A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

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A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway discusses the theme of hunger throughout A moveable feast by exploring and describing the different types of hunger that he felt. He aims to explore this theme in the passage where he strolls with Hadley, and they stop to eat at the restaurant Michaud’s. Through repetition and use of unconventional detail and word choice, Hemingway shows that he has more than one type of hunger, and needs to differentiate between them. Hemingway strives to tell that hunger is a feeling that is deep within someone, that changes depending on the situation and varies in intensity and meaning. In order to stress the various types of hunger that he felt, Hemingway uses repetition. He uses this device often, as the word “hunger” appears frequently throughout the entire passage. Hemingway uses the word to stress the significance some the different meanings and leave the reader to use syntax to figure it out the correct meaning. He used the phrase, “I knew I was hungry in a simple way” to let the reader know that he was hungry only because he had not eaten (Hemingway 57). He was not hungry for life or for art; he just needed food to satisfy his craving. Hemingway describes the hunger as simple because its meaning is the denotative form of the word. The other types of hunger are sometimes difficult to decipher. When Hemingway questioned Hadley if he was truly hungry, Hadley responded, “There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more, But that’s gone now. Memory is hunger” (Hemingway 57). When Hemingway asked Hadley to describe and define his hunger, there is repetition of the word in unconventional settings. Hadley shared Hemingway’s view that there are different types of hunger and explains that springtime brings the kind that he feels as a writer. During the spring, nature begins to bloom and the weather begins to warm; this is prime material for Hemingway to write. He also repeated the word in other parts of the novel when he writes, “Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when you are hungry” (Hemingway 72). Many people would never imagine that hunger is healthy, yet Hemingway used this to play with the denotative form of the word. In this sentence, he uses an oxymoron of sorts to explore the contrast between literally being hunger and the writer’s hunger that he feels.

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