Who is Ernest Hemingway?

EARLY LIFE

Born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Miller Hemingway was the second of six children born to Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and Grace Hall Hemingway, a music teacher. Ernest enjoyed an adventurous boyhood, fishing, hunting and camping in the woods of North Michigan where his family owned a house. Ernest attended Oak Park High School where he excelled in classes, particularly English. He participated in boxing, track, water polo and football, in addition to editing and writing for the school newspaper, yearbook and literary magazine. Upon his graduation in 1917, Ernest worked for the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter for six months. The Star’s style guide “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative,” would form a foundation for his future writing efforts.

WORLD WAR I

In 1918, Ernest volunteered to serve as an ambulance driver in Italy. He was severely wounded while delivering postcards to soldiers. He endured several surgeries and a six month recuperation in Milan. It was while in hospital that he fell in love with a nurse seven years his senior whom he hoped to marry, until she became engaged to an Italian officer. Ernest was devastated by the rejection. He returned to the States and spent the summer with friends camping in Michigan. Then he resumed his career as a journalist with the Toronto Star Weekly. While traveling in Chicago for a story, he met Elizabeth Hadley Richardson and they married in 1921. Ernest was appointed foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and the newlyweds moved to Paris.

PARIS

Ernest covered the Greco-Turkish war for the Toronto Star and he wrote travel pieces including topics like hot fishing spots in Europe and bullfighting. He also forged friendships with a group of expatriate artists also known as the “Lost Generation.” The group included writers such as Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Max Eastman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the painters Miro and Picasso and more. Their relationships had an indelible impact on his writing and ideology. The 1920s were extremely productive writing years. Ernest became a father in 1923 and simultaneously quit his position at the Star and devoted himself completely to writing for publication. In 1925 Hadley and Ernest took their annual trip to Pamplona for the running of the bulls. It would inspire his first critically acclaimed best seller, The Sun also Rises published in 1927. That same year he divorced Hadley and married Pauline Pfeffer, a contributor to Vogue and Vanity Fair. When Pauline became pregnant they moved to Key West where Patrick was born in 1928. Ernest still continued to travel extensively through Europe to gather material for his writing.

KEY WEST

Hemingway continued to write producing what many critics still feel is the best novel ever written about WWI. A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929 and solidified Hemingway’s reputation as one of the greatest writers of his generation. The 1930s would see the publication of Hemingway’s bible on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932), a recount of his African safari in Green Hills of Africa (1935) and two famous short stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936) and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936). In 1937, Hemingway ventured to Spain to support the loyalists and observed the Spanish Civil War firsthand. His experiences as a war correspondent for the Alliance would inspire his other great war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. In 1940 he married fellow war correspondent Martha Ellis Gelhorn. It was a short-lived marriage that bitterly ended five years later. He married final wife Mary Welsh Monks, a Time Magazine correspondent in 1946. For the next fourteen years, the couple lived in Hemingway’s Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm) in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba.

CUBA

In addition to hunting expeditions in Africa and Wyoming, Hemingway developed a passion for deep-sea fishing in the waters off Key West, the Bahamas, and Cuba. He also armed his fishing boat, the Pilar, and monitored with his crew Nazi activities and their submarines in that area during World War II. His 1940 purchase of Finca Vigia, outside Havana, Cuba created a paradise for his undisciplined bunch of cats. Ernest’s hard lifestyle of travel, excessive drink, and fine eating took its toll on his health. By the 1940s he began to hear voices in his head, he was overweight, had hypertension and showed signs of cirrhosis of the liver. His first novel in a decade, Across the River and into the Trees was poorly received, but his next, the allegorical novella The Old Man and the Sea restored his fame.

The protagonist is an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who finally catches a giant marlin after weeks of disappointments. It is a long protracted battle. As he returns to the harbor, the sharks eat the fish, lashed to his boat. The model for Santiago was a Cuban fisherman, Gregorio Fuentes, who died in January 2002 at the age of 104. Fuentes had served as the captain of Hemingway’s boat Pilar in the late 1930s and was occasionally his tapster. Hemingway was awarded a 1953 Pulitzer Prize and 1954 Nobel Prize for his short novel, cementing his place as godfather of American literature. Although he would live for another seven years before committing suicide, his health deteriorated greatly due to several accidents and perhaps a genetic predisposition to depression.

Hemingway’s literature remains significant because of its enduring human themes, innovative style, and his colorful persona. He also was adept at describing life as it was not, never settling on a happy ending because life is too complex and layered to produce a contrived ending. Because Ernest was unafraid to explore the tragedies of life, death and love he still has timeless appeal.

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE APPLIES TO AUTHORS TOO

As active readers we use our background knowledge to connect to a text. Ernest Hemingway used his background knowledge to write his novels, poems, and short stories. The themes he chose to address in his novels also mimicked themes he wrestled with during his lifetime. For example, he used his experiences as one of the expatriates in Paris in the 1920's to write The Sun Also Rises. The themes seemed to center around drinking, hanging out in cafes, and WWI, just as he did in his own life. In The Green Hills of Africa, the story was based on a big game hung. Hemingway was known as an experienced game hunter. While he was a correspondent for the Spanish Civil War he was inspired to write For Whom the Bell Tolls. During that time one of his friends committed suicide because of the war. His father also committed suicide during that time.

His life experiences definitely connected him to the character of Santiago and the themes in The Old Man and the Sea. In The Old Man and the Sea, the themes of kill or be killed, pride, bravery and honor take precedence. Around the time the novel was written, in the 1950s, Hemingway had settled into his villa in Cuba, fishing on his boat named Pilar. He was intrigued by Hispanic life and that is a straight connection between his novel and his life. Considering this novel was his Nobel Prize winner in the field of literature, it's not difficult to understand why he chose the themes he did. He had already experienced several wars, battled with the demons of his father's and friend's suicides, and became an expert fisherman. These experiences tested his own theory of what it meant to be a great man with a lot of pride and honor.

In the novel, Santiago has a kill or be killed attitude, as does the marlin. In order to measure greatness, Santiago knew he had to defeat the fish after a long battle. He viewed the death of the marlin as a prize, not only to himself but to the marlin. As I was researching Hemingway, I read about his experiences deep sea fishing. He was quoted as saying he was giving the fish he killed "the gift of death." The fish died with honor battling in a natural setting. Santiago had the same attitude in the novel. HE was gifting the marlin with a brave fight to the end. Santiago and the marlin were both creatures of nature and, as a man Santiago was not to be defeated.

In the end of the novel, Santiago does not return to shore with his "prize" but he still has honor. To him and Hemingway, honor is not measured by victory, but by pride. Santiago knew what he'd accomplished out at sea and did not need to have a fish to show the others just how far he went.

Books by Ernest Hemingway

Three Stories and Ten Poems. Paris: Contact Publishing Co., 1923.

in our time. Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1924.

In Our Time. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925.

The Torrents of Spring. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.

The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.

Men Without Women. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927.

A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929.

Death in the Afternoon. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932.

Winner Take Nothing. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933.

Green Hills of Africa. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.

To Have and Have Not. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937.

The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938.

For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.

Across the River and into the Trees. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950.

The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

A Moveable Feast. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964.

Islands in the Stream. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.

The Dangerous Summer. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985.

The Garden of Eden. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.

True at First Light. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

Under Kilimanjaro. Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2005.