3. The Man Behind the Words
• Born - July 21, 1899, Oak Park, Illinois
• Mother - Grace Hall
– Opera singer before marrying Ernest’s dad
– He never forgave her for dressing him in girl’s
clothes, giving him a girl’s haircut, and passing
him off to neighbors as her daughter Ernestine
• Father - Clarence Edmonds Hemingway
– Taught Ernest to love outdoor life
– Took own life in 1928 after losing health (diabetes)
and money (Florida real estate bubble)
4.
5. More About Young Ernest
• Education
– Public schools in Oak Park
– Published earliest stories and poems in
school newspaper
• Graduated from hs in 1917
• Worked six months as reporter for
Kansas City Star
7. Army Career
• World War I
– Joined volunteer ambulance
unit in Italy
– Suffered severe leg wound
(1918)
• Had affair with American nurse
during his recovery (basis for A
Farewell to Arms)
– Decorated twice by the Italian
government for his service
8. After the War
• Worked as journalist in
Chicago
• Moved to Paris in 1921
– "If you are lucky enough to
have lived in Paris as a
young man, then whenever
you go for the rest of your
life, it stays with you, for
Paris is a moveable feast.”
9. Travels
• Toured with wife (Elizabeth Hadley
Richardson)
– Italy, France, Switzerland
• Traveled as reporter (1922)
– Turkey, Greece (reported on the war
between them)
• Two trips to Spain (1923)
– Bullfights!
10. Pamplona and
Running of the Bulls
• In total,
Hemingway
journeyed to
Pamplona on
nine occasions,
the most prolific
Each time he came for San burst between
Fermín, the city's famed fiesta 1923 and 1927,
of bullfighting and brutality, when he visited
drink and song. every year.
11. In Europe
• The center of the modernist movement
– Modernism - a style or movement in the
arts that aims to break with classical and
traditional forms
• Associated himself with writers such as
Gertude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• You know about him already, don’t you?
• Edited some of Hemingway’s drafts
• Acted as his agent
• Hemingway portrayed Fitzgerald in a
somewhat negative light in A Moveable
Feast - friendship suffered for it
• Fitzgerald regretted the lost friendship
13. The Lost Generation
• After World War I
– Young men and women began to realize that old
ideas and beliefs had not saved man from the
catastrophe of war
– Began to look for a new system of values
– New values would replace old system, which they
found useless
• Believed that “the only reality was that life
was harsh”
14. The Lost Generation
• Young people coming of age during and
shortly after World War I
• Many expatriates settled in France
• Younger literary modernists
• Feeling a sense of dissatisfaction and
ennui with America after the War
15. Major Works inspired there
• The Sun Also Rises (1924-1926)
– First great success
– Narrated by American journalist
– Group of expatriates in France and Spain
– Members of the Lost Generation
• A Farewell to Arms (1929)
– Italian front in WWI
– Two lovers find brief happiness
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
16. A Later Success
• The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
– Cuban fisherman named Santiago
(modeled off of a fisherman who worked on
Hemingway’s boat)
– Catches giant marlin after weeks of
disappointment
– Story of his journey with the marlin - comes
back with nothing but won a spiritual battle
17. Nobel Prize
• Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
(1954)
• Unable to attend award ceremony
– Recovering from injuries sustained when
hunting in Uganda
18. A Whole Lotta Weddings
• Divorced Elizabeth (1927)
• Married Pauline Pfeiffer in the same year
(suspicious!)
• Third wife (1940) - Martha Gellhorn - writer
and war correspondent
– She called Hemingway her “unwilling companion”
– Bitter divorce (1945)
• Fourth wife - Mary Welsh - correspondent for
Time magazine
19. A Warning About Alcohol
• Hemingway started drinking when he was a
reporter
– Built up tolerance
• Downward spiral (began in1940s)
– Heard voices in his head
– Became overweight
– Had high blood pressure
– Cirrhosis of the liver
– Taught 12-year-old son to drink (son later became
an alcoholic)
20. An Adventurer
Went on hunting
expeditions in
Africa and
Wyoming
24. Papa Hemingway
Whether it was "Papa" hunting
in Africa, or "Papa" in Spain
watching the bullfights, or
"Papa" at a café in Paris
chatting with acquaintances
over a bottle of cognac, this was
the public image Hemingway
projected to others, rough and
tough, a real "man's man."
25. The Later Years
• Depression - hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic
(1960 - released in 1961)
– Two months of electroshock therapy
• July 2, 1961
– Committed suicide with his favorite shotgun in his
Idaho home
• Posthumous publication - True at First Light
– Considered one of the worst books by a Nobel
Prize winning author
26. Writing Style
• Deceptively simple - straightforward
• Understatement and omission (see Iceberg
Theory)
• Repetition
• Spare dialogue
• Focus on facts
– “Find what gave you the emotion; what the action
was that gave you the excitement. Then write it
down making it clear so the reader will see it too
and have the same feeling as you had.”
27. Writing Style
• Few adjectives or adverbs
• Simple sentences (let’s diagram some!)
• Concise, vivid
• He noted that, “a writer’s style should be
direct and personal, his imagery rich and
earthy, and his words simple and vigorous.
The greatest writers have the gift of brevity,
are hard workers, diligent scholars and
competent stylists”
28. The Iceburg Theory
• “If a writer of prose knows enough about
what he is writing about, he may omit
things that he knows and the reader . . .
will have a feeling of those things as
though the writer had stated them.”
• In other words, when you write, just
show the tip of the iceburg
30. The Hemingway Hero
• Sometimes referred to as the “code
hero”
• Easily identifiable
• A man’s man
– Moved from one love affair to another
– Participated in game hunting
– Enjoyed bullfights
– Drank wildly
31. The Hemingway Hero
• Soldiers, hunters, bullfighters, etc.
– Tough, courageous, honest
– Courage and honesty set against the brutal
ways of modern society
– Lose hope and faith because of this
confrontation
32. Themes
• A man can be destroyed but not
defeated.
• Life is a series of struggles
• Suffering makes the human spirit
strong’
• Pushing beyond the normal limits of
life is important, regardless of
whether you win or lose
33. The Six Word Story
For sale:
baby shoes,
never worn.
