Free Earnest Hemingway Essay Sample

Hemmingway is a writer whose writing style is within narrow limits, thus bringing out a perfect unemotional and factual writing style that presents an objective appearance of experience (Savage 381). Hemmingway’s earlier novels are credited for their excellent writing styles and interesting story content. Hemmingway’s writing achieved great aesthetic values due to his emotional involvement in the writing.

One of the best literatures by Earnest Hemingway is the novel A Farewell to Arms, in which irony is exceedingly used to emphasize the theme of war and desperation. Irony and understatement are the main forms of rhetoric devises used by Hemingway to disseminate his message. For instance, in the A Farewell to Arms, the author states that “at the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with rain come cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army” (Hemingway and Berridge 26). The author uses blatant irony to express historic war injustice in which many people died, but the clear use of “only” within the sentence when referring to the dead people is the main source of the understatement, in that seven thousand dead people cannot be referred to as “only”, thus it indicates that more deaths were expected by the author but a few resulted out of the war.   

Ernest Hemingway’s writing addresses the social problems affecting the society. In the novel Bell Tolls, Hemingway talks about the issues affecting womanizing and machoism. As it is common with all of his writings, Hemmingway’s writings are influenced by his personal experience and influence from people around him (Dunn and Spring 25). From the beginning of his writing career, Hemingway made use of a distinctive writing style that attracted criticism from critics. Many critics argue that his writing style lacks substance, as he avoids the use of direct emotional description and statements.  Although Hemingway’s writing style can be criticized due to its simplicity and plainness, his works have forceful prose style as characterized by the use of simple sentences and minimal use of adjectives and adverbs. Besides, Hemingway’s descriptive language is concise and has precise description of places and dramatic dialogue.

Most of Hemmingway’s novels are written in first person with single point of view. This monotonous writing style was broken when he wrote the story For Whom the Bell Tolls. In the novel, Hemingway deployed several narrative techniques, where he incorporated objective description, internal monologue, and rapid shifts in points of views. Hemingway’s writing styles indicate that he believed in personal and direct writing style enhanced by vigorous but simple words and rich imagery. For Whom the Bell Tolls is believed to be the Hemingway’s best novel motivated by politics. The book attempts to present a depth illustration of Hemingway’s country and its people. The novel is enhanced by its light and comic episodes. Hemmingway writings are intriguing due to his brevity and competent writing styles.

In his first collection of tales In our Time, Hemmingway illustrates his attitude as a writer, whereby he puts together short sketches from a man’s life to build the whole novel. The story setting moves from the American countryside to the Italian war front, then to the post war America and lastly to Europe. The various settings in a single novel make the novel intriguing and compelling to read. The connection of events and various setting illustrate that Hemingway is a creative writer who can combine various events to form a single interesting story (Hemmingway 381-382).

Hemmingway developed a short and precise style of writing literature. Among the main points explored by the author is the tactic of using short sentences that contain one precise point. The second main tactic is short first paragraphs, which is done to avoid making the readers have a feeling of a long story within his novels. Equally, the author insists that good research requires that the author makes positive declarations and negative assumptions in order to make sure that the positive tactics grip the reader so as to present the protagonist, while the negative notions represent the antagonist. Adjectives are widely used within the work of the author, in which he asserts that use of vigorous English is better to slang and plain English terms (Lisa 16).  

Mark Twain’s modern literature novel Huckleberry Finn acted as a guide to Hemingway’s use of American vernacular English, which is quite predominant in the novel Green Hills of Africa (Bloom 85). American vernacular, or American English as it is known today, was preferred by Hemingway as a way of getting most Americans to identify with his stories. At the same time, there were other influential writings, like Stephen Crane’s novel The Red Badge of Courage that helped Hemingway develop better war plots based on honest and naturalistic war theory rather than the descriptive journalistic writing methods, which made stories look exaggerated and distorted. Eventually, every story that Hemingway wrote featured a replication of a well researched idea, in which true facts were used to present the true emotions. For instance, though Hemingway was not there during the American civil war, he copied a few tactics from Crane’s work to include in his war theories that he incorporated in most of his stories and letters.

Themes

Hemmingway makes use of death as a dramatic way of solving dramatic conflicts in the story. Moreover, the theme of death can be observed in other parts of the story when characters are illustrated as having concerns about death.  Hemmingway adores the characters that bravely face death or make a decision to reverse the worsening situation.

The short story Hills like White Elephant is an excellent example of Hemingway’s masterpiece in presenting how crude is the military love (Bloom 84). The cold irony within the story creates tense emotions; in that the young lady is in love with an elderly American who is not ready to have children, but the young lady is pregnant. The young lady is a European and the setting of the story just after the Second World War helps create the theme of desperation on the part of the European lady, who stereotypes the European nation’s urgent need for American help. Just like the young woman who is pregnant and sad since the elderly American man is not interested in family matters, the young lady is desperate to lose her child to abortion, which the American refers to a minor operation. The American man promises the young lady a lot of love and support if she gives in and aborts. In response the young lady refers to the elderly American man as ‘a white elephant’ - allegory that defines the American man as a useless and expensive desire to keep. The main theme is love between an elderly military man and a young European woman, which is soon over because the American man is afraid to face the consequences of marriage life, since he got used to war.

At the same time the theme of war is presented in the short story, in which America economic deal advanced to European countries, which condition is compared to the elderly man and the young lady, is stereotyped as the beneficially of the white elephant. Therefore, Hemmingway is questioning the war aftermath economic policy advanced by the United States to the European countries. Thus, the author remains an exemplary genius at intertwining the theme of war and its impacts on the social setting and lifestyle.

Alcoholism is a minor theme explored in Hills like White Elephant, whereby the lady and the American boyfriend are testing different kinds of alcoholic drinks to distinguish their tests in vain. Though critics exclaim that Hemmingway is a tragic author, the lady refusing to abort for the sake of keeping the man proves that the story is not tragic par se, but the author only explored the options available for any individual given certain circumstances beyond one’s grasp. Therefore, the theme of lack and eventually recognition of internal power to overcome outside trials is elucidated by the young woman’s experience with the American boyfriend, who turned an enemy, and the young lady comes out successful and powerful when she rejects the American, calling him a mere ‘White elephant’ (Bloom 85).  

Another example of a story is The Art of the Short Story, in which the author clarifies that there are earnest things that must be included in the plot of any story and that every author should endeavor to make sure that the editors never leave the most important portions of the plot out of the story. Hemmingway is concerned about the way his work was edited, since he wrote in short condensed words that were send by telegram and to avoid overcharge, the words were highly reduced in such a way, that facts only remained persistent within his short stories. 

 

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