A Farewell to Arms

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Ernest Hemingway is considered the main personification of the American writers of the ‘Lost Generation’, who lived and wrote his novels during World War I. He became a famous writer in a short time, and the most important author of his generation, and perhaps the 20th century.

To begin, I would like to mention his finest novel “A Farewell to Arms” that emerged from World War I, as well as his first important work “The Sun Also Rises”, and his most ambitious novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. The most outstanding of his works is the short novel, “The Old Man and the Sea”, that describes the journey of an old fisherman and his long and lonely struggle with a big fish in the sea, as well as his efforts for victory, which end up in defeat.

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Illinois, in a suburb of Chicago, where he also grew up. Hemingway would refer to it, as a town of ‘wide lawns and narrow minds.’ He was raised with the strict values of hard work, strong religion, and self-determination. He was taught that if one possessed these qualities, he would be successful in whatever field he chose in life.

His father taught him to hunt and fish along the shores and in the forests around Lake Michigan. Nature would be the key of Hemingway's life and work, and once he became successful he chose isolated places to live, which were also convenient locales for hunting and fishing. His mother taught him fine music.

When he was in high school, he would play football, go swimming, play water basketball and serve as the track team manager. The first articles that he wrote on the high school newspaper the Trapeze, were generally humorous. Hemingway graduated in 1917. While Hemingway was graduating from High School, World War I was ...

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... He would also recite or speak out loud the conversations he was creating, because the ear is a good censor. He would never write down anything on paper, until he’d have it so expressed that it would be clear to anyone.

However, it is impossible to describe this great man’s life in a few pages. Interpretations for his work are never-ending and come from different viewpoints, since every reader has one for his work. The world has nothing but a fortune.

WORK CITED

- Levin, Harry “Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway”, from "Contexts of Criticism" (Harvard University Press, 1957).

- Palin, Michael. “Hemingway's Travels”. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1999.

- University Press: New York and Oxford, 2000.

- http://www.lostgeneration.com/lastdays.htm

- http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway

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