Hemingway's Novels example essay topic

Table Of Contents: I. IntoductionII. Childhood. A Writing Career Begins IV. Novels for the Ages. Other Recognizable Work sVI. Conclusion VII.

Bibliography I. Introduction Across more than half a century, the life and work of Ernest Hemingway have been at the center of controversy and intrigue. From the moment he embarked on his career as a writer, he presented himself to the world as a man's man, a sportsman, a street-wise reporter, a heroic, battle-scared soldier, and an aficionado of the Spanish bullfight, among other talents. His legend and mastery of so many abilities almost seems to colossal for one man, yet those who knew him say he was a crack shot, an expert amateur boxer, and a considerable military genius. All of these aspects made Hemingway the writer he was, along with his dedication to his craft. His work has hardened into myth, as he has become one of the immortal writers of the twentieth century. Affable with all of his friends, Hemingway had an aura about him that gave him a commanding presence in any room.

His personality was one of strength and it showed with some of the qualities he possessed; a competitive spirit, personal pride, fearlessness in any undertaking, and an interest in physical violence must have left his closest companions admiring in awe. Probably, all of the above allowed Hemingway to live through several divorces and the untimely suicide of his father whom he loved so dear, and still write with the greatest of adroitness and emotion. Maybe that is how he has endeared himself to the entire world and why his legend will live for eternity. One of Hemingway's resounding qualities is that his writing has the quality of reality and not idealism. For him, writing is truth, honesty, and sincerity. Hemingway writes of what he knows and what he has experienced and he does so in the most direct and objective way possible.

With no space for ambiguity, every word on every page is key to the story for Hemingway, unlike many of his contemporaries. Although some would claim to have these qualities, Hemingway is the most extreme version of this style of writing. His style undoubtedly stems from his many years as a reporter and the crisp, economical writing one must use in that line of work. He truly was the romance writer of the twentieth century. With a brutality that only those who have served in war have truly seen, Hemingway's writing is that of a man rigidified by the penultimate experience of war, that severely affects anyone within its grasp.

With the desire to write pouring through his veins, Hemingway the writer was forever changed by war. One might even say that it brought out the best of him, as where other writers cowered, Hemingway stood tall and proud. That is the way he will always be remembered. II. Childhood As Hemingway is a writer of experience and was profoundly affected as a boy as well as a man, it is important to note the effects of his childhood on his writing.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois on 21 July 1899, Ernest Miller Hemingway was one of six children. His father was a medical practitioner, but felt most at home in nature with a gun or fishing pole, which explains two of Hemingway's passions and his love of nature. At school he possessed many talents including football, athletics, boxing, being a member of the debate team, and a member of the school orchestra. His most important academic endeavor was his early commitment to writing, which included editing a weekly news-sheet and writing poetry and prose for the school's literary magazine. Hemingway's exposure to literature in high school was predominantly British. Only a handful of American writers enjoyed full representation in the unusually well stocked local library, whereas every standard British writer from Shakespeare onward was available in depth.

The school's preoccupation with Europe may have been one of the many reasons Hemingway was so intrigued by these distant places and so wanted to leave maybe what seemed insignificant in his corner of America. Another well-documented reason was Hemingway's hatred for his mother, as many of his World War II comrades knew all to well. From the beginning, Hemingway's personal mission has been to find the style that defines him as a man. In his high-school activities and his high-school writing, the difficult quest is already apparent. In English class he is already talking about "an author's style", to the mystification of his classmates. He is already trying styles for himself.

His determination to be different from his classmates leads him away from elegance and toward the emphasis of a limited, repetitive vocabulary. His subjects are savage and his dialogue is concise and colloquial for maximum effect using understatement with suggestive power. By his junior year he has a typewriter on the third floor of his family's house, conveniently remote from his prominent family. He is becoming his own man and is biding his time until he can leave home and experience an unsheltered existence wherever he chooses. This rebellion was natural as it grew into his way of living and writing. To prove his manhood, he had to step outside of the comfort of a society that demanded no proof and only was concerned with status.

Above all, Hemingway was looking for adventure on the horizon, and with typewriter in hand he set out to find it.. A Writing Career Begins After volunteering for active service in the First World War and being rejected because of a damaged eye from boxing, Hemingway found his escape as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. His writing style evolved from the newspaper's form: graphic, potent prose to tell a story clearly and expeditiously. It cannot be overemphasized that the seven months he spent with the paper had the most profound influence on Hemingway as he worked as a crime reporter and rode the ambulances to the hospital - a preview for the reality of life during wartime.

When his true ambition to seek out the war was made possible, Hemingway jumped at the chance to serve the Red Cross on the Italian front and so he left the Kansas City Star for Europe. His search for adventure continued, as he was able to join a team that carried Red Cross supplies to the front line. Two months after coming to Europe and still two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, he was badly wounded in the leg by a mortar shell. Lucky to be alive, he was hospitalized in Milan where over two hundred shell fragments were removed from his legs and body in the course of twelve operations. All this time Hemingway was observing and experiencing. He knew the idealism that inspired the volunteers, the courage some men possessed and the bravado of others, the brutality, and the waste that lay mangled on the ground.

With all this experience, Hemingway would later call on it to tell the truth in ways people never imagined. After a short stint in Toronto with the Star Weekly, Hemingway got his wish again and returned to Europe in 1921 as a roving correspondent for the Daily Star in Paris. He received modest wage, had the freedom to travel, choose his writing material, and sufficient financial stability to progress with his own fiction. In Paris, Hemingway was introduced to an intimate circle of writers including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. As one would imagine, these imminent writers would open up what was a burgeoning writer and allow young Hemingway to gain feedback on his prose and poetry - an invaluable commodity. This is seen all to clearly in Hemingway's letters to his new found friends: To Ezra Pound, Paris, 17 March 1924 Dear Duce:" ...

I am writing some damn good stories. I wish you were here to tell me so, so I would believe it or else what is the matter with them. You are the only guy that knows a god damn thing about writing. Ford can explain stuff... , but in private life he is so goddam involved in being the dregs of an English country gentleman that you get no good out of him... ". As the years progressed, Hemingway began to wish for more time for his fictional work.

The ideas from his experiences around Europe were sitting innocently in the back of his mind waiting to explode onto the page. After another return to Toronto, Hemingway resigned from the Star to pursue his passion of literature in Paris. His first novel was finally ready for print and Ernest Hemingway the author had arrived on the scene. IV.

Novels for the Ages a) A Farewell to Arms In this novel, Hemingway explores his experiences in war through the character of Frederic Henry. Using a masterful depiction of the impersonal cruelty of war, the key to the novel is what Henry has learned through the total experience. In this story that he tells in his own voice, the meanings are sunk in the texture of the story and can only be relevant if recognized as offering him a pragmatic view of life and more importantly, of himself. The total effect of the story depends on the degree of Henry's self-realization or acceptance of the implicit meanings in his experience. This is a theme for Hemingway that is consistent throughout his work-the identity of man is measured by the recognition of meaningful experiences. The novel is based on showing a large distance achieved in what Henry is and what he becomes.

Hemingway does this by showing the original Henry and finally the dynamic, changed Henry. At the beginning of the novel, Henry's character is easily summarized. He is rootless; he has a stepfather somewhere in America, but he has quarreled so much with his family that communication is at a minimum. Actually, most of the time his general attitude is that he does not care about anything at all. He has volunteered to serve in the Italian Ambulance Corps for reasons never made clear and he has neither patriotism nor hatred for the Austrians at all. In fact, the war and his involvement in it are as unreal experiences to him as anything else in his thoroughly meaningless life.

There is however one quality that although repressed by Henry does exist, and is recognized by the priest. His strong potential for truly caring is there and there are times when he cares a great deal and everything becomes clear. Growing throughout the novel, is this single quality and serves as the main part of the development of his personality. In the beginning of the novel and up to the time of the wound, the aspect is consistently and consciously smothered. Later in the novel, this characterization of Henry changes and Hemingway uses the character of Rinaldi to sum up the empty Henry: "You are really an Italian... All fire and smoke and nothing inside.

You only pretend to be an American". Then in actuality, Henry is wearing a double guise. He is to Ferguson a sneaking American hiding in an Italian uniform and to Rinaldi he is Italian pretending to be an American. Ironically, the ambiguities of various identities multiply at the bridge over the Tagliamento when Henry realizes that to battle the police he would be a German in Italian uniform. Henry's courtship of Catherine Barkley is in a sense the same as his attitude to the war in general. Hemingway uses the metaphor of playing a game for Henry and his courtship to mimic what the war means to him and show how the wound changes him irreparably afterwards.

In his incapacity to care, he is able to play for any amount of stakes because he has nothing to lose. The wound is the first lesson to him of what he does have to lose and symbolizes a drastic change in his life. He realizes in the explosion of the mortar shell that he does have a self that the war has something to do with: "I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly, all myself, and I knew I was dead and it had all been a mistake to think you just died". In this moment of extreme shock, Henry realizes what has been true all along: he is dead and he has been dead for a long time and the mistake is in thinking that he has just died. This interpretation substantiates the thesis that Henry has lacked a self up to the time of the wound, because not caring about anything is equivalent to death.

With one foot in the grave for Henry, the effect of coming so close to death and the horror of the wound is enough to allow him to rediscover the value of life. In the field hospital, the issue is dramatically externalized in the successive visits of Rinaldi and the priest. These two are distinct opposites with Rinaldi the rationalization of not caring and the priest the man of faith. Rinaldi warns Henry that love is an illusion when he perceives his friend's burgeoning involvement with Catherine. He feels bonded to Henry as he insists that they are both similar inside and that neither of them entertains illusions or "care", hence they are both invulnerable. While Henry does not accept this advice of his reason, he does not reject it either.

With the arrival of the priest, the counter-argument is presented. The priest, filled with ignominy and repugnance at the war, observes correctly that Frederic Henry doesn't really mind the war. Correctly diagnosing Henry's deficiencies, the priest gives Henry the definition of care, which he will later come to embrace. The issue has now been put forward to Henry, and although he will come to a balance somewhere in the middle of Rinaldi and the priest, the rest of the novel is a steady movement for Henry away from Rinaldi's philosophy.

So Henry's time in recovery begins and with it his affair with Catherine and the idyllic union they share over approximately four months. During his stay in the hospital, he centers in on a hedonistic lifestyle that she fashions for him in the midst of the war. But his role is consistently that of acceptor and nowhere is it apparent that he is a giver as well. As Henry returns to the front, he finds himself between two beleaguered friends. Rinaldi, incapable of believing in anything not measurable by his reason, has buried himself in his work to avoid seeing the carnage that he works within. The priest on the other hand, has also become depressed in his faith by the action of the war.

Believing in some kind of miracle that would intervene and cause men to lay down their arms which of course did not happen, has caused the priest to begin to doubt his belief. Henry's movement toward the opposite of what he was at the inception is finally complete, as he accepts the obligations of caring for life and for Catherine. During his train ride to Stress, he feels deceiving in his civilian clothes, which is ironic because he is truly going to Catherine as himself for the first time. In the later escape across the lake to Switzerland, Rinaldi's earlier prophecy is fulfilled-that the caring Henry would have a better time than he would, but he would also suffer more remorse. The stakes are suddenly very high and the game Henry entered blindly some six months ago without a care is now the most important game he has ever played. The end of the novel is the inevitable catastrophe as Henry is left to say good-bye to a statue, which is all he is left in his gamble with love.

He returns alone to his hotel, a winner who is taking nothing away from the gambling table but a new self, vulnerable to the hurts of the world. Finally, one sees clearly the two opposing movements of the novel. The relentless, tragic warning throughout the novel, echoed in the imagery, the rain, and the narrator's comments is the first movement of the current of doom. Its counterpart is the connection Henry establishes with the world in his love affair with Catherine, and in doing so becomes humanly "alive". b) For Whom the Bell Tolls Critics consider For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway's most ambitious novel. It is set in an international civil war, intricate in its alliances and divisions, and it attempts to portray Hemingway's experiences in Spain, perhaps his favorite country. Therefore, the novel is a multitude of ideas: an attempt to present in depth a country and people Hemingway was very fond of, an effort to deal honestly with a highly complex war of highly complex ideologies, and to cast a personal metaphor on his very distinct meaning of life.

Hemingway knew when he had written something special and he definitely felt that way about For Whom the Bell Tolls. He had become absorbed in his masterpiece, which is clearly noticeable in his letter to his friend Maxwell Perkins: To Maxwell Perkins, La Finca Vigia, 13 July 1940 Dear Max:" ... They are copying it all now except the last chapter where I am still working on the end. The last chapter is the most exciting in the book.

It's almost unbearably exciting during and after the bridge is blown. I finished the part where - what the hell - will not tell you - you can read it - I was as limp and dead as though it had happened to me. Anyway it is a hell of a book. I knew I had to write a hell of a last chapter. But have it all now except the very end - the action and the emotion are all done. Been too shot about it all to write yest. or today.

(The girl doesn't get killed.) I hated to have that damned Jordan get what he got after living with the son of a bitch for 17 months. Felt worse than if it were me. Hemingway's immersion into his work was total and seems the characteristic of a good writer. The structure of this novel is circular, with its center the steel bridge that spans the gorge, and every other action, dramatic and symbolic, radiating from the center with varying intensity. The Loyalist offensive depends on the certainty that the bridge be exploded so that the road will be closed to the movement of Fascist reinforcements.

The protagonist, Robert Jordan, has the sole reason for going behind enemy lines to blow up the bridge; like Santiago his mission is what he was born for. In actuality, the bridge becomes symbolically a pivotal center for the destiny of mankind. The bridge then is the absolute point of confrontation and the proper place to provide a vision of time standing still. In this way, Hemingway faced countless technical problems in attempting to suspend time in the novel. His first strategy in attempting to create an illusion of suspended time was to isolate the novel in time and space. Using a seventy-hour time scheme for the novel's events and making that seventy-hour schedule apparent to the reader, Hemingway is able to transform the novel into his own time.

Thus, one is constantly reminded that this is not seventy consecutive hours, but instead seventy hours picked out of time with no real beginning or end. It is not minutes or hours that are passing in the novel, but Jordan's life. The seventy clock hours measure doom instead of time and this movement works with the use of suspended time. The novel is also isolated spatially. The plot device of having the action take place behind the enemy lines makes a natural spatial boundary. Placed in another country, the action is subject to new laws where normal human behavior does not apply.

The guerrillas are by definition "irregulars", improvising their own ways to structure a life outside of normal socially controlled habits. With the placing of sentries to guard this isolated space, the fictional distance is accentuated, as it is when Andres has major difficulties in getting over the Loyalist lines to deliver his message to Gold. The placement of the bridge over a gorge between two mountains, the concealed remoteness of Pablo's cave, and the general impression that the reader receives of the entire location of the action being contained by a jagged mountain range, effectively encloses the stage of the novel in a similar way that time is enclosed. Within this complex use of time and space, the plot is stripped down to the essentials.

Jordan arrives with his orders at Pablo's cave, makes his arrangements, falls in love with Maria, explodes the bridge on schedule, and prepares to die when his broken leg makes it impossible for him to escape. The simplicity of the plot aids in the process of fusing time, for the action starts slowly and accelerates increasingly to the final scene in the novel. Pushed relentlessly by the ominous fatality of the palm reading at the inception, and the necessity to carry out the orders on schedule, the novel functions. The appearance of the cavalry troop and Pablo's treachery quicken the suspense, as does the knowledge that the Fascists are preparing to meet the attack.

The total effect of the plot acceleration crams the action intensively; it saturates the density of time within its enclosed and suspended space. Dexterously, Hemingway explodes this charged, fused time as the themes important to the protagonist are brought out. As the novel progresses, Maria becomes symbolic of Jordan's self-realization of the universal righteousness of the cause for which Jordan is offering his life, of Spain as a country, and ultimately of the natural world itself. Maria is thus the vessel of Jordan's complete self-realization; in his merging with her, he has achieved the immortality of becoming another and of losing himself into something not himself. This idea of self has been pondered for centuries, including by D.H. Lawrence who claimed that the artist could never be completely absorbed in someone else as Jordan is to Maria.

Emily Bronte contemplated it further with her novel Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff and Cathy fuse into one: "I am Heathcliff". So this is not an uncommon idea in literature, and Hemingway uses it effectively here. Jordan even makes a similar statement to Maria as Cathy does about Heathcliff, when he says: " Thou art me now too. Thou art all there will be of me". With these statements, Jordan gains eternal life in Maria beyond his insignificant mortality.

But just as Maria is too small to hold the burden of symbolic meaning placed on her, the bridge is not sturdy enough at the center of the novel. The major technique that Hemingway employs to this end is the futility of the attack and the abortive failure of the entire bridge blowing operation: .".. that bridge can be the point on which the future of the human race can turn". The Fascists have already moved their reinforcements up the road to counter the already known attack and it matters very little whether the bridge is blown up or not. In military terms, the bridge is no longer a point on which the future of the war or the human race can turn. It is seemingly meaningless, as a group that banded together into a cohesive unit to destroy a bridge and create meaning have fallen into illusion despite their courage. But in nonmilitary terms and the terms the novel wants the reader to see, the bridge has become a point on which the entire human race can change.

Mankind overcomes the meaninglessness with its resolute bravery and achieved togetherness; the individuals of the group have been forged together into a whole. This guerrilla group has represented the ideals of their cause and beyond that the determination of humanity to live lives of courage and dignity in the face of nothingness. c) The Old Man and the Sea The Old Man and the Sea is a heroic tale of man's strength pitted against forces he is unable to control. Hemingway seems to have written what on the surface is a short, insignificant story of an old Cuban fisherman and his battle with the giant Marlin of the sea. Yet, the novel works on levels that are much more profound and propounds ideas that are universal to man and of the most complex of human emotion. Through the use of three prominent themes of friendship, bravery, and Christianity, the novel strives to teach sound morals that are enviable in man.

The relationship between the old man and the boy is introduced early in the story. Unlikely companions as they are, one is old and the other is young, they share the utmost respect and loyalty to each other. Santiago and Manolin are equals as age is not a factor in their relationship; they are friends as two people of the same age would be. As Manolin's maturity and sensitivity to Santiago's feelings is one of his prominent characteristics, he does not in the least way resemble a young boy. Manolin is his own person and even offers to go against his parent's wishes and accompany Santiago on his fishing trip. The theme of unremitting loyalty manifest itself in the admirable young boy and it is accentuated by the fact that Santiago is an outcast in the village because he has not caught a fish for more than eighty-four days.

The conversations between the boy and his mentor are comfortable, like that of two friends who have known each other for a lifetime. When they speak, it is usually about baseball or fishing, the two loves they have most in common. Their favorite team is the Yankees and their favorite player is Joe DiMaggio who Santiago never loses faith in. Hemingway uses the Yankees and DiMaggio to further advance one's view of Santiago and is foreshadowing the kind of resolve the man has as he sets off on his epic battle.

In the story, Santiago's bravery is unsurpassed but it is not until he hooks the "great fish" that one truly sees the magnitude of his valor and perseverance. Through Santiago's actions, Hemingway teaches the reader about the strength of these qualities in the face of adversity. He demonstrates that even when all is lost and seems hopeless a willful heart and faith can overcome anything. Santiago has faith in Manolin, in the Yankees, in Joe DiMaggio, and above all in himself.

With this as his greatest attribute against and unfriendly world, Santiago is able to endure until he has won the battle. While faith is necessary during the journey, the inner strength of the fisherman cannot be emphasized enough. Santiago's dream of the lions sitting on the peaceful shore represent him when he was young and strong and when he could overcome any challenge with outer strength to accompany his inner fire. And now, although he is an old man and his body has been worn by unforgiving aging, the inner fire never went out as illustrated when he fights futilely against the vigorous sharks. No man could fend off several sharks with the scent of blood as Santiago knows as a fisherman, but he is a great warrior inside and warriors fight until the bitter end. Hemingway uses symbolism in the novel profusely and one of the greatest uses is the element of Christianity throughout the novel.

From the beginning of the story, a unique relationship between Santiago and Manolin is portrayed which parallels that of Christ and his disciples. Manolin is Santiago's disciple and Santiago teaches him about fishing, life, and faith; the kind of faith taught represents the basic principles of any religion, but Hemingway continues toward Christianity. Hemingway alludes to the nail pierced hands of Christ by stating that Santiago's "hands had deep creased scars". Even more obvious, is the description of Santiago's response when he saw the sharks: "just a noise such a man might make, involuntarily feeling the nail go through his hands into wood". Further evidence of Christianity is apparent when Santiago carries the mast across his shoulders, symbolic of the cross, and collapses under the weight just as Christ does. Although the Christian element is there, it does not interrupt the other themes of the novel or smother them, as much of the novel takes place out at sea where Santiago is far away from Manolin.

The plot of this novel is as straightforward as it could possibly be as is the plot in most of Hemingway's works. After three days of the most intense battle of skill and wit between man and beast, and over eighty-four days without a catch, Santiago finally claims his prize with a harpoon. In the end, Santiago has won but he has won with nothing material to show for it except the skeleton of a fifteen hundred-pound marlin. For his battle with the ocean is just halfway through, as the great Mako shark and his fellow predators are too much to overcome as they tear apart the glorious catch.

Structurally, the novel works on the idea of the quest as Santiago has an unexplainable calling toward the sea. Santiago is so much more than a great fisherman for this is not the battle of a great fisherman; he is a great man led on his destiny to face a mythical creature of the sea. In reality the quest is not one of simply fishing skills, it is one of superior character that only the great man may possess and one that only the fiercest attributes of the sea may bring to surface. In the end the old man's perseverance and faith pay off, while although he comes back from his battle with the sea empty handed, he has succeeded in teaching Manolin the lessons of faith and bravery and has gained the respect of the town. Unforeseen was the incredible success the short novel was to have in the coming years and how it was to be regarded as a classic that every good bookshelf should boast. Hemingway could not see into the future, but he knew this folk tale of a Cuban fisherman was his masterpiece of masterpieces as he explained to his editor Wallace Meyer: To Wallace Meyer, La Finca Vigia, 4 and 7 March, 1952 Dear Wallace:" ...

It is 26,531 words in length. It may be impossible to publish a book of this length. But I know that in the history of publishing there have been books of this length which have had an extraordinary and continued sale. I will try not to point out to you what virtues or (misspelled) it has. But I know it is the best I can ever write for all of my life I think, and that it destroys good and able work by being placed alongside it.

I'll try to write better but it will be tough. Please do not think I am have ing a rush of conceit to the head. I am a professional writer and I know something about this piece of work". Hemingway was certainly correct as millions of people will attest to. V. Other Recognizable Works Above all, the most noticeable aspect of any Hemingway piece of literature is the objective and realistic feeling that it gives you. Hemingway was there and in his stories the setting and characters are as tangible to you as they were to him.

What is on paper, is what he has personally felt or known and his imagination is firmly anchored to his own experience. Hemingway's first character he was to discover was Nick Adams from In Our Time. This collection of short stories was his first published work in 1925 and therefore the writing contains many similarities to his style as a journalist. A combination of objective sketches and dramatic monologues, the novel shows Hemingway in the transition stage to becoming a true novelist. One of the short stories is even about a love affair between a wounded American soldier and a British nurse in Milan. This is a fictionalization of Hemingway's own disconsolate wartime romance and the idea that he will later use for an entire novel, A Farewell to Arms.

With these stories, a trend in Hemingway's writing begins; the hardship and disasters of war intrigued Hemingway as he experienced it and saw it all around him. Although the novels analyzed outshine Hemingway's other works, the other works are regarded as excellent works of literature as well. Now that Hemingway had fully made the move to novelist, his work resembled more and more that of his new profession and not of a journalist, although the journalistic element was always there. Some of his other distinguished, published works include: The Sun Also Rises published in 1926, Death in the Afternoon published in 1932, Green Hills of Africa published in 1935, The Snows of Kilimanjaro published in 1936, To Have and Have Not published in 1937, and Across the River and into the Trees published in 1950.

His prolific career as a writer always contained a passion for the short story. The quantity of work he produced for print was quite a sufficient amount even though his career spanned several decades. In his early years, he had a hard time putting in long days at his typewriter as he explained in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald: To F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pig got, 9 October 1928 Dear Mr Fizz geral:" A letter some time ago from Maxwell E Perkins let me in on the little secret that you work eight hours every day - Joyce I believe worked twelve. That was some comparison between how long it took you two great authors to finish your work. Well Fitz you are certainly a worker.

I have never been able to write for longer than two hours myself without getting utterly pooped - any longer than that and the stuff begins to become tripe but here is old Fitz whom I once knew working eight hours every day". Hemingway may not have been able to work eight hours a day, but he was certainly able to publish several works of literature, novels or short stories, that have received critical acclaim from their audience. His work is not that of a novelist who has one good story in him, but that of an accomplished writer who every time he set to work produced something magical. VI. Conclusion If the measure of an artist's success is the influence he has on his contemporaries, then it is safe to say that Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important if not the most important writer of the twentieth century. Language was no barrier for Hemingway as his classic works have been translated into French, German, and Spanish among others.

His international popularity increased rather than waned throughout his lifetime, delighting the readers from the diverse countries he wrote so admiringly about. It was this reason that must have struck a cord with the Nobel Prize committee as they awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature to Ernest Miller Hemingway for "forceful and style-making mastery of the art of modern narration". At the time of the award Hemingway's health was worsening and he was unable to make the trek to Stockholm to accept the award. The prize meant instant fame everywhere and a film of The Old Man and the Sea was even produced with Hemingway as adviser. With his unique stamp of writing accepted by the world, Hemingway became a staple in the classroom and in the public library. Hemingway differs from other writers in that his legendary personality is inscribed in all of his work.

With his burgeoning success as a writer, he became more of a prominent figure through the newspapers and the general public eye. To see a picture of the bullish man, is to see one of his protagonists and to read about him in the newspaper, is to read one of Hemingway's novels or short stories. For more than any other artist, Hemingway's personality is undeniably intertwined in his fictional themes and characters. His life is in his books and his books reflect his life. One is unable to separate the work from the man, as his work does not stand by itself - whole, impersonal, or self-explanatory as it does with two of Hemingway's American contemporaries, Eliot and Faulkner.

Their work separates from themselves to exist by itself. In this way, Hemingway's work has turned into an accepted reality that other writers could never foster. The Hemingway hero is a living entity, not just someone conjured onto the page, and the Hemingway code is a way of life, not just a group of ideals that could only exist on paper. Hemingway's personality has been thrust upon us and will continue to be a major factor in the appeal of his works.

Despite all of his success, Hemingway was a very troubled man as is well documented. Severely shaken by the death of his father in 1928 and then cruel illness in his later years, Hemingway found himself deserted by his ability to write. When the artist cannot find his art, he is left with nothing and so it was true with Ernest Hemingway. So on July 2, 1961 in his house near Ketchum, Idaho, he committed suicide with his very own twelve-gauge, double-barreled English shotgun. The battle he had finally lost was not during any physical test of strength and courage but it was with himself. ."..

How much better to die in all the happy period of un disillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered" he said in Milan at age nineteen. Unfortunately, his prophecy had come true. Overwhelmed by demoralizing fears that he was no longer capable of living up to the standard he had created for himself, the end he had long debated became justified and inevitable. Nevertheless, his legacy is of a man who lived life to its fullest in the pursuit of adventure which he translated into his art that so many have come to enjoy. VII.

Bibliography

1. Hemingway: by Kenneth S. Lynn published 1987 by Simon & Shuster 2.
Hemingway: by Stewart Sanderson published 1965 by Oliver and Boyd Ltd.
3. Ernest Hemingway: An Introduction and Interpretation: by Sheridan Baker published 1967 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc.
4. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist: by Carlos Baker published 1972 by Princeton University Press 5.
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961: edited by Carlos Baker published 1981 by Granada Publishing 6.
Papa Hemingway: by A.E. Hot chner published 1966 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.