How is Hemingway's life reflected in his writing?
Many parallels have been drawn between Hemingway's life and fiction.
Scholars generally agree that Nick Adams is the character who most closely represents Hemingway the man. There is some dissension, however, regarding whether it is in fact Hemingway's
personality or simply his experiences which are being personified by his characters. Most of Hemingway's fiction is based on his own personal experience. When creating the fiction, he invents from this experience.
Read anything by scholar Philip Young, particularly Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. Young has done some interesting work in regards to the parallels between Hemingway's life and fiction. He pays particular attention to the injury Hemingway suffered at age eighteen when he served as an ambulance driver for the Italian army, and how and why this episode resurfaces in his literature.
Also, Carlos Baker's biography, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story provides a detailed account of the many parallels existing between the events in Hemingway's life and the events transpiring in his stories.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Did any real life event trigger Hemingway's story, "Hills Like White Elephants"?
We must always be wary
of our attempts to align the life with the fiction. This is especially true when one undertakes the study of Hemingway. Hemingway's genius lies in his ability to invent from his
experience and knowledge. It is through this invention that he succeeds in creating for the reader some of the most memorable persons, places, and episodes in all of American literature.
If you must have a real life prototype for the short story, "Hills Like White Elephants," Carlos Baker provides one in his book, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. See "Stages in the
planning of 'Men Without Women'" in Notes, page 595 (hardcover edition).
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Where does the title,
A Farewell to Arms originate?
Hemingway got the title of his book from George Peele's
poem, "A Farewell to Arms" (1590). Peele had dedicated his poem to Queen Elizabeth. Hemingway discovered the Peele poem in The Oxford Book of English Verse.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Is it unwise to equate Ernest Hemingway with his fictional hero?
Phillip Young's "code hero" theory may be a legitimate
one and it is a reasonable place to start when undertaking the study of Hemingway, but if a reader is to spend the majority of time trying to match the qualities/experiences of Hemingway's fictional hero with the qualities/experiences
of Hemingway himself, sweeping critical assertions are imminent. It is even more dangerous when a reader tries to formularize Hemingway's fiction, to fit themes and characters into little restricted spaces and to become, as they say
in the world of academia, "thesis-driven." There are many dimensions to Hemingway's literature. The more time you spend equally evaluating these dimensions, the more you will appreciate Hemingway's literary art.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Where does the title, For Whom the Bell Tolls originate?
"For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a phrase from John Donne's
MEDITATION XVII in his book, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.
You can read the text of this meditation online. The section which starts, "No man is an island" and ends "it tolls for thee" is the segment that Hemingway chose as an epigraph to his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Did any personal experience inspire the erotic novel, The Garden of Eden?
Some critics and scholars have suggested that the eccentric gender
and sexual experiments portrayed in this novel are based in part on experiments Hemingway and first wife Hadley conducted amongst themselves in the early 1920's. Catherine Bourne, however, would
seem to be more modeled after Hemingway's second wife Pauline than first wife Hadley. For further information on these sexual experiments, particularly as they tie into The Garden of Eden, see Aaron Latham's
"A Farewell to Machismo" in The New York Times Magazine, 16 October 1977, 51-55, 80-82, 94-99.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
Who are the writers that influenced Hemingway?
Hemingway himself probably best answers this question in his
1958 interview with George Plimpton. In the interview, Hemingway provides a list of his "literary forebears." Hemingway's interview with Plimpton is reprinted in Conversations with Ernest Hemingway
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. The list to which I refer is on page 118.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
What was Hemingway's inspiration for The Old Man and the Sea?
Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway's long time fishing companion and first mate of the Pilar,
had this to say about his friend's possible inspiration:
"When we went to sea, we found the old man and the sea. We found him adrift on a little boat with a big fish tied there and when Hemingway went to write he wanted to give it a name and I said why don't you name it the old man and the sea."
So if we take Fuentes at his word, this was Hemingway's inspiration and the old man he saw that day became a model for the old man in the book. Everything else that occurs in the story was likely invented by Hemingway. Writing remains an act of invention. It may initially be based on actual experience, but to make it truly fiction and to define it as such, it must be invented. Hemingway knew and understood that better than anyone. This is one of the many reasons his work endures.
Return to Influences FAQ | View all FAQs
What Hemingway works were directly influenced by the wars?
Hemingway admitted in a 1925 letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald that of all the subjects a writer could write about,
war was one of the best, if not the best. World War I affected Hemingway's literature more than any other war he was involved in.
The Sun Also Rises depicts the post World War I "lost generation." A Farewell to Arms is still considered by many critics the best novel ever written about World War I. Many of the characters in Hemingway's short stories have been involved in or directly affected by the first World War: Krebs of "Soldier's Home," Harry of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Nick Adams of "A Way You'll Never Be." World War I also plays out in the stories, "Now I Lay Me" and "In Another Country." The gruesome death scenes that Hemingway describes in "A Natural History of the Dead" are likely based on what he saw occur in World War I and the Greek-Turkish War.
The Spanish Civil War was the inspiration for Hemingway's 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls and his only full-length play, The Fifth Column.
World War II comes into play in Hemingway's 1950 novel, Across the River and into the Trees and the "At Sea" section of the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. A short story titled "Black Ass at the Crossroads" (never finished by Hemingway) also uses World War II as a backdrop.
