Ernest Hemingway

ERNEST HEMINGWAYThe Author and his Narrative Technique

WHY STUDY HEMINGWAY? Hemingway marks a new era in American

writing, the modern era, and is often considered the American writer

Hemingway makes extensive use of his own experiences in his fiction, so to fully understand (and enjoy) his work, a little knowledge of his life and narrative technique is needed

In class we will study a number of stories from the collection of short stories In Our Time (1925)

OAK PARK, HEMINGWAY’S BIRTHPLACE

OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

Born 21 July 1899 in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb Oak Park protected its children against

corruptive forces until they were 18 – so no uncensored movies, boxing matches, gambling, smoking, drinking etc. And no information about birth control, venereal diseases etc.

Oak Park curfew: 8 P.M. in autumn and winter, 9 P.M. in spring and summer. Later than that you had to be escorted by an adult

Village values: going to church, charity, musical evenings, public lectures etc.

Unlike most other authors, Hemingway never wrote about his hometown

WINDEMERE COTTAGE, MICHIGAN

WINDEMERE, MICHIGAN The year Hemingway was born his family

bought a cottage on Walloon Lake in Michigan

Hemingway, his parents, four sisters and a brother spent every summer there until Hemingway was 19

Here Hemingway learnt to appreciate nature and was taught how to fish and hunt by his father

Hemingway spent the summers camping out, hiking and being with friends from Horton Bay

He got aquinted with the last of the Ojibway Indians who lived in the woods close to Horton Bay

Many of Hemingway’s stories are set in this area and some of his characters resemble ’real’ people

CLARENCE HEMINGWAY (1871-1928)

PARENTS His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway (Dr. Ed),

was a doctor and out of a respected and well-known family

He loved outdoor life and shared this passion with Ernest

He was a devoted father and husband until illness made him withdraw from society

Clarence met Grace Hall, at first she was unsure about whether to choose marriage or a career

"When Ed was courting the rather reluctant Grace, he promised that she would never have to do housework and kept his word. He always prepared the children's breakfast and served Grace in bed. He bought the groceries, did most of the cooking, took care of the laundry and managed the servants despite his medical responsibilities." (Jeffrey Meyers, biographer)

GRACE AND CLARENCE, 1896

PARENTS Grace and Clarence had six children, Ernest

was the second. When Ernest was born Clarence blew a horn on the porch to announce the birth of his first son

He suffered from depression and diabetes and was worried about the family’s financial future and shot himself in 1928. Ernest blamed his mother for his death

THE HEMINGWAY FAMILY, 1916

PARENTS Grace Hall-Hemingway (1872-1951) was a great

opera singer, she auditioned for The Metro-politan Opera in New York and was offered a contract but decided to marry Clarence instead

Grace was very religious (Protestant) She was a feminist and a member of a club

demanding suffrage for women – her mother Adelaide was the director of the club

Grace wanted equality and kept her maiden name in marriage, hence the last name Hall-Hemingway

She gave up her career as an opera singer, but continued working as a music teacher and helped support the family with her income

She used her inheritance to build the family a new home in 1906, still in Oak Park

PARENTS Hemingway thought his mother failed to be

feminine which led to his father’s lack of masculinity – his father was treated for hysteria although it was considered a women’s disease

He hated his mother and blamed her for his father’s death: ”I hate her guts…she forced my father to suicide…I will not see her and she knows she can never come here”

He refused to attend her funeral in 1951 because ”she would be as dangerous dead as most women alive, I know I’d never go to her funeral without being afraid she was booby trapped”

WRITING When Hemingway graduated from high

school he was too young to enlist in the Army Instead he got a job as cub reporter at the

newspaper the Kansas City Star through some relatives

At the Star he learned to write about small events for small-town people using simple, declarative sentences

He quickly adopted the Star writing style: short first paragraphs, vigorous language, no superfluous words, few adjectives and no worn-out phrases.

He continued working as a journalist and war correspondent all his life

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE This style of objective, unemotional and

minimalistic writing influenced Hemingway greatly and is found all through In Our Time

This technique is often referred to as the iceberg technique or tip of the iceberg as Hemingway shows only 10% - the remaining 90% he has deliberately omitted, just like you only see one tenth of an iceberg.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE Mastering this technique takes a lot of editing

and Hemingway spent a lot of time revising and taking out everything that wasn’t absolutely essential to the story

All words about feelings are left out, but still you feel the pain and tension when you read them, this is due to Hemingway’s view that “if a writer could accurately describe the facts that cause emotion, it was unnecessary for him to describe emotion”

Recurring themes in Hemingway’s work are: masculinity, femininity, pain (mental and physical), growing up, war, life, death, fishing, bullfigthing, light, darkness, childbirth, relationships, numbness, suppressed emotion – all things he knew about from his own life

EDITING AND REVISION

SYMBOLISM Hemingway makes heavy use of nature

symbolism, rain represents death, pain and despair in A Farewell to Arms for instance

Rain is also an important theme in Cat in the Rain where it has several symbolic meanings

In Indian Camp it is misty, indicating that we don’t see or know everything that goes on

In general there are a lot of double meanings in Hemingway’s work, and often more words are used in the same story for the same thing

In Cat in the Rain the American woman is both called a woman and a girl, and the cat is also called a kitten – so watch out for choice of words!

THE ARMY Hemingway hadn’t forgotten about the Army, but

failed to enroll due to bad eyesight Instead he volunteered as an ambulance driver for

the American Red Cross in Italy in 1918 After barely a month he was severely wounded by

an Austrian trench mortar and spent 5 months recovering in an Italian military hospital

His nurse was an American woman named Agnes von Kurowsky with whom Hemingway fell in love

He thought they were engaged to be married, but Agnes broke off whatever their relationship might have been saying she was much too old for him (she was 8 years his senior)

She was one of the few women who turned Hemingway down

AGNES VON KUROWSKY, HIS FIRST LOVE

THE ARMY AND WRITING The setting and opening of the novel A

Farewell to Arms draws heavily on his experience with Agnes although the ending is greatly changed

Just like many of Hemingway’s stories are set in Michigan, many are set in war situations in Italy or Spain (the Spanish Civil War)

Hemingway returned to America as a decorated war hero

HEMINGWAY, 1918

MARRIAGES Hemingway’s first wife was Hadley Richardson

(married 1921-1927), they had a son John Hadley was not interested in feminism, but more

of a ”true woman” than a ”new woman” She was fragile, gentle and dependent – a born

follower. In short everything Hemingway’s mother wasn’t

Zelda Fitzgerald once said: ”I notice in your family you do everything Ernest wants”

Hemingway had ”a powerful desire to pay his own way – or to convince himself and others that he had done so”, still he let Hadley pay for their time in Paris

Hemingway was unfaithful to Hadley as he was to all his wives

HADLEY, ERNEST AND THEIR SON JOHN (BUMBY)

MARRIAGES Hemingway’s second wife was Pauline Pfeiffer

(married 1927-1940). They had two sons, Patrick and Gregory

Like Hadley, Pauline was a submissive woman who made Hemingway feel more masculine and strong because she was weak

Pauline was devoted to him during their entire marriage and ”made her husband her life’s work”

By choosing these women Hemingway tried to avoid the mistake he saw in his own parents’ marriage

From 1936 Hemingway had an affair with Martha Gellhorn, Pauline knew about it

PAULINE AND ERNEST

MARRIAGES His third wife was Martha Gellhorn (married

1940-1944) She was a journalist and war correspondent

like Hemingway and a ”truly ambitious woman”

Martha was full of courage and Hemingway admired her deeply, later he also resented her independence, ambition and determination because these qualities reminded him of his mother

He felt unable to write when she wasn’t there and wanted her to give up her job

Martha on the other hand felt confined, bored and ill-used when she was at home

MARTHA GELLHORN AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY

MARRIAGES When she worked in Italy and Africa he kept

sending her cables saying: ”Are you a war correspondent or a wife in my bed?”

He started drinking heavily and decided to punish her

He offered to work for the magazine she had worked for for years – and as each newspaper was only allowed one war correspondent she couldn’t work at the front anymore

Hemingway went to London by plane (leaving Martha to go by a ship carrying explosives and no lifeboats)

He had a car accident and started dating Mary, when Martha finally arrived she said that ”she considered herself free and separate from him”

MARRIAGES His fourth and last wife was Mary Welsh

(married 1946-) Whereas Martha didn’t stand up to any ill-

treatment and refused the submissive female role, Mary was the old-fashioned woman who endured all Hemingway’s whims

During their marriage his paranoia and depressions increased and he became more and more abusive to Mary

Also his view on women became increasingly patronizing (he generally called women ”daughter”)

She considered divorce, but stayed with him to his death in1961

MARY AND ERNEST

GREAT WORK Hemingway wrote In Our Time and The Sun also

Rises, among others, when he lived in Paris in the 1920s with his wife Hadley and writers like James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald

He went on safari in Africa in 1933 which gave rise to Green Hills of Africa and The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The Spanish Civil War, during which he worked as a war correspondent, also inspired him to write the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. In Spain he was also introduced to bullfighting

In 1952 The Old Man and the Sea was published, critics and readers alike loved it and in 1953 he won the Pulitzer Prize

In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

SUICIDE

In his last years Hemingway drank heavily and had serious depressions for which he was treated with shock therapy

In 1961 he attempted suicide twice and was re-admitted to hospital

On 2 July Hemingway committed suicide by shooting his brains out and thereby ended his life like his father

HEMINGWAY’S TOMB IN KETCHUM,IDAHO