An Inspiration to Young Writers: Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21st in 1899. Named after his grandfather, Hemingway was the second of six siblings in his family. He was born and raised in a town called Oak Park, which was known for being an upper/middle-class suburb only ten miles from Chicago. Hemingway would later refer to his place of birth as a “neighborhood of wide lawns and narrow minds.” This was likely due to the fact that Oak Park was mainly a conservative town that tried to separate from the liberal views of the big city. Hemingway was raised with very strict, conservative values, which taught him that the most important things in life were religion, hard work, physical fitness and self-determination. Hemingway’s father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, taught him to hunt and fish by the forests of Lake Michigan. Hunting quickly became one of Hemingway’s most loved passions; he often uses his knowledge of the sport to his advantage in his writing. Hunting is just one of the many inspirations that Ernest Hemingway uses to develop one of his short stories. A major influence on his pieces was World War I; he was enlisted in the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded after being struck by a mortar shell in Italy and returned home (Lost Generation). The effects of the war on Hemingway’s mind and body played a huge role in short stories that he wrote, but also on possibly his most famous novel of all time, A Farewell To Arms. In an interview with Matthew J. Bruccoli, Hemingway listed the following writers as influences on his own work: Ring Lardner, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein (Conversations with E.H.).

It is safe to say that Hemingway’s family was fairly wealthy. They had enough money to house, feed, and...

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... known as a very descriptive writer and this story shows how he could push his own boundaries to the limit (Stukas).

Ernest Hemingway was an immensely skilled writer that left his everlasting mark on the writing community. He is an inspiration to young and old writers everywhere. Hemingway was taken away from the world too soon (at the age of 61) when he was killed by “self-inflicted gun wounds.” It is still unclear today whether it was suicide or accidental while cleaning his favorite shotgun. It is also unclear what stories Hemingway still had to offer the world and what writing would be like today if he released a couple more novels and short stories to the public. One things for certain, Hemingway had a way with words that turned ordinary things, like leopards or goats or elephants, into things unimaginable that can only be experience while reading his works.