How Hemingway's Life Influenced His Writing

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Ernest Hemingway infuses his novels with life experiences, creating characters and plot lines based around his own romantic encounters. Agnes von Kurowsky was Hemingway’s first love, shaping how he would continue to behave in his romantic relations with his following four wives. Hemingway’s taste in strong minded, ambitious women molded the characters in some of his most notable works, from For Whom the Bells Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises. Conflict and Hemingway’s desire for countless women, caused a multiple of his marriages to end in divorce. These incidents in Hemingway’s love life left a deep mark in his heart, and his literary works. Hemingway’s first romantic encounter held the basis for how he would view his relationships later in life, and played part in influencing one of his most successful novels, A Farewell to Arms. Agnes von Kurowsky was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on January 5, 1892. Kurowsky and Hemingway met while she working as a nurse for the Red Cross, and he was recuperating from a mortar shell injury during WWI. Immediately after meeting, the two began an affair, shown through a collection of letters from both Hemingway and Kurowsky. However, their relationship did not come without complications. Hemingway was a mere boy of 18 and Kurowsky, 25. Hemingway and Kurowsky say their numbers in to drastically different lights, as they also viewed their relationship. Hemingway recognized the significance in their differentiating age, but managed to quickly look past the numerical values. “As I drifted off, I kept thinking how sympathetic and lovely she was, doubly attractive so far from home. All right, she was a few years older than I, but then girls are quite likely to appeal to young me... ... middle of paper ... ...nths after his divorce with Gellhorn. Monks from Minnesota, was a journalist like many of Hemingway’s previous wives. Monks and Hemingway met while in London, and while Hemingway was still married to Gellhorn. Monks and Hemingway were married in 1946, living in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba for the next fourteen years. At this time in Hemingway’s life, his drinking grew worse, until he committed suicide 1961. Hemingway’s encounters with women helped shaped not only his novels, but also his life. Through his first love with Agnes von Kurowsky, it shaped how the rest of his relationships would follow; broken and complex. His marriages subsequently ended in bitter divorces and jealousy, which he illustrates through his novels such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway’s life experiences instilled the plot line and characters of his novels.

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