PROJECT WORK
MY FAVOURITE AUTHOR
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
2003
CONTENTS
• Introduction
• The aim of the Project Work
• The Project Work
My Favourite Author:
• Childhood
• World War I
• A soldier’s home
• The Paris years
• An unparalleled creative flurry
• Key West
• Cuba
• World War II
• The last days
• Denouement
• Conclusions.
CHILDHOOD
ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY WAS BORN AT EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON JULY
21, 1899 IN OAK PARK, ILLINOIS. IN THE NEARLY SIXTY-TWO YEARS OF HIS LIFE
THAT FOLLOWED HE FORGED A LITERARY REPUTATION UNSURPASSED IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY. IN DOING SO, HE ALSO CREATED A MYTHOLOGICAL HERO IN HIMSELF THAT
CAPTIVATED (AND AT TIMES CONFOUNDED) NOT ONLY SERIOUS LITERARY CRITICS BUT
THE AVERAGE MAN AS WELL. IN A WORD, HE WAS A STAR.
Born in the family home at 439 North Oak Park Avenue (now 339 N. Oak Park
Avenue), a house built by his widowed grandfather Ernest Hall, Hemingway
was the second of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway’s six children; he
had four sisters and one brother. He was named after his maternal
grandfather Ernest Hall and his great uncle Miller Hall.
[pic]
The Hemingway family: Ursula, Ernest and Marceline with parents, October
1903
Oak Park was a mainly Protestant, upper middle-class suburb of Chicago that
Hemingway would later refer to as a town of „wide lawns and narrow minds.“
Only ten miles from the big city, Oak Park was really much farther away
philosophically. It was basically a conservative town that tried to isolate
itself from Chicago’s liberal seediness. Hemingway was raised with the
conservative midwestern values of strong religion, hard work, physical
fitness and self-determination; if one adhered to these parameters, he was
taught and he would be ensured of success in whatever field he chose.
[pic]
Five year-old Ernest Hemingway trout fishing, July 1904
As a boy he was taught by his father to hunt and fish along the shores and
in the forests surrounding Lake Michigan. The Hemingways had a summerhouse
called Windemere on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, and the family would
spend the summer months there trying to stay cool. Hemingway would either
fish the different streams that ran into the lake, or would take the
rowboat out to do some fishing there. He would also go squirrel hunting in
the woods near the summerhouse, discovering early in life the serenity to
be found while alone in the forest or wading a stream. It was something he
could always go back to throughout his life, wherever he was. Nature would
be the touchstone of Hemingway’s life and work, and though he often found
himself living in major cities like Chicago, Toronto and Paris early in his
career, once he became successful he chose somewhat isolated places to live
like Key West, or San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, or Ketchum, Idaho. All were
convenient locales for hunting and fishing.
When he wasn’t hunting or fishing his mother taught him the finer points of
music. Grace was an accomplished singer who once had aspirations of a
career on stage, but eventually settled down with her husband and occupied
her time by giving voice and music lessons to local children, including her
own. Hemingway never had a knack for music and suffered through choir
practices and cello lessons, however the musical knowledge he acquired from
his mother helped him share in his first wife Hadley’s interest in the
piano.
[pic]
Ernest Hemingway feeding a stuffed squirrel, February 1910
Hemingway received his formal schooling in the Oak Park public school
system. In high school he was mediocre at sports, playing football,
swimming, water basketball and serving as the track team manager. He
enjoyed working on the high school newspaper called the Trapeze, where he
wrote his first articles, usually humorous pieces in the style of Ring
Lardner, a popular satirist of the time. Hemingway graduated in the spring
of 1917 and instead of going to college the following fall like his parents
expected, he took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star; the job
was arranged for by his Uncle Tyler who was a close friend of the chief
editorial writer of the paper.
World War I
[pic]
Ernest Hemingway in his Spangolini uniform
At the time of Hemingway’s graduation from High School, World War I was
raging in Europe, and despite Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to keep America out
of the war; the United States joined the Allies in the fight against
Germany and Austria in April 1917. When Hemingway turned eighteen he tried
to enlist in the army, but was deferred because of poor vision; he had a
bad left eye that he probably inherited from his mother, who also had poor
vision. When he heard the Red Cross was taking volunteers as ambulance
drivers he quickly signed up. He was accepted in December of 1917, left his
job at the paper in April of 1918, and sailed for Europe
in May. In the
short time that Hemingway worked for the Kansas City Star he learned some
stylistic lessons that would later influence his fiction. The newspaper
advocated short sentences, short paragraphs, active verbs, authenticity,
compression, clarity and immediacy. Hemingway later said: „Those were the
best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten
them.“
Hemingway first went to Paris upon reaching Europe, then traveled to Milan
in early June after receiving his orders. The day he arrived, a munitions
factory exploded and he had to carry mutilated bodies and body parts to a
makeshift morgue; it was an immediate and powerful initiation into the
horrors of war. Two days later he was sent to an ambulance unit in the town
of Schio, where he worked driving ambulances. On July 8, 1918, only a few
weeks after arriving, Hemingway was seriously wounded by fragments from an
Austrian mortar shell, which had landed just a few feet away. At the time,
Hemingway was distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers in
the trenches near the front lines. The explosion knocked Hemingway
unconscious, killed an Italian soldier and blew the legs off another. What
happened next has been debated for some time. In a letter to Hemingway’s
father, Ted Brumback, one of Ernest’s fellow ambulance drivers, wrote that
despite over 200 pieces of shrapnel being lodged in Hemingway’s legs he
still managed to carry another wounded soldier back to the first aid
station; along the way he was hit in the legs by several machine gun
bullets. Whether he carried the wounded soldier or not, doesn’t diminish
Hemingway’s sacrifice.
[pic]
Young Ernest Hemingway: At the Milan hospital in the fall of 1918
He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Valor with the official Italian
citation reading: „Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel from an
enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care of
himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more
seriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be
carried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated.“ Hemingway described
his injuries to a friend of his: „There was one of those big noises you
sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something
coming right out of my body, like you’d pull a silk handkerchief out of a
pocket by one corner. It flew all around and then came back and went in
again and I wasn’t dead any more.“
Hemingway’s wounding along the Pave River in Italy and his subsequent
recovery at a hospital in Milan, including the relationship with his nurse
Agnes von Kurowsky, all inspired his great novel A Farewell To Arms.
A Soldier’s Home…
[pic]
Ernest Hemingway stretched out in the Red Cross Hospital, Milan 1918
When Hemingway returned home from Italy in January of 1919 he found Oak
Park dull compared to the adventures of war, the beauty of foreign lands
and the romance of an older woman, Agnes von Kurowsky. He was nineteen
years old and only a year and a half removed from high school, but the war
had matured him beyond his years. Living with his parents, who never quite
appreciated what their son had been through, was difficult. Soon after his
homecoming they began to question his future, began to pressure him to find
work or to further his education, but Hemingway couldn’t seem to muster
interest in anything.
He had received some $1,000 dollars in insurance payments for his war
wounds, which allowed him to avoid work for nearly a year. He lived at his
parent’s house and spent his time at the library or at home reading. He
spoke to small civic organizations about his war exploits and was often
seen in his Red Cross uniform, walking about town. For a time though,
Hemingway questioned his role as a war hero, and when asked to tell of his
experiences he often exaggerated to satisfy his audience. Hemingway’s story
„Soldier’s Home“ conveys his feelings of frustration and shame upon
returning home to a town and to parents who still had a romantic notion of
war and who didn’t understand the psychological impact the war had had on
their son.
The last speaking engagement the young Hemingway took was at the Petoskey
(Michigan) Public Library, and it would be important to Hemingway not for
what he said but for who heard it. In the audience was Harriett Connable,
the wife of an executive for the Woolworth’s company in Toronto. As
Hemingway spun his war tales Harriett couldn’t help but notice the
differences between Hemingway and her own son. Hemingway appeared
confident, strong, intelligent and athletic, while her son was slight,
somewhat handicapped by a weak right arm and spent most of his time
indoors. Harriett Connable thought her son needed someone to show him the
joys of physical activity and Hemingway seemed the perfect candidate to
tutor and watch over him while she and her husband Ralph vacationed in
Florida. So, she asked Hemingway if he would do it.
Hemingway took the position, which offered him time to write and a chance
to work for the Toronto Star Weekly, the editor of which Ralph Connable
promised to introduce Hemingway to. Hemingway wrote for the Star Weekly
even after moving to Chicago in the fall of 1920. While living at a
friend’s house he met Hadley Richardson and they quickly fell in love.
The
two married in September 1921 and by November of the same year Hemingway
accepted an offer to work with the Toronto Daily Star as its European
correspondent. Hemingway and his new bride would go to Paris, France where
the whole of literature was being changed by the likes of Ezra Pound, James
Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Ford Maddox Ford. He would not miss his chance to
change it as well.
The Paris Years
The Hemingways arrived in Paris on December 22, 1921 and a few weeks later
moved into their first apartment at 74 rue Cardinal Lemoyne. It was a
miserable apartment with no running water and a bathroom that was basically
a closet with a slop bucket inside. Hemingway tried to minimize the
primitiveness of the living quarters for his wife Hadley who had grown up
in relative splendor, but despite the conditions she endured, carried away
by her husbands enthusiasm for living the bohemian lifestyle. Ironically,
they could have afforded much better; with Hemingway’s job and Hadley’s
trust fund their annual income was $3,000, a decent sum in the inflated
economies of Europe at the time. Hemingway rented a room at 39 rue
Descartes where he could do his writing in peace.
With a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway met some of
Paris prominent writers and artists and forged quick friendships with them
during his first few years. Counted among those friends were Ezra Pound,
Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Max Eastman, Lincoln Stephens
and Wyndahm Lewis, and he was acquainted with the painters Miro and
Picasso. These friendships would be instrumental in Hemingway’s development
as a writer and artist.
Hemingway’s reporting during his first two years in Paris was extensive,
covering the Geneva Conference in April of 1922, The Greco-Turkish War in
October, the Luasanne Conference in November and the post war convention in
the Ruhr Valley in early 1923. Along with the political pieces he wrote
lifestyle pieces as well, covering fishing, bullfighting, social life in
Europe, skiing, bobsledding and more.