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Earnest Hemingway

analytical Essay
3008 words
3008 words
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Earnest Hemingway
As one of the 20th century's most important and influential writers. His writings drew heavily on his own experiences for his writing. His writing reflected his trouble with relating to women and his tendency to treat them as objects, as he had four marriages and countless affairs, highlighting his theme of alienation and disconnection. Now here is why he is what he is by writing about what he was.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, to Dr. Clarence Hemingway and Grace Hall Hemingway. Oak Park was a mainly Protestant, upper middle-class suburb of Chicago that Hemingway would later refer to as a “town of wide lawns and narrow minds" (Gerogiannis 188). The second among six children, Ernest spent the first two years of his life dressed as a girl by his mother. She called him “Ernestine” and fantasized that he was the twin of his older sister, as she dressed them both in matching dresses and gave them similar hairstyles (Rozkis 233) As he grew older, however, his father stepped in and insisted that Ernest be “raised like a man,” teaching Ernest how to behave and introducing him at a young age to hunting, fishing, and boxing, all activities in which he would stay interested for the rest of his life (Gerogiannis) It is perhaps this early start at questioning his manliness and his father’s attempts to drive any femininity out of him that instilled his characteristic obsession with proving his masculinity throughout his life.
Schlusemeyer 2
Hemingway received his schooling in the Oak Park public school system. In high school he was mediocre at sports, joining the football, swimming, basketball, and water polo teams and serving as the track team manager (Nelson 5). He began his journalistic career writing for the school paper, the Trapeze, where he wrote his first articles and often humorous pieces in the style of Ring Lardner, a popular satirist of the time. After graduating in the spring of 1917, against the wishes of his parents, he forwent college and took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. It is here that the seeds of his unmistakable staccato writing style were planted as he followed the rules of the Star’s stylebook exactly. “Use short sentences,” it said. “Use shor...

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...Modified August, 1999. Viewed April 20, 2005. http://www.ernest.hemingway.com
Ernest Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois Last Modified 2004. Viewed April 21, 2005. http://www.ehfop.org
Gerogiannis, Nicholas. "Ernest Hemingway." Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Authors in Paris. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1982. 187-211.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
Nelson, Raymond S. Ernest Hemingway: Life, Work, and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B., Canada: York Press, 1984.
Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time Last Modified January, 1998. Viewed April 21, 2005. http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/index.htm
Rozkis, Laurie E. Macho, Macho Man: Ernest Hemingway. New York: Pearson Press, 1999.
The Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum Last Modified 2002. Viewed April 20, 2005. http://www.hemingwayhome.com
Timeless Hemingway. Last Modified January, 2005. Viewed April 20, 2005. http://www.timelesshemingway.com

In this essay, the author

  • Analyzes hemingway's change from writer to actual character in one of his own works, taking issue with his blustery tone, particularly when criticizing writers.
  • Explains that hemingway traveled to spain in 1937 to cover the spanish civil war for the north american newspaper alliance. the civil war caused a marital war in his household as well.
  • Explains that ernest hemingway is one of the 20th century's most important and influential writers. his recognizable prose style and innovative "iceberg theory" have gained him an immovable place in american literature.
  • Describes ernest hemingway's life and works.
  • Describes gerogiannis, nicholas, and ernest hemingway's dictionary of literary biography.
  • Analyzes how ernest miller hemingway's writings reflected his trouble with relating to women and his tendency to treat them as objects.
  • Narrates how hemingway's staccato writing style was planted after he resigned from the star and attempted to enlist in the army, but was rejected because of poor vision.
  • Analyzes how hemingway exaggerated his heroism in retelling the events of the war, and how he became a close literary friend with fitzgerald.
  • Narrates how the hemingways returned to the united states briefly in 1923 so they could resume concentrating on his writing and reconstruct the works he had lost. they met pauline pfeiffer, a fashion editor for vogue magazine.
  • Narrates how hemingway divorced hadley and married pauline in 1928. after his father killed himself, he published his 1932 spanish bullfighting dissertation, death in the afternoon.
  • Narrates how hemingway met martha gellhorn in key west, where they had a secret affair, before the franco-led rebels won the war, and he wrote for whom the bell tolls.
  • Narrates how hemingway's story, the old man in the sea, won him the pulitzer prize.
  • Narrates how hemingway and mary vacationed in east africa in 1954. the plane crashed and he broke through the door to escape. he was unable to attend the ceremonies in sweden.
  • Cites nelson, raymond s. ernest hemingway: life, work, and criticism.
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