituality.”, all of which are “elements vital to existential thought”, present in Hemingway’s writing (Killinger, 1960). Killinger also brings to attention Hemingway’s preoccupation with death and its presence as the reoccurring theme in all his work. This has also been noted by other critics. In Essays in Criticism (Cash Jnr., 1951) Cash

Ernest Hemingway was referred to me from Dr. John in regards to his explosive disorders and loss of sleep and appetite. Dr. John also said that he has feeling of suicide following the death of his father. Dr. John

Throughout the short stories of Ernest Hemingway, alcohol inevitably lends its company to situations in which desperation already resides. In an examination of his earlier works, such as In Our Time, a comparison to later collections reveals the constant presence of alcohol where hopelessness prevails. The nature of the hopelessness, the desperation, changes from his earlier works to his later pieces, but its source remains the same: potential, or promise of the future causes a great deal of trepidation and lament throughout Hemingway's pieces. Whether the desperation comes from trepidation or lament depends on the view point from which it is observed, or rather, experienced.

The period between World War I and World War II was a very turbulent time in America. Ernest Hemingway most represented this period with his unrestrained lifestyle. This lifestyle brought him many successes, but it eventually destroyed him in the end. His stories are read in classrooms across America, but his semi-autobiographical writings are horrible role models for the students who read them. Hemingway’s lifestyle greatly influenced his writings in many ways.

The theme of the story could be depression, depravity, or hate. The nation falls into disorder after the disease. What’s worse, people who live lose the important ability to communicate. In this case, humanity depraves easily, and the dark side inside human’s mind drifts. As it’s indicated in the passage, the author use metaphor “superiority” to people’s attitude of more comprehending. However, “such ‘superiority’ was frequently punished by beatings, even by death”(93). Along with the misunderstanding, people tend to be jealous to things they don’t own-not only to possessions, but also to the ability of language. Even the protagonist gets the feeling of “hatred, frustration and jealousy”(98) when she finds out that the man could read while she couldn’t. Under such situation, people become isolated and depressed, sometimes seeking for death like the protagonist has always been thinking. The author also used the literary device of allusion like “Left-handed

Disillusionment does not merely occur in only novels; every single individual to walk the Earth will experience mental displeasure at some point within their lives. Nevertheless, many choose to let unfortunate events circle within their souls and become encrypted into their memory. Once this happens, the role of aimlessness takes its course, adverse fate reigns, and the feeling of disenchantment dwells in the mind. Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, grasps this very subject in a subliminal way; one must accurately analyze Hemingway’s somber tone and sparse writing style in order to find the hidden symbolism and themes captured within this literary work. His protagonist, Jake Barnes, has certainly experienced prodigious pain, but

Many authors, critics, and everyday social readers define Ernest Hemingway as the prime example of 20th century American literature. Hemingway’s works transcend time itself, so that even readers today analyze and criticize his works. His works, of course, have drawn praises and animosity from all corners of the globe. Critics often applause Hemingway on his short simple prose, for which many people recognize him for. His writing builds upon the masterful usage of “short, simple words and short, simple sentences” (Wagner, 3) to create clear and easy to

Hemingway's world is one in which things do not grow and bear fruit, but explode, break, decompose, or are eaten away. It is saved from total misery by visions of endurance, by what happiness the body can give when it does not hurt, by interludes of love which

In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 over two thousand crew and passengers were awoken to the ghastly scraping of ice upon the Titanic’s hull. As the dying ship slowly descended beneath the waves and into the deep cold waters of the North Atlantic, the culprit of this gruesome scene was apparent. This was the work of the gigantic mountain of ice protruding from the dark waters. But ultimately what caused the destruction of the “Unsinkable Ship” and took the lives of fifteen hundred innocent souls was not the formidable ice face that arose from the freezing waters, but instead the unseen structure twice its size that lurked beneath the surface. Ernest Hemingway does the same thing to his readers that the iceberg did to the titanic. In Hemingway’s writing it is undeniably what lies beneath the surface, what remains unsaid, that truly shakes the reader to their core.

Ernest Hemingway, the author of “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. When Hemingway finished high school, World War I was raging across Europe. Although Hemingway wanted to enlist in the war, he became a reporter for the Kansas City Star. This is where he really practiced writing. He eventually moved to Paris to work as a reporter and he joined a group of writers and artists, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Pablo Picasso. In 1937, Hemingway went to Spain as a reporter to cover the Spanish Civil War. After, he moved around a great deal, first to Havana, Cuba, and then back to Europe to contribute to the war effort in World War II. Hemingway’s work won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is one of Hemingway’s most famous short stories, as much for its existentialist themes, as its questionable dialogue that has been argued over for years. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that believes that life has no higher purpose and that no higher being exists to help us make sense of it. People are just left alone to find meaning in the world and their lives. Despite his great literary achievement, Hemingway dealt with existentialism, depression, alcoholism, and other health problems. He died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 1961 at age sixty-one.

Hemingway died July 2, 1961, at his home, as the result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Ernest Hemingway had a different style of writing than the other authors in his

“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).

Ernest Hemingway the winner of the Nobel Peace prize lived a troubled life over his Sixty-two years of life and experienced many struggles. He went through a few marriages, different faiths and in the end, he lost his battle with depression. However, though all of this he made an impact on the world with the style and theme of American literature he wrote and is a significant influence to many authors and readers alike. During his life, there were many things that were an influence and help shape his writing into what it is today. Hemingway heavily focused on the theme of war during his career and was a topic of several of his novels one of those novels being “For whom the bell tolls” (Hemingway) The recognizable effects of Hemingway’s influence on literature is still witnessed around the world in the many tributes to him to this day.