Throughout the Nick Adams and other stories featuring dominant male figures, Ernest Hemingway teases the reader by drawing biographical parallels to his own life. That is, he uses characters such as Nick Adams throughout many of his literary works in order to play off of his own strengths as well as weaknesses: Nick, like Hemingway, is perceptive and bright but also insecure. Nick Adams as well as other significant male characters, such as Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms and Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises personifies Hemingway in a sequential manner. Initially, the Hemingway character appears to be impressionable, but he evolves into an isolated individual. Hemingway, due to an unusual childhood and possible post traumatic injuries received from battle invariably caused a necessary evolution in his writing shown through his characterization. The author once said, “Don’t look at me. Look at my words” (154). Hemingway constantly draws parallels to his life with his characters and stories. One blatant connection is with the short story, “Indian Camp,” in which an Indian baby is born and its father dies. As Nick is Hemingway’s central persona, the story revolves around his journey across a lake to an Indian village. In this story, Nick is a teenager watching his father practice as a doctor in an Indian village near their summer home. In one particularly important moment, Hemingway portrays the father as cool and collected, which is a strong contrast to the Native American “squaw’s” husband, who commits suicide during his wife’s difficult caesarian pregnancy. In the story, which reveals Hemingway’s fascination with suicide, Nick asks his father, “Why did he kill himself, daddy?” Nick’s father responds “I don’t kno... ... middle of paper ... ...York: Cambridge UP, 1996. 21-51 Berman, Ron. "Hemingway's Michigan Landscapes." The Hemingway Review 27.1 (2007): 39-44. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York, Scribner: 1929 In Our Time. “Indian Camp.” New York, Scribner: 1925 Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway. New York: Da Capo, 1999. Reynolds, Michael. The Young Hemingway. Chicago: Norton Pub, 1937. Stewart, Matthew C. "Ernest Hemingway and World War I: Combatting Recent Psychobiographical Reassessments, Restoring the War." Papers on Language & Literature 36.2 (2000): 198-221. Tyler, Lisa. "Dangerous Families and "Intimate Harm" in Hemingways "Indian Camp"" Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.1 (2006): 37-53. Waldhorn, Arthur. Ernest Hemingway: A Collection of Criticism (Contemporary Studies in Literature). Chicago: Syracuse University Press, 1978.
Assadnassab, Sara. "Hemingway´s Depiction of Women in A Farewell to Arms.”. http://epubl.ltu.se/1402-1773/2005/117/LTU-CUPP-05117-SE.pdf (accessed April 17, 2013).
In his short story, “Big Two-Hearted River”, Ernest Hemingway focuses on the mental and emotional state of Nick, the protagonist, who “le[aves] everything behind” during a wilderness fishing trip. Traumatic thoughts and memories haunt Nick, but the cause of his inner turmoil is not disclosed in the story. Other short stories by Hemingway, however, reveal that Nick Adams is a wounded veteran who served in the First World War. To distract himself from these painful memories, Nick concentrates on the physical details of his journey such as making camp and preparing food. In addition to self-distraction, he attempts to inhibit his ability to think through hunger and physical exhaustion. By examining how Nick uses these techniques of mental control in “Big Two-Hearted River”, one can gain a deeper understanding into his behaviour and fragile psyche. Thus, through analysis of his methods of rehabilitation, this examination will illustrate the central conflict between Nick’s subconscious thoughts and his conscious effort to repress them.
Sherwood Anderson was a relatively well-established author when he met Ernest Hemingway. Before they encountered one another, Hemingway had already read Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Ernest “was a great admirer of [Anderson’s] work, particularly those tales which had sporting scenes for their backgrounds” (Schevill 153). Whenever the two were around each other, Hemingway was always “quiet and attentive” (Fenton 104), though Ernest’s friend, Kate Smith recalled: “It probably means a storm’s brewing” (Fenton 104). Hemingway would internalize all that he learned from his time spent with Anderson in Chicago. The two shared a similar interest in “sex as a basic human drive,...the examination of youth and its distresses,…[and] the importance of emotion and feeling” (Fenton 148). Anderson himself denied ever influencing Hemingway’s work “as a whole” (Fenton 105). Anderson merely recognized the talent that Hemingway possessed. Motivated by his appreciation...
Trogdon, Robert W. Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002. Print.
Ernest Hemingway uses the various events in Nick Adams life to expose the reader to the themes of youth, loss, and death throughout his novel In Our Time. Youth often plays its part in war, and since In Our Time writes very frequently about war; it is not a surprise that the theme of youth is seen in many of the stories. In “Indian Camp” the innocence of youth is shown in the last sentence of the story: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” (19) When this sentence and the conversation Nick and his father have before they get on the boat are combined in thought it shows that because of Nicks age at the time that he does not yet understand the concept of death.
Hemingway is shown to forge his own methodology in The Sun Also Rises that creates a melancholy tone that brings about feelings of love and devastation in the reader.. The Iceberg Theory, a theory that portrays meaning to a character without directly stating what the reader should be, adapts Hemingway’s complexity and messages into the novel. This technique is used for the portrayal of Jake Barnes, the foremost example being when Barnes acknowledges his wound. After Georgette asks, "What's the matter, you sick?", Barnes replies with a simple, "Everybody's sick. I'm sick, too,” (Hemingway 23). This allows the reader to sense the scope of Barnes’ dilemma, as well as the psychological pain that Barnes is stricken with.. Barnes must also find a way to live in a world where he can create a personal order that is “neither based on an abstraction nor belied by experience” (Civello). This brings in the moral sense of the novel, portrayed by all characters in the novel. The characters are continuously unable to lessen their individual pains, resulting in the inability to find morality in American Culture. Hemingway's ethos and the stoic condition of Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley allows him to illustrate the dark view of morality. The Sun Also Rises shows us the good, the bad, and the misunderstood of the lost generation, with the help of
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.
Gajduske, E. Robert. Hemingway's Paris. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978. Mahoney, John. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Barnes and Noble INC., 1967. McSowell, Nicholas. Life and Works of Hemingway. England: Wayland, 1988. Meyers, Jeffery. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985. Shaw, Samuel. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Fredrick Ungar Publishing Company, 1974. Tessitore, John. The Hunt and The Feast, A life of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Franklin Watts, 1996. Waldhorn, Arthur. A Reader's Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New York: Octagon
In the story Indian Camp the main character Nick and his father resemble the relationship between Hemingway and his father. Nick is a teenage boy that travels across the lake to an Indian Village. He watches his father, who is a doctor; deliver a baby by caesarian section to an Indian woman. Nicks father discovers that the baby’s father has committed suicide. Nick and his father have a conversation discussing death, which brings the story to an end. Hemingway grew up in a middle class suburb, where his parents Ed and Grace raised him. Ed was a doctor who took his son along on visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians (Waldhorn 7).
Ernest Hemingway uses the various events in Nick Adams life to expose the reader to the themes of youth, loss, and death throughout his novel In Our Time. Youth very often plays its part in war, and since In Our Time relates itself very frequently to war throughout; it is not a surprise that the theme of youthful innocence arises in many of the stories. In “Indian Camp” the youthful innocence is shown in the last sentence of the story: “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” (19) When this sentence and the conversation Nick and his father have before they get on the boat are combined in thought it shows that because of Nicks age at the time that he does not yet understand the concept of death.
Ernest Hemingway used his experiences from World War I to enhance the plot of A Farewell to Arms. Parallels can be drawn throughout the entire novel between Henry's and Hemingway's experiences. Both were Americans serving in the Italian army; both were wounded and went to Milan; both fell in love with a nurse. These many similarities, however, also contain slight differences. There is no real question that Hemingway based events in the novel off of his real experiences, but A Farewell to Arms is by no means an autobiography. The book does not focus on the experience of war. Instead, it is more focused on the after-effects. Minor changes to the events themselves make the novel unique, while the factual basis strengthens the plot with authentic feeling.
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 reader must instead collect evidence from the indirect hints that Hemingway gives through his narrator, Jake Barnes. The theme of masculinity, though prevalent in the novel, is masked in this way. Jake war wound, Jake and Robert Cohn’s relationship, and the bull-fighting scene show the theme of masculinity.
Hemingway’s involvement in warfare provided many of his works with a central—or at least a supporting—theme. In The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway used war as a major theme such as the effects of World War One, the gruesome reality of war, and the loss of innocence during the war, respectively. He devoted his life to write authentically on every piece of his work including and particularly the subject of warfare and its effect during his time period. Although his literary works are not primary sources of the war experiences during the early half of the Twentieth century, they provide close to the truth surrounding those wars as accurately as possible.
Written just after the first global war, Hemingway delivers a subtle anti-war novel. World War I ended in 1918; A Farewell to Arms was published eleven years later. Although eleven years seems as if it would be enough time to forget, no time span can allow Hemingway to forget the effects of World War I. After World War I, Hemingway is struck with countless nightmares. Hemingway uses these nightmares and flashbacks to write A Farewell to Arms (Analysis 1). When reflecting on the novel, a blogger writes, “A Farewell to Arms is a war novel, not in the sense that it glorifies the war, but as all know, it describes the cruelty, madness of the war which deprives human life and happiness” (Analysis 1). During the novel, Hemingway displays his anti-war message by showing how the characters indulge in distractions to escape the reality of war. Love and sex, alcohol, and religion are all ways characters distracted themselves.
“A Farewell to Arms Essay – A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway.” Twentieth Century Literary Criticism 115 (1929): 121-126. JSTOR. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.