Ernest Hemingway

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Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway based his writing on real life experiences concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park Illinois. One of Hemmingway’s first works was Indian Camp published in 1925. In many ways Indian Camp shows the relationship between Hemingway and his father. Hemingway then digs deeper into the past to create the love between Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley, in A Farwell To Arms. Hemingway was later able to reflect his disgust of home life when he portrayed himself as the character Krebs in Soldiers Home, the character had problems with lies, women, and at home.
In the story Indian Camp the main character Nick and his father resemble the relationship between Hemingway and his father. Nick is a teenage boy that travels across the lake to an Indian Village. He watches his father, who is a doctor; deliver a baby by caesarian section to an Indian woman. Nicks father discovers that the baby’s father has committed suicide. Nick and his father have a conversation discussing death, which brings the story to an end. Hemingway grew up in a middle class suburb, where his parents Ed and Grace raised him. Ed was a doctor who took his son along on visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians (Waldhorn 7).
When Hemingway was young, his father made him have his tonsils removed by another doctor. The doctor did not use anesthetic while performing the surgery. Hemingway always held it against his dad for having his tonsils taken out, with out an anesthetic (Myers 48). Hemingway portrayed his father as the doctor in Indian Camp. In the story Nick asked his father about giving the Indian woman something to stop her screaming during the caesarian. Nicks father states “No. I haven’t any anesthetic…but her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important” (Tessitore 18).
Hemingway uses the conversation between Nick and his father, concerning the suicide of the Indian, to show his distaste for his own father’s suicide.
Nick: “Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”
Father: “I don’t know Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”
Nick: “Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”
Father: “Not very many, Nick…”
Nick: “Is dying hard, Daddy?”
Father: “No, I think its pretty easy, Nick...

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...d his lost love, he produced the character Krebs who was troubled by female companionship. Krebs wanted a woman but was not willing to work for one. Krebs considered relationships too complicated and painful. Hemingway learned this from previous relationships especially the relationship between Hemingway and Kurowsky. Krebs who lived with his parents after the war continued to do nothing around the house. Tensions grew between him and his parents and Krebs was eventually driven out.
Hemingway was almost identical to Krebs in the story. Hemingway is heart broken after the war because of Kurowsky. Tension had also grown between Hemingway and his mother. “Shortly after Hemingway’s twenty- first birthday… his mother gave him an ultimatum that he had to find a real job or move out of the house” (Waldhorn 9). Both Hemingway and Krebs moved out and got jobs.
Hemingway wrote form his past experiences form life. In Indian Camp it showed his relationship with his father. By leaving his childhood and entering the war, he was able to come up with the character Henry and Barkley in A Farwell In Arms. When returning home from the war Hemingway used Krebs in Soldier’s Home to express his distast

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