Loss Of Masculinity In Hemingway's

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” - John F. Kennedy

Hemingway has made use of the book as a symbol of war to stress the soldier’s inability to lead a normal life (McKenna and Raabe 210). The symbol is used in the context of many other elements that convey Krebs’ distance from his own life. The book about war is a literary symbol that Hemingway employs in a specific context.

In Junot Diaz’s short story, “Drown” masculinity is a cultural imperative that prohibits young men, particularly those of Latino decent, from being able to express love in a meaningful way, or follow the desires of their heart. There are several factors prohibiting them from this pursuit. The absence of a father figure in the narrator’s life, and indeed in the life of many young Latino men, lead them to develop their own ideas of masculinity based on scant memories of their father prior to abandonment, or a fictionalized version told to them by others, as proposed by critic John Riofrio. Riofrio also asserts that this

Hemingway uses a lot of symbols thought his story. He does this to illustrate two different meanings without having to explain every single detail. He achieves his position of being the spectator by using symbols to represent things beyond the surface. The first instance Hemingway uses a symbol is when girl talks about the white elephant (275). The white elephant represents something that no one wants to talk about, in this case, is baby that the girl is pregnant with. The author may not

This shows the independence and freedom women were starting to get back then. Brett is both masculine and feminine in the story but mostly shows more of here masculine side throughout. The war was a major reason why women resulted in having to fulfill the masculine role, because men would be affected by the war emotionally or physically. Hemingway uses Jake as a example of loss, by taking away his ability to have sex.Ever since this loss forced Jake to change his view on masculinity. Jakes is wanted by many women but cant have physical relations with him due to his injury. Hemingway provides us with a description that shows Jakes problem with his masculinity. In chapter 3, Hemingway writes,“looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away. "Never mind." "What’s the matter? You sick?" "Everybody’s sick. I’m sick too."(Hemingway 23).This quotes shows Jake incapability for sexual actions as that the main reason why him and Brett can't and didn't end up together.

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.

Jake Barnes, the emasculated narrator, is the prime example of what the perfect man is not. Towards the end of the book, Hemingway shows the audience how much power Brett Ashley has over him when she sends him a telegram. He replies to her saying “Well, that meant San Sebastián all shot to hell. I suppose, vaguely, I had expected something of the sort. I saw the concierge standing in the doorway” (Hemingway 243). Not only does he desert his peaceful getaway because of Brett's unknown problems; he believes he was expected to do so. Furthermore, Jake's injury concurs with his affection towards Brett Ashley. While laying in bed and processing about his injury, his mind immediately thinks about Brett. Jake stated to himself, "I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn't keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry" ( Hemingway 39). Thoughts of his injury lead to the ideas of Brett, which then leads to inner sadness at his lack of ability to fulfill the role of love of the typical man. Jake's friend Bill tells him that he doesn't work, leaving Jake feeling bad about himself. In an article written by Ira Elliot, she stated "A man who is supported by woman is of course not a "real" man, but what Bill means by "impotent" is ambiguous. He may believe that Jake is sexually impotent or that as a decadent American who has adopted "fake" European standards he is physically impotent" (Elliot 4). The impotent from Jake's unpleasant experience acts as a strong image for the way that war had changed his

            War, usually thought of as a masculine fight for glory, is reversed in Hemingway's writings.  Instead of men showing their masculinity, he portrays a war that takes away men's masculinity through injuries that deprive them the rest of their lives.

Herman Melville’s novels, with good reason, can be called masculine. Moby-Dick may, also with good reason, be called a man’s book and that Melville’s seafaring episode suggests a patriarchal, anti-feminine approach that adheres to the nineteenth century separation of genders. Value for masculinity in the nineteenth century America may have come from certain expected roles males were expected to fit in; I argue that its value comes from examining it not alone, but in relation to and in concomitance with femininity. As Richard H. Brodhead put it, Moby-Dick is “so outrageously masculine that we scarcely allow ourselves to do justice to the full scope of masculinism” (Brodhead 9). I concur with Brodhead in that remark, and that Melville’s

Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises has his male characters struggling with what it means to be a man in the post-war world. With this struggle one the major themes in the novel emits, masculine identity. Many of these “Lost Generation” men returned from that war in dissatisfaction with their life, the main characters of Hemingway’s novel are found among them. His main characters find themselves drifting, roaming around France and Spain, at a loss for something meaningful in their lives. The characters relate to each other in completely shallow ways, often ambiguously saying one thing, while meaning another. The Sun Also Rises first person narration offers few clues to the real meaning of his characters’ interactions with each other. The

When thinking of masculinity in literature, one author has who has become synonymous with manliness comes to mind, Ernest Hemingway. Critics have spent countless hours studying his writing in order to gain insight into his world of manly delights, including his views on sex, war, and sport. His views can be seen through his characters, his themes and even his style of writing.

When thinking of masculinity in literature, one author has who has become synonymous with manliness comes to mind, Ernest Hemingway. Critics have spent countless hours studying his writing in order to gain insight into his world of manly delights, including his views on sex, war, and sport. His views can be seen through his characters, his themes and even his style of writing.

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.