Ernest Hemingway

Second Lecture
The life of Ernest Hemingway
Early Life and Career
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois. Clarence and Grace Hemingway raised their son in this conservative suburb of Chicago, but the family also spent a great deal of time in northern Michigan, where they had a cabin. It was there that the future sportsman learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors.In high school, Hemingway worked on his school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula, writing primarily about sports…etc
Military Experience
In 1918, Hemingway went overseas to serve in World War I as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army. For his service, he was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery, but soon sustained injuries that landed him in a hospital in Milan. Some literary critics believe that it was this near death experience that obsessed Hemingway with a continual fear of death and a need to test his courage that lasted the rest of his life…etc
Hemingway and The Last Generation
In Paris, Hemingway soon became a key part of what Gertrude Stein would famously call "The Lost Generation." With Stein as his mentor, Hemingway made the acquaintance of many of the great writers and artists of his generation, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce. Hemingway included the lost generation as an epigraph in his novel The Sun Also Rises. It is his break from traditional narrative that makes him unique. Sparse in language, and skilled in his use of silence, dialogue and action, Hemingway made deliberate choices to break from the flowery language of the past, the very language that defined a very different time…etc




His Realism
Hemingway is a realist and a naturalist .He adheres to fidelity to life.He believed that a novelist should depict “the actual”. He pictures his own experiences based on real observation and realizations . He enters into contemporary problems caused by the first world war .His events ,characters ,dialogues are real..etc
His Symbolism
Hemingway uses symbols in his novels ,in the old man and the sea ,the symbolism has a far deeper significance than in the early novels .The book is a representation of life as struggle against unconquerable forces of nature ,in which a kind of victory is possible .Santiago’s massage is that while a man may grow old and lose his luck ,he can still dare stick to the rules ,keep on striving even in the teeth of opposition and thus make his failure a thing to be proud of ,a kind of victory….etc
Hemingway’s Awards
Silver Medal of Military Valor, Italian Armed Forces (c. WWI)
Bronze Star, United States Armed Forces (1947)
Pulitzer Prize, The Old Man and the Sea (1953)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit (1954)
Nobel Prize for Literature (1954)
Top Reporter of the Last Hundred Years, Kansas City Star (1999)
Personal Struggles and Suicide
In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Even at this peak of his literary career, though, the burly Hemingway s body and mind were beginning to betray him. Recovering from various old injuries in Cuba, Hemingway suffered from depression and was treated for numerous conditions such as high blood pressure and liver disease.
He wrote A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his years in Paris, and retired permanently to Idaho. There he continued to battle with deteriorating mental and physical health.
Early on the morning of July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in his Ketchum home.