Ben Watson
English Research Paper
Mr. Walrath
January 3, 2015 “You are all a lost generation.” When Gertrude Stein uttered those words in conversation, she was speaking of an entire generation of American expatriates living abroad after WWI. Out of this war came many great writers of the twentieth century, among them the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Elliot. But the man who perhaps embodied this group the best was Ernest Hemingway. While dealing with the traumas of his generation, chief among them WWI, his unique writing in his lean, to-the-point style vaulted him to fame. This is part of the reason why Hemingway was the greatest writer of the 20th Century. On July 21, 1899, Ernest was born to Clarence and Grace Hemingway of Oak
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Due to vision problems, namely a bad left eye, he wasn’t able to enlist (thelostgeneration.com). He then, however, found out about the Red Cross requiring volunteers to be ambulance drivers, he made no hesitation in signing up (thelostgeneration.com). He was stationed in Milan in early June of 1918, and acted as an ambulance driver until July 8, 1918, the day upon which he was gravely wounded (thelostgeneration.com). Though the details are still debated upon, it is fairly widely believed that after taking over 200 pieces of shrapnel, and several bullets to the legs, Hemingway still managed to carry an Italian soldier to a first aid station (thelostgeneration.com). He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery for these actions, actions that led to him being hospitalized in Milan for some time, in which he met a nurse by the name of Agnes von Kurowsky (Bio.com). She originally accepted his proposal of marriage, before leaving Hemingway for another man (Bio.com). Both the devastation of Kurowsky leaving him, and the horrors of his short time in the war would greatly affect his later writing, namely, the novel, A Farewell to Arms …show more content…
Early on, he met some of the people that would help him become the great writer that he was, including Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein (thelostgeneration.com). He spent his first two years in Paris (1921-1923) making a name for himself as a reporter, and novice fiction writer before his wife got pregnant (thelostgeneration.com). In October of 1923, he and his wife moved back to the U.S. in order to have their baby, due to hospitals being better in America then (thelostgeneration.com). Wasting little time getting back to Paris in January of 1924 (thelostgeneration.com). This time around was when Hemingway really established himself. He wrote several books including In Our Time, and The Sun Also Rises, which some believe to be his most important work (nobelprize.org). All this success in his professional life, however, led to problems with his personal life. In 1927 he divorced Hadley, likely due to his affair with one Pauline Pfeiffer, who would soon become his second wife (Bio.com). By 1928, having married Pfeiffer, Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida with his new wife, leaving Paris behind
Stewart, Matthew C. "Ernest Hemingway and World War I: Combatting Recent Psychobiographical Reassessments, Restoring the War." Papers on Language & Literature 36.2 (2000): 198-221.
Hemingway plainly writes, “. I was given the medal because I was an American” (Hemingway). This short sentence captures the feeling the rest of the world felt about America in World War I. Americans had come into the war towards the end with great enthusiasm and cockiness that European soldiers had lost years ago. The war greatly impacts him and changes the way he thinks about his daily life.
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
A Farewell to Arms has many similarities between Henry and Hemingway; the first noticeable one is that Henry, like Hemingway, was an American in the Italian army. Henry was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, just like Hemingway was. Thomas Putnam stated in his article on Hemingway that "during the First World War, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in Italy as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. In June 1918, while running a mobile canteen dispensing chocolate and cigarettes for soldiers, he was wounded by Austrian mortar fire." This is comparable to Henry’s experiences in A Farewell to Arms. Anders Hallengren drew the connection that both men, real and fictional, were one of the first Americans wounded in World War I. "There is a parallel in Hemingway's life, connected with the occasion when he was seriously wounded at midnight on July 8, 1918, at Fossalta di Piave in Italy and nearly died. He was the first American to be wounded in Italy during World War I." A...
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star after graduating from high school in 1917. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver in the Italian infantry and was wounded just before his 19th birthday. Hospitalized, Hemingway fell in love with an older nurse. Later, while working in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, he became involved with the expatriate literary and artistic circle surrounding Gertrude Stein. During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway served as a correspondent on the loyalist side. He fought in World War II and then settled in Cuba in 1945. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. After his expulsion from Cuba by the Castro regime, he moved to Idaho. In his life, Hemingway married four times and wrote numerous essays, short stories and novels. The effects of Hemingway's lifelong depressions, illnesses and accidents caught up with him. In July 1961, he committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. What remains, are his works, the product of a talented author.
World War I had the highest casualty rate, the greatest cost, and the farthest reaching consequences of any preceding war in history. One of these consequences was the desolation of traditional values in the soldiers that survived the war. This loss created what was known as the “Lost Generation,” the generation that came of age during the war and due to the traumatizing experiences they faced they were left confused and aimless. From this generation emerged many notable writers who portrayed varying viewpoints and aspects of the Lost Generation. The preeminent writers of this time were F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Two of their most widely known novels, The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises respectively; reflect the author’s experience in WWI, and despite their seemingly contradicting depiction of early 1920’s life, both are stories that illustrate the Lost Generation.
Earnest Hemingway’s work gives a glimpse of how people deal with their problems in society. He conveys his own characteristics through his simple and “iceberg” writing style, his male characters’ constant urge to prove their masculinity.
During his life, Ernest Hemingway has used his talent as a writer in many novels, nonfiction, and short stories, and today he is recognized to be maybe "the best-known American writer of the twentieth century" (Stories for Students 243). In his short stories Hemingway reveals "his deepest and most enduring themes-death, writing, machismo, bravery, and the alienation of men in the modern world" (Stories for Students 244).
In conclusion, Hemingway utilizes character description and symbolism in order to present the aimless destruction of the “Lost Generation”. In the early portion of the 1920’s, Gertrude Stein told Ernest Hemingway, “All of you young people who served in the War, you are the lost generation.” (Shi 987) After World War I, those who served returned to a world that had lost morals, ways of life and a traditional status quo. Consequently, young soldiers were forced to reconcile with a world that seemingly lacked meaning. To compensate, the generation turned to alcohol, sexuality and tainted love affairs.
The lost generation was a group of writers who gained much popularity and grew in their literary expansion post WWI from 1918 through 1930. (Lost Generation) Prior to enlisting in the war, Americans were promised an upbringing of patriotism and honor for serving one’s country. They found returning home that the honor in which they believed to be fighting for was nothing more than witnessing innocent men killed. Upon returning back from WWI the image of patriotism and honor faded when the realism of the after effects of the war and the consequence became apparent in our young men. World War I destroyed the virtuous envision young American men had towards their country when they returned home after witnessing friends dying in battle and many returning home in a state that left them both physically and emotionally impaired. (The Lost Generation: American Writers of the 1920's)
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899. He was a writer who started his career with a newspaper office in Kansas City when he was seventeen. When the United States got involved in the First World War, Hemingway joined with a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. During his service, he was wounded, and was decorated by the Italian Government. Upon his return to the United States, he was employed by Canadian and American newspapers as a reporter, and sent back to Europe to cover the Greek Revolution. In the 1920’s, Hemingway was a member of expatriate Americans in Paris. In one writing of Hemingway, it reads, “In the nearly sixty two years of his life that followed he forged a literary reputation unsurpassed in the twentieth century” (LostGeneration). During this time, he wrote some of his most important and successful works of literature. Ernest Hemingway is one of the most influential writers of his time. One biography of him said, “His novels and short fictions have left an indelible mark on the literary production of the United States and the world” (TheEuropeanGraduateSchool).
Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) has been considered the essential prose of the Lost Generation. Its theme of alienation and detachment reflected the attitudes of its time.
The birth of American writer Ernest Miller Hemingway on July 21st, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois occurred during the progressive era and mere months before the Philippine-American war. Raised in the conservative suburbs and vacationing in northern Michigan the young Hemingway enjoyed the outdoors at his family’s cabin and his experiences there led him to become a sportsman partaking in fishing, hunting, and thrill-seeking. His initial writing skills were divulged when he began writing for his high school newspaper “Trapeze and Tabula” where he took interest in the sports section which would later play a large role in his professional writings as his focus on masculinity and social theories.
Earnest Hemingway's works began appearing in the mid 1920's. He appeared in the time of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others of the sort (Salter). Having befriended them, he later "broke with almost all his literary friends" (Salter). Hemingway's writing was so highly acclaimed that he was considered the voice of his generation. In relation to his works, what should be noted of his biographical background is a short list of rather important events. Hemingway's whole life, he seemed to be constantly depressed. His father was "a highly principled doctor", and both his parents were very "religious and strict" in his upbringing (Salter).He traveled to Europe and in 1918 where “Hemingway volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver to do service on the front lines of World war I” (Akers). When he assisted in the war in Italy, he had been severely injured aiding an injured man (Akers).According to Akers his experiences deeply impacted him and his work greatly. Another fact to keep in mind is his unsuccessful attempts at maintaining love, seen through his various marriages and divorces. “When he married Hadley Richardson in 1921 and the couple move...
The post World War II period had an enormous impact on American society and literature. Many important events occurred and affected directly the movement of American literature. During this period, American Literature reflected the movement of disillusionment, and portrayed the lost generation. Many WWII writers adapted new approaches and philosophies in writing their novels. They portrayed the lost generation, an anti-war perspective and explored the true meaning of “war hero”.