Ergle 1

Chelsey Ergle.

Ms. McKenzie

Advanced American Lit.

3 May 2017

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed (Dreher).

These immortal words breathe life into a writers lungs. Stringing words together with the blood

flowing through your veins shows that there is life imbedded into writing. Hemingway shows

that writing is life explained and what you live for can be as simple as typing words on a blank

sheet of paper. A pen to a paper is how Hemingway lived in the world, made his impact, and

breathed air into those following behind in the shadows of his footsteps for many generations to

come, to write, along behind those inspirational words.

His soon to be legendary career began with a simple high school course of journalism for

the schools newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula. The experience of a newspaper or two, Kansas City

Star included, molded his blunt and man-of-few-words personality that shines through in his

literary works. A writer should write what he has to say, he said in his Nobel speech that shows

the very raw sentence structure that we read in his works that is alive in how he speaks (Heller).

Going through his early career, it is well known that he was emotionally fragile and a

perfectionist; therefore resulting in all he had to show of a days work in beautiful Paris was a

single sentence (Heller). Hemingways habits of sketching, known to double as a diary entry

he worked on during his spare time, later as he realized the quantity of material in hand, became

his first and most successful novel, The Sun Also Rises (Heller). Perception in his very first

novel showed as he had captured personal wording directly in time (Heller). This lead the way to
 Ergle 2

showing us how we all perceive the world spinning around us, capturing our emotions that

usually get lost in thought and in time.

Instead of the experience shaping the words like any other, stereotypical writer would

bleed onto a page, Hemingway became more known to be using his voice to string it together

(Heller). His writing style is legendary because of the complexity he could bring to very bland,

every day, conversational words. The way he explains life transfers from his blood straight into

the readers very own veins (Heller).

The undeniable way that Hemingway could transfer the ways of life as he described,

crazy, disorganized, and anything but perfect is the reason he is immortal. Written out as a theory,

he tells why he could teleport anything he desired into the minds of his readers. The Iceberg

Theory states that You can omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part

would strengthen the story and make people feel more than they understood (Headlee). In all

works published by Ernest Hemingway, he clears the way for the theory to be expressed. Time

expanded his works as he went on to write long after first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Even

through expansion of knowledge, use of words, and sentence structure, the compulsiveness of his

editing and simplicity later became elaborate and committed to near self-parody (Poetry

Foundation). He devoted his life to the scratches on paper to become something of a depiction of

time and what legends are made of. In this way, the ceasing of his literary works are what caused

his untimely death (Biography).

If inspiration exists, his blood created something. If air could be breathed into lungs, the

gust of wind would fill to the brim. The imprints into the earth that was his, became a shadow to

follow, to write, along behind those inspirational words. That is, if inspiration exists.
 Ergle 3

Citations

Heller, Nathan. "How Hemingway Became the Literary Equivalent of the Nike Swoosh."

Slate Magazine. N.p., 16 Mar. 2012.

"Ernest Hemingway." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017.

Dreher, Beth. "12 Inspiring Ernest Hemingway Quotes | Reader's Digest." Reader's

Digest. Reader's Digest, 09 Feb. 2017.

Headlee, Amanda. "The Iceberg Theory of Writing." The Sarcastic Muse. N.p., 17 June

2015.

"Ernest M. Hemingway." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation,

Dreher, Beth. "12 Inspiring Ernest Hemingway Quotes | Reader's Digest." Reader's Digest.

Reader's Digest, 09 Feb. 2017.

"Ernest Hemingway." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017.