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 What does light signify in the story,
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" ?
 The idea of a well-lighted place is of great significance to this short story.
It illuminates the connection between the old man and the older waiter, both of whom favor well-lighted places especially at night. A well-lighted
atmosphere is an atmosphere in which the old man and older waiter can escape their loneliness. In the darkness of the night, the men are more vulnerable
to thoughts of suicide and despair. Darkness and sleep must be avoided, for in these states there is nothingness, "nada."
The old man and the older waiter have nothing to go home to except darkness. The younger waiter, on the other hand, has a wife to go home to,
and is therefore anxious to close up the café. When he refuses to refill the old man's brandy, the older waiter wonders what difference
an extra hour would make. The older waiter can empathize with the old man and understands his attraction to a clean, well-lighted place.
On some level, the younger waiter may also understand why the old man prefers drinking in a clean, well-lighted place to drinking at home, but
his concern for himself takes precedence over his concern for the old man. After all, he is young and has confidence. With such confidence,
it seems slightly strange that he would be rushing home to his wife. A confident man must know that his wife will be waiting in bed for him
regardless of how late the hour.
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Where can I find booknotes for Hemingway's
major works?
Barron's Booknotes for Hemingway's four major novels can be found
at PinkMonkey.com. Below are the direct links to the booknotes:
The Sun Also Rises
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and the Sea
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How is the fractured identity of Frederic Henry illustrated?
Frederic Henry lacks a distinctive national identity. For the first eighty-one
pages of A Farewell to Arms , Frederic is referred to as
"Signor Tenente" or the "American Tenente." On one occasion, Catherine greets him with the more formal, "Mr. Henry." Only upon his arrival at the American
hospital in Milan do we learn his full name. He introduces himself as Frederic Henry to Miss Gage, an American nurse.
Even after Frederic acknowledges his American nationality, he is still misperceived. Having requested a barber to give him a shave, he begins questioning the
man about the war. The barber continues his work, refusing to provide Frederic with any current news. Angered by the man's deliberate defiance, Frederic
sends him away. He subsequently calls a porter who explains that the barber thought Frederic to be an Austrian officer.
During the Italian retreat from Caporetto, Henry's lack of a national identity is indisputable. While Italian officers are being rounded up on the
Tagliamento bridge, first capriciously interrogated and then taken to the river bank where they are executed by the military carabiniere, Henry decides
to bid a "farewell to arms." No longer supporting the war or the Italian army, to which he had proclaimed moderate allegiance (as an ambulance driver), he jumps into the
Tagliamento River. He may have made his "separate peace" with the military, but he will still have to connect the separate pieces within himself through
the remainder of the novel.
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How does Hemingway use nature in his work?
In Hemingway's work, nature often exists solely to illuminate man's struggle with himself.
His characters are often placed into naturalistic settings where they confront an idea, a feeling, a struggle and they must respond accordingly. Typically, they respond with Hemingway's code
of "grace under pressure." Hemingway has a great deal of respect for nature and its role in shaping events, but he also has a clear respect for man in nature shaping his own events.
Hemingway uses nature as a foreshadowing of things to come. Rain in A Farewell to Arms
is a good example of this. For Hemingway, rain is often indicative of rebirth or death, occasionally a mixture of both. It could also be representative of transition and change. It can bring replenishment
and nurture life, but in large amounts, in over excess, it can bring suffocation and death.
Stylistically, Hemingway's descriptions of the natural world are some of the most visually compelling in all of literature. His ability to accurately describe a landscape in a relatively small
amount of words is extraordinary.
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What Hemingway works were made into plays?
Appendix IV of Charles M. Oliver's Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work is titled "Film, Stage, Television, and Radio Adaptations of Hemingway's Works."
Oliver's book was published in 1999, so this should give you a relatively up-to-date listing.
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What are the basic abbreviations for Ernest Hemingway's works?
The abbreviations for the works of Ernest Hemingway are as follows:
TSOP = Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
iot = in our time (1924)
IOT = In Our Time (1925)
TOS = The Torrents of Spring (1926)
SAR = The Sun Also Rises (1926)
MWW = Men Without Women (1927)
AFTA = A Farewell to Arms (1929)
DIA = Death in the Afternoon (1932)
WTN = Winner Take Nothing (1933)
GHOA = Green Hills of Africa (1935)
THHN = To Have and Have Not (1937)
SS = The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1938)
TFC = The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938)
FWTBT = For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
MAW = Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time (1942)
ARIT = Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
OMATS = The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
MF = A Moveable Feast (1964)
BL = By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
IITS = Islands in the Stream (1970)
NAS = The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
SL = Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961 (1981)
TDS = The Dangerous Summer (1985)
DT = Ernest Hemingway: Dateline Toronto (1985)
GOE = The Garden of Eden (1986)
CSS = The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Finca Vigía Edition) (1987)
CP = Ernest Hemingway: Complete Poems (1992)
TAFL = True at First Light (1999)
UK = Under Kilimanjaro (2005)
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Can Hemingway be classified as
an anti-Semitic writer? If so, why?
The portrayal of Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises
is probably the best illustration of Hemingway as an anti-Semitic writer. Whether Hemingway was displacing his own feelings for Jews onto
Robert Cohn or merely reflecting the views of a vastly anti-Semitic 1920's culture is an interesting point to consider. Hemingway himself was anti-Semitic
to a certain degree. His personal letters are sporadically littered with the word "kike." He sometimes used the word in the verb tense, writing to the effect:
he "kiked" me out of money. But, Hemingway also had many Jewish friends throughout his life and while in high school, he gave himself the
nickname of "Hemingstein." In creating such a name, he may have been cleverly trying to combat the anti-Semitism of his day.
To classify Hemingway as just a sexist writer or an anti-Semitic writer or a racist writer is to dismiss the great depth and complexity of his art.
Let's take his portrayal of women as an example. Many critics have found his depiction of women hollow and superficial. His women seem to exist only
in the context of the male hero. They are given no distinctive voice of their own and are almost always dealt a tragic fate. They are victimizers, bitches,
ruiners of men. Yet let us also recognize the strength and courage of the Hemingway female. Let us commend Pilar's qualities of leadership in
For Whom the Bell Tolls and Catherine's heroic exit in
A Farewell to Arms. Let us recognize Hemingway's sensitivity
towards women, his attempts to understand their inner core and their suffering, as evident in the last chapter of To Have and Have Not .
As a writer, Hemingway wanted and needed to show the various faces of life: the smiles, the tears, the pain, the triumph. He never turned away from the
sensitive subjects such as anti-Semitism, sensitive, that is, to our present day society, but rather commonplace in Hemingway's time.
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Which of Hemingway's books have been banned?
The following information was found at a web site called "The File Room."
The original source of the information is Banned Books 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. by Anne Lyon Haight and Chandler B. Grannis (1978).
Description of incident
1929 Italy: "A Farewell to Arms" was banned because of its painfully accurate account of the Italian retreat from Caporetto.
1929 United States-Boston, MA: Five issues of Scriber's Magazine were prohibited because they contained the story of "A Farewell to Arms."
Robert Herrick attacked "A Farewell to Arms" in an article entitled "What Is Dirt?" in the November issue of Bookman.
1930 Boston MA: "The Sun Also Rises" was banned.
1933 Germany: Works burned in the Nazi bonfires.
1938 United States-Detroit, MI: "To Have and Have Not" was removed from public sale and from circulation in the public library, but preserved
among works by "writers of standing." It was also barred from sale by the Prosecutor of Wayne County on complaint of Catholic organizations.
1939 Ireland: "A Farewell to Arms" banned.
1941 United States-New York, NY: When the Pulitzer Prize Advisory Board recommended "For Whom the Bells Tolls" for the 1940 prize, Columbia
University President Nicholas Murray Butler said "I hope that you will reconsider before you ask the University to be associated with an award
for work of this nature."
1953 Ireland: "The Sun also Rises" and "Across the River and into the Trees" were banned.
1956 South Africa-Johannesburg: "Across the River and into the Trees" was banned as "objectionable and obscene."
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Does Jake Barnes represent the lost generation?
At first glance, Jake Barnes would seem the ideal spokesperson for the "lost generation." This is partly because
of his assigned narrative role as observer, surveyor, a human window through which the reader views the reckless behavior of the expatriates and partly because he is the only of the expatriates to which the war has
inflicted a physical trauma. The hurt of the other expatriates exists on a more emotional level. The war has not deprived them of a physical ability. Instead it has served to enhance their defeatist outlooks.
If anyone has the right to feel lost, confused, and disenchanted, Jake has, for the war has robbed him of a distinctive physical resource.
However, Jake Barnes attempts to create a meaningful code for himself despite the fact that his wound defines his limitations. He knows that all is hopeless, that he will never have a "normal" relationship with
any woman, yet he continues to test the waters so to speak, to probe his emotional consciousness, at times engaging in expressive behavior, at other times stoically retreating into a state of passive detachment.
As a man, Jake has lost everything there is to lose, and this loss ironically shields him from further injury and disappointment, thus giving him the freedom to act in sometimes disparate, contradicting ways.
Jake Barnes is not an "expatriate" in the true sense of the word, or better stated, in the sense of the word as it is defined in The Sun Also Rises.
He is not a man who drinks himself "to death" nor is he "obsessed by sex" nor does he spend all his time "talking, not working" as Bill Gorton proclaims. These are pursuits of the "lost generation." A closer examination reveals
that Jake Barnes is not completely lost. He has found inner control in his uncontrolled outer surroundings. He has accepted his damning fate without thoroughly damning himself.
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How is the "iceberg principle" used in Hemingway's works?
Hemingway's theory of omission is widely referred to as the "iceberg principle." He explains this principle in chapter
16 of his 1932 book, Death in the Afternoon . Essentially,
the principle states that by omitting certain parts of a story, a writer actually strengthens that story. The writer must be conscious of these omissions and be writing true enough in order for the reader
to sense the omitted parts. When the reader senses the omitted parts, a greater perception and understanding for the story can be achieved.
Let's apply Hemingway's "iceberg principle" to the endings of some of his most famous works. At the end of The Sun Also Rises,
Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley contemplate a life together. At the end of A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry
walks back to his hotel alone in the rain. At the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan awaits his impending death.
The fate of these characters is never directly stated. Hemingway doesn't tell the reader that Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley will never be together. Instead, it is "pretty to think"
that they could have had a damned good life together. Hemingway doesn't tell the reader what lies in store for Frederic Henry after he leaves his dead lover in the hospital. Does his walk alone in the rain represent emotional
freedom or devastation? Robert Jordan is surely to die at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, but Hemingway leaves the
reader with the image of Jordan's "heart beating" against the forest floor.
Hemingway disliked discussions regarding the symbolism in his works. The "iceberg principle," however, by its very nature, invites symbolic interpretations
and I think Hemingway acknowledged this in his own subtle way. Fraser Drew once quoted him as saying: "No good writer ever prepared his symbols ahead of time and wrote his book about them, but out of a good book
which is true to life symbols may arise and be profitably explored if not over-emphasized."
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