Biography of Earnest Hemingway

Early Years
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois.
His father Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a physician, and his
mother, Grace Hall-Hemingway, was a musician. Both were well-
educated and well-respected in the conservative community of Oak
Park. They were strong and each had a total conviction and
enthusiasm to teach Ernest their own ideals: His mother son one side
taught him culture and took him to operas, concerts and art galleries
and his father, on the other, was rugged and taught him outdoor life,
how to use an axe, a gun, and to be afraid of nothing. He was brought
up in an intensely religious atmosphere, was educated in public school
and involved in many writing activities such as the school newspaper.

Adulthood
Hemingway worked at a Kansas newspaper for a short time after
high school graduation, then he committed to joining the fighting in
World War I. Though being rejected for military service, he volunteered
with the Red Cross and became an ambulance driver in Italy. In 1918
Hemingway was wounded and sent to a hospital in Milan, Italy. He
returned to America after recovering from his war wounds. Prevented
from achieving his first goal of being a war 'hero' - fulfilling his father's
teachings of being a strong, dominant, fighting man, afraid of nothing,
he turned to his mother's loves - culture and began to write. He
became a reporter, first for American newspapers, then Canadian.
Then he sailed to France on assignment and found fellow authors in
Paris that encouraged him to write non-journalistic pieces and follow
cosmopolitan culture  At that time, America had become a great
place to “go into some area of business” and it was devoid of
cosmopolitan culture, so when he came to Paris-centre of Europe’s
cosmopolitan cultures, he found literary freedom and a cosmopolitan
way of life and changed his country's style of writing from Victorian to
modern.
Hemingway's first book, In Our Time (1923), was viewed as the
beginning of Hemingway's highly influential style, which would make
an indelible mark on 20th century prose fiction. He followed it up with
the 1926 publication of The Sun Also Rises, which won him
international acclaim. A tale about disillusioned expatriates in Paris
who escape their ennui with drinking, brawling, and lovemaking, it
became the bible of those whom Gertrude Stein christened "the lost
generation." This gave rise to Hemingway as the leader of the "lost
generation." Because of this novel's popularity, the term, "The Lost
Generation" is the enduring term that has stayed associated with
writers of the 1920's.
 After that, He continued to write, publishing another successful
novel, A Farewell to Arms, in 1929. In this period, he spent much of his
free time traveling and in 1937 his passion for Spain compelled him to
work as a correspondent to document the civil war. From his
experience in the Spanish Civil War came Hemingway's great
novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), which, in detailing an incident in
the war, argues for human brotherhood.
Later Years
Hemingway worked as a journalist during World War II. He
witnessed many battles and was involved in the liberation of Paris from
Nazi forces. After the war ended, Hemingway returned to the home in
Cuba. He wrote many pieces, but most were considered inferior to his
earlier works.
In 1952, Hemingway published his most successful story, The Old
Man and the Sea, which was an appropriate conclusion for his career.
The story helped him to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He
employed a new technique “The iceberg theory” by creating a surface
story from which often the main story was omitted, or was merely
hinted at. The meaning of a piece is not meant to be immediately
evident from the surface story, because the crux of the story lies below
the surface.
In 1960, Fidel Castro's revolution drove Hemingway from Cuba to
Ketchum, Idaho. He fell into deep depression and suffered from
paranoia, alcoholism, and numerous physical ailments. But his medical
treatment to overcome his mental problems did not work and he found
his memory had gone and he could not even write to appease himself.
There was no other choice than to end his life. On July 2, 1961,
Hemingway committed suicide with a shotgun at his home in Ketchum,
Idaho.
Marriages
Hemingway was married four times, divorced three times and
had three sons. His marriages often appear as nothing more than a
footnote in an essay of his life. Considering he led such an
extraordinary existence, his marriages are often considered a minor
point in his overall story.
Work

192 Three Stories and Ten 193 Winner take Nothing (Short
3 Poems (Short Stories) 3 Stories)
192 In Our Time (Short Stories) 193 Green Hills of Africa (Novel)
5 5
192 The Torrents of 193 To Have and Have Not (Novel)
6 Spring (Novel) 7
192 The Sun Also Rises (Novel) 194 For Whom the Bell
6 0 Tolls (Novel)
192 Men Without Women 194 Men at War (Edited Anthology)
7 (Short Stories) 2
192 A Farewell to Arms (Novel) 195 Across the River and into the
9 0 Trees (Novel)
193 The Fifth Column and the 195 The Old Man and the Sea
0 First Forty-Nine 2 (Novel)
Stories (Short Stories)
193 Death in the
2 Afternoon (Novel)

Writing style
Hemingway pioneered a new style of writing that is almost
commonplace today. He did away with all the florid prose of the 19th
century Victorian era and replaced it with a lean, clear prose based on
action rather than reflection. He chose words sparingly, avoided using
adjectives, and trusted the readers to understand the meaning of his
prose. He tended to not tell the readers about how the characters in
his stories feel or think and let them develop their own ideas about the
background or intentions of the characters by employing the “iceberg
theory” in his writing. So he would leave out essential information of
the story under the belief that omission can sometimes add strength to
a narrative. It was a style of subtlety which contrasted greatly (and in a
way enhanced) the themes he wrote about war, blood sports like
bullfighting or boxing, crime, etc. It is hard to find anyone writing today
who doesn't owe a debt of influence to Hemingway.
In Hemingway’s work the meaning of the lost generation is not
the generation that is lost in the sense that it is ruined and destroyed
but the generation that is unable to find the way and which is in the
quest of values after the World War I. It World War I undercut
traditional notions of morality, faith, and justice. No longer able to rely
on the traditional beliefs that gave life meaning, the men and women
who experienced the war became psychologically and morally lost, and
they wandered aimlessly in a world that appeared meaningless. And
“The sun also rises” was an important to note that Hemingway was the
leader of the "lost generation”. He implies these ideas through his portrayal
of the characters’ emotional and mental lives. These stand in stark
contrast to the characters’ surface actions. The characters’ constant
carousing did not make them happy. Very often, their merrymaking
was joyless and driven by alcohol. At best, it allowed them not to think
about their inner lives or about the war. Although they spent nearly all
of their time partying in one way or another, they remained sorrowful
or unfulfilled. Hence, their drinking and dancing were just a futile
distraction, a purposeless activity characteristic of a wandering,
aimless life.

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