Ernest Hemingway : Life and Work

Name: Sophia Almeida

of Michigan. He attended Oak Park High School where he execelled in his classes,
particularly English. He tried his hand at football and swimming, edited the school paper (the
Trapeze), and contributed pieces to the school’s literary magazine (the Tabula). After
graduating high school, Ernest traveled to Kansas City and worked as a cub reporter for The
Kansas City Star. In 1918, he began service as an ambulance driver for the Italian army, On
July 8, he was wounded at Fossalta on the Italian Piave while delivering chocolates,
cigarettes, and postcards to soldiers. He married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson on September
3 , 1921. The newlyweds soon entered the literary community of Paris, living off of Hadley’s
trust fund and Enrnest’s pay as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. The 1920's were
extremely productive writing years for Hemingway. Three Stories and Ten Poems was
published in 1923, In Our Time in 1925. In 1926, The Torrents of Spring and the widely
successful novel, The Sun Also Rises were published. A collection of short stories titled Men
Without Women followed in 1927. This year also signified the end of Hemingway's marriage
to Hadley and his subsequent marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer on May 10, 1927. Ernest and
Pauline would spend the majority of their years together at 907 Whitehead Street in Key
West, Florida. On December 6, 1928, Hemingway was dealt a devastating emotional blow as
his father, suffering from severe diabetes and concerned about his financial future, shot
himself.The 1920's were extremely productive writing years for Hemingway. Three Stories
and Ten Poems was published in 1923, In Our Time in 1925. In 1926, The Torrents of Spring
and the widely successful novel, The Sun Also Rises were published. A collection of short
stories titled Men Without Women followed in 1927. This year also signified the end of
Hemingway's marriage to Hadley and his subsequent marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer on May 10,
1927. Ernest and Pauline would spend the majority of their years together at 907 Whitehead
Street in Key West, Florida. On December 6, 1928, Hemingway was dealt a devastating
emotional blow as his father, suffering from severe diabetes and concerned about his financial
future, shot himself.
Hemingway continued to write producing what many critics still feel is the best novel ever
written about World War I. A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929 and solidified
Hemingway's reputation as one the greatest writers of his generation. The 1930's would see
the publication of Hemingway's bible on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932), a
recount of his African safari in Green Hills of Africa (1935) and two famous short stories,
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
(1936).
In the late 1930's, Hemingway ventured to Spain to give his encouragement to the Loyalists
fighting in the Spanish Civil War. His experiences as a war correspondent for the North
American Newspaper Alliance would inspire his other great war novel, For Whom the Bell
Tolls. Exactly one month after the 1940 publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
married fellow writer and war correspondent Martha Ellis Gellhorn. It was a marriage that
would last only five years. He married fourth and final wife Mary Welsh Monks on March
14, 1946. For the next fourteen years, the couple would live in Hemingway's Finca Vigía
(Lookout Farm) in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba.
After a disappointing reception of his 1950 novel, Across the River and into the Trees,
Hemingway rallied producing The Old Man and the Sea (1952), a short work that earned him
a 1953 Pulitzer Prize and ultimately the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. Physically unnerved
from two plane crashes earlier that year, Hemingway was unable to attend the prize
ceremonies. He would live another seven years.
On July 2, 1961, in his home in Ketchum, Idaho, Hemingway died of a self-inflicted shotgun
wound to the head. His wife Mary found him and relayed word of her husband's death to the
world. Ernest Hemingway was two and a half weeks shy of his sixty-second birthday. Three
sons and millions of loyal readers would preserve his memory. Hemingway redefined 20th
century literature from the time his pen touched the paper, and his influence is nearly the
standard today. From his work at the Kansas City Star, he learned to “Use Short Sentences.
Use short paragraphs,” thus putting an emphasis on compression, simplicity, and clarity.
Certainly, he used these ideas from that day forth, as he was later quoted in saying, “Those
were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them." As
illustrated in all of his works, Hemingway tossed aside the 19th century Victorian prose and
reshaped it into a clear, clean, and straight-to-the-point prose which focuses on action rather
than emotion.

The term “hard-boiled” is often used to describe Hemingway’s writing style, as it means “to
be unfeeling, callous, coldhearted, cynical, rough, obdurate, unemotional, without sentiment.”
To much of the reader’s amazement however, Hemingway is able to pack an indescribable
amount of power, originality, excitement, and even emotion into the concise, action-driven
prose. Thus, as only Hemingway himself can tell, it is quite accurate to say that only one-
eighth of the iceberg is above the surface. He believes that eliminating the content that is
apparent and the meaning that is obvious only strengthens your iceberg. As a result, each
reader is able to comprehend Hemingway’s prose as they see fit; for each reader, there can be
a completely different meaning altogether. It is this principle which has guided literature in an
“ideal fashion” that earned Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his mastery
of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the
influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."