Ernest Hemingway Essay

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Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero, Illinois. Clarence and Grace Hemingway raised Ernest in the suburbs of Chicago and Northern Michigan. He spent most of his young years with his father, where he learned things that are necessary for a “man” to know. This included hunting, fishing, and appreciating the outdoors (“Early Years” 1). This being the origin of his notion that to be a man, you must follow masculine stereotypes.
His mother on the other hand had a different view of Ernest. Grace would take Ernest and dress him up as a girl, her excuse being that she always wanted him to be a girl. Being treated as a girl by his mother and then being made into a man by his father, had taken a toll on Ernest. He created an odd hatred/fear of women, especially towards his mother (Mental Floss 1). “He hated his mother, with reason. She was solid hell. A big false lying woman; everything about her was virtuous and untrue…” (Brainy Quote 1). Others around his mother could even notice that she did not treat her son properly, and that the hatred he contained for her, although unhealthy, was honestly reasonable.
Once it was time for Ernest to go to high school, he quickly be...

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... scarred as a child, that he lived in fear of women all of his life. He feared commitment and feared being dubbed a coward by most. Almost as if he was brainwashed, he pushed himself to the brink of depression to prove his masculinity to others. However, the truth is that he was actually trying to prove this notion to himself, hoping that it would one day reverse the effects of his traumatic childhood experience. Eventually, He drinks himself into a stupor and at the age of 61, and on July 2nd commits suicide. His fears, his depression, and a severe addiction to alcohol all had gotten ahold of him, and eventually made him believe that he had nothing else to live for (Biography Channel 1). Ernest Hemingway was one of the most influential authors of his time. Whose literature and life was swayed by a traumatic childhood, a dreadful mother, and a manipulated mentality.

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