Hemingway, World War I, and Agnes von Kurowsky
Hemingway's World War I experiences were the source of much of the legend that later surrounded him. Brave and masculine, he was the writer who really got out there and experienced everything. Wounded in the trenches, decorated for his valour, he then threw himself into a wartime romance with the nurse who was responsible for bringing him back to health, his first love, who later jilted him for an older, aristocratic, man. This report will examine the background to these myths and assess their veracity.
It was not long after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917 that 17 year-old Hemingway, not yet finished high school, first expressed an interest in seeing some action. However his father, keen for him to follow his sister to college, settled for a compromise that saw his brother fix young Ernest up with a job in the Kansas City Star. That November, he told his family that he could not possibly wait more than another year before enlisting, saying "it will be hard enough to stay out until then". Biographer Kenneth S. Lynn argues that for the young Hemingway, the war was like a championship football game, a huge event not to be missed.1
Hemingway's letters of that winter contain references to him attempting to join the army but being refused because of a bad eye. Nobody has been able to find any evidence that such a claim is true. Lynn points to the likely falsity of the claim by mentioning the fact that Harry Truman, who was helpless without his glasses, got past the same army doctors in Kansas City that Hemingway would have had to deal with, and suggests that the prospect of squalor and danger in the trenches did not accord with Hemingway's vision of the great event of his time. At the same time, his reading of Hugh Walpole's The Dark Forest the previous year made him aware of another, heroic, and far less dangerous way of seeing the war - the Red Cross.
Ernest and his friend Ted Brumback volunteered for the Red Cross in early January and in April they were assigned as second lieutenants in an ambulance unit in Italy. They were issued a regular US Army officer's uniform with full insignia, and Ernest made the most of the fact that real army privates and non-commissioned officers had to salute him, in one instance counting 367 salutes as he walked up and down Broadway.
It was on January 28, 1986 at 11:38 A.M. that the shuttle Challenger, NASA flight 51-L, the twenty-fifth shuttle flight, took off. It was the "Teacher in Space" mission. At lift-off, the temperature at ground level was 36° Fahrenheit, which was 15° Fahrenheit cooler than any previous launch by NASA. It was the Challenger's tenth flight. Take-off had been delayed several times. Finally the shuttle had taken off. The shuttle had climbed high in the sky thirty-five seconds after take-off, and it was getting hit by strong winds. The on board computers were making continuous adjustments so the shuttle would stay on course. About eight miles in the air, about seventy-two seconds after take-off, people watched in fear and horror as the shuttle was engulfed by a huge fire ball. All the crew members were killed instantly.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home." The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's. 2002. 152-57.
Although not as strictly addressed, there is still a schism when it comes to the matters of experimentation involving animals. Those in opposition of it see it as being against the will of the animal, because animals have no say in the matter. However, through animal experimentation there has been vast medical advances in hospitals and veterinarians , research has led to cures for various diseases that would normally take many more years to cure, and the use of animals is highly ethical considering what could be the alternative, although there is progress being made to change these measures. This is how animal experimentation is of use to society for humans and animals.
Stokes, W.S. “Animals and the 3 R’s on Toxicology Research and Testing.” Human and Experimental Toxicology December 2015: 7. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 February
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.
and Europe, which include reduction of animal use, refine animal study techniques, and animal testing replacement. According to Dana ,Bidnall, “Animals are also used, and subsequently killed, every year in many other types of laboratory experiments, from military testing to simulated car crashes to deliberately introduced diseases such as AIDS and Alzheimer 's”(49). Bidnal also states that, “These experiments take place in labs at universities, pharmaceutical companies, and testing agencies, and on farms and military bases around the world”(49). The author suggest,”Researchers who conduct experiments on animals argue that it would be unethical to test substances with potentially adverse side effects on humans; animals are good surrogates because their responses are similar to humans”(49).Bidnal contends with ,”However, some animals are chosen for other reasons”(49). According to Bindal, “Animal testing is not the only option in toxicity testing”(50). Bidnal states, “Alternatives are widely available and include human clinical and epidemiological studies; experiments with cadavers, volunteers,and patients; computer simulation and mathematical models; and in vitro (test tube) tissue culture techniques, to name just a
“An Examination of Animal Experiments.” Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. .
The history of animal experimentation and tests, and the argument surrounding it, has an expansive and somewhat extensive history. Some of the first medical research that was conducted on living animals was done by Aelius Galenus, better known as Galen, in the second century C.E. There have been examples of animal testing in earlier dates, but Galen devoted his life to understanding science and medicine, so he is attributed to being the father of vivisection. In the twelfth century, an Arabic physician named Avenzoar introduced animal testing dissections as a means to better understand surgery before preforming the operation on a human patient. Edmund O’Meara made one of the first opposing ar...
The National Academies Press (2012) NASA’s Strategic Direction and Need for a National Consensus retrieved from http//www.npa.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18248&
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His mother, Grace Hall, was a trained opera singer and later on, a music teacher. His father, Clarence Hemingway, was a doctor and an avid naturalist ("Ernest Hemingway: An Inventory”). Just after graduating high school, at the age of eighteen, Hemingway enlisted in the army to fight in World War I ("The Big Read"). After being severely wounded in the war, he moved to Paris in 1921, and devoted himself to writing fiction (Baker). It is said that, “No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway” (Putnam). Hemingway’s book A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929, and was based off of the events that happened to him in the war and what happened in his love life. Fredrick Henry, the protagonist, is an American ambulance driver fighting for the allies during World War I. He is introduced to a nurse named Catherine, who he later on falls in love with. Henry was hit by a trench mortar shell and was very badly injured. He is then sent to Milan, where Catherine later on comes to help nurse him to health. The two fall in love and Henry no longer is involved with the war, so they try and have a child, but both Catherine and the child die during labor, and Henry is left alone. Psychoanalytical approach views the psychological motivations of characters, which refer to the dynamics of personality development and behavior based on the unconscious motivations of a person ("Psychoanalytic Theory”). Hemingway’s writing was greatly impacted by his real life tragedies, which consist of witnessing the gruesomeness of war and his discovery and loss of love, this helps exhibi...
Approximately two to four million animals have been used in safety tests. Safety tests are conducted with a wide range of chemicals and products, including drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, household cleaners, and packing materials. This raises issues such as the ethics and humaneness of deliberately poisoning animals, thus harming them, for the sake of marketing a new cosmetic or household product.
Learning Theories Knowledgebase . (n.d.). Retrieved June 19, 2010, from Learning Theories Knowledgebase : http://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-bandura.html
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.
There are indications in each of the novel’s five books that Ernest Hemingway meant A Farewell to Arms to be a testament against war. World War One was a cruel war with no winners; ”War is not won by victory” (47). Lieutenant Frederic Henry, the book’s hero and narrator, experiences the disillusionment, the hopelessness and the disaster of the war. But Henry also experiences a passionate love; a discrepancy that ironically further describes the meaninglessness and the frustration felt by the soldiers and the citizens.
Orlans, F. Barbara. In the Name of Science:Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. New York: Oxford UP: Oxford UP, 1993.