Year Hemingway And Martha example essay topic

... particularly when criticizing writers. Laurie E. Rozkis writes that this "was the genesis of the public 'Papa' image that would grow over the remaining 30 years of his life, at times almost obscuring the serious artist within" (237). He followed with Winner Take Nothing, a volume of short stories that had a mediocre critical reception, but quickly returns to non-fiction. In the summer of 1933, Hemingway and Charles Thompson journeyed to Africa for a big game safari, inspired by Teddy Roosevelt's writing of African hunting exploits as a boy. Hemingway spent three months hunting on the Dark Continent and published all his observations in Green Hills of Africa. While the book contained some writing about Africa and its animals, it was overshadowed by Hemingway's digression into criticism of his friends and portrayal of himself as courageous and skillful while depicting others, including Thompson, as mean-spirited and selfish.

In a review, the literary critic Edmund Wilson said of Hemingway 'he has produced what must be the only book ever written which makes Africa and its animals seem dull' (Gerogiannis 203). Shortly after returning home, he published To Have and Have Not, which also did not fair well with critics. In 1937 Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. The civil war caused a marital war in the Hemingway household as well. Pauline sided with the Fascist Franco Regime in Spain Schlusemeyer 7 because of its pro-catholic stance, while Hemingway supported the communist loyalists who in turn supported the democratically elected government. During this trip he met a young writer named Martha Gell horn in Key West and the two conducted a secret affair for almost four years before Hemingway divorced Pauline and married Martha.

Eventually the loyalist movement failed and the Franco led rebels won the war and installed a government in 1939. Though his side lost the war Hemingway used his experiences there to write the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, a play titled 'The Fifth Column' and several short stories. For Whom the Bell Tolls was hugely successful. Sinclair Lewis wrote that it was 'the American book published during the three years past which was most likely to survive, to be know fifty years from now, or possibly a hundred... it might just possibly be a masterpiece, a classic' (Rozkis 240). It was unanimously voted the best novel of the year by the Pulitzer Prize committee, but was vetoed by the president of Columbia University because of its highly-political content; no prize was awarded that year (Gerogiannis 205) Hemingway and Martha moved to a large house outside Havana, Cuba, and named it Finca Vigil ('Lookout Farm'). During this time, Ernest struggled with his writing.

His notorious drinking increased as he worked on what would become the heavily edited and posthumously published novels Islands in the Stream and The Garden Of Eden, and later took on another assignment, covering the Chinese-Japanese war in 1941 for PM magazine. Being "unimpressed" with Asia, he quickly returned to Cuba, where he began a self-assigned undercover operation to hunt down German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. Hemingway gathered some of his friends, a group he called the "crook factory", hoping that if he ever located a German sub he could get close enough to drop a bomb Schlusemeyer 8 down the hatch. Rozkis writes that "Nothing ever came of their sub hunts except a good time fishing and drinking together, in the process irritating Martha who thought Hemingway was avoiding the responsibilities as a great writer to report the real war then raging in Europe" (243). Frustrated, Martha left for London as a war correspondent for Collier's. Hemingway followed shortly.

He first spent his time with the Royal Air Force and even participated in the D-Day invasion of France. Afterwards, he joined with the 22nd Infantry Regiment to follow them as they ousted German forced from Rambouillet and Paris. During these operations, Hemingway claims to have actually participated in the warfare, contrary to regulations for war correspondents, and many of his tales almost put him in violation of the Geneva Convention. However, because his stories did not match those of high-ranking officials, the matter was dismissed (Nelson 10).

During this time he met Mary Welsh, another correspondent for Time. She and Hemingway openly conducted a courtship in London and then in France. Hemingway wrote, 'Funny how it should take one war to start a woman in your damn heart and another to finish her. Bad luck' (Rozkis 244). He once again divorced his wife for another woman, and he and Mary were married in March of 1946. With the war over, however, life seemed dull and Hemingway still struggled with his writing.

He continued drinking more heavily and womanizing, as he began an affair with A diana Ivanich. He struggled with, but finally finished The Old Man in the Sea in 1952, and secured a deal with Life to publish it. The story received immediate critical praise, winning him the Pulitzer Prize which had eluded him earlier. Schlusemeyer 9 In 1954 Hemingway and Mary vacationed in east Africa to take a tour of lakes and waterfalls. During one flight, the pilot dove to avoid a flock of birds and hit a telegraph wire.

The plane was badly damaged and made a crash landing, but no one suffered any major injuries. After a boat ride across Lake Victoria, the Hemingways took another flight. Heading toward Uganda, the plane barely got off the ground before crashing and catching fire. Hemingway, using his head as a battering ram, broke through the door to escape from the flaming plane (Rozkis 245). Jeffrey Meyer lists the various injuries Hemingway sustained in the crash and escape: 'His skull was fractured, two discs of his spine were cracked, his right arm and shoulder were dislocated, his liver, right kidney and spleen were ruptured, his sphincter muscle was paralyzed by compressed vertebrae on the iliac nerve, his arms, face and head were burned by the flames of the plane, his vision and hearing were impaired' (173). Later that year Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but due to his injuries was unable to attend the ceremonies in Sweden.

In the late fifties, the Hemingways moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho so Ernest could hopefully recover from his deteriorating health. He wrote A Moveable Feast, his memoirs. He checked twice into the Mayo Clinic to be treated for his physical ailments as well as depression, but was not helped much. He began receiving shock treatment but, as Meyers writes, "one of the sad side effects of shock therapy is the loss of memory, and for Hemingway it was a catastrophic loss.

Without his memory he could no longer write, could no longer recall the facts and images he required to create his art" (205). Having lost his ability to write and still ailing physically, he lost the will to live. On July 2, 1961, three weeks before his 62nd birthday, Hemingway shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Schlusemeyer 10 Ernest Hemingway is one of the 20th century's most important and influential writers. His writings were often of stoic, macho, adventurous figures, and he often drew heavily on his own experiences for his writing. His writing also reflected his trouble with relating to women and his tendency to treat them as objects, as he had four marriages and countless affairs, highlighting his theme of alienation and disconnection.

His recognizable prose style and innovative "iceberg theory", in which the author only gives the reader the necessary information and leaves the rest for the reader to figure out, have gained him an immovable place in American literature as he has never fallen out of favor with academic studies or critics. His biggest theme of "grace under pressure", keeping one's dignity in the face of extreme situations, is one he strove to keep in his own life, but found in the end that he, too, was only human. Schlusemeyer 11

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