Ernest Hemingway

Whatever else was in the background of Ernest Hemingway's shotgun suicide in 1961, the fact that he used a gun and not, say, poison or sleeping pills speaks to the popular image of the he-man at home with weapons he knew very well how to use. In a way, the suicide was like the life that had preceded it, what with Hemingway's continual recourse in his novels to the culture (not to say cult) of the man's man who functioned gracefully in the most violent and dangerous situations--and who was also devastatingly attracted and attractive to women. The suicide was also something that the ordinary observer of Hemingway might not have expected, given Hemingway's "terrifying belief that suicide was a cowardly, unmanly act" (Lynn 107). In any case, Lynn says that Hemingway's "man's man" presentation had the effect of inciting controver

. . .
them conflated life and art as well. One bit of evidence that Hemingway's novels paralleled the culture out of which they grew is that he never reached very far back into history for the subjects of his texts. That may owe something to the fact that his writing career began in journalism and moved into fiction after the Great War, and as Hemingway encountered new experiences, he incorporated them into his work. Thus In Our Time, which was written mainly in the US after the war, is set domestically. A Moveable Feast broad-brushes Hemingway's experiences in Paris after the War, and preoccupation with the war in Europe is evident in The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway did not attempt to discover thematic resonance in antiquity but in observed and lived experience and memory. That helps position him as a modernist, since a tenet of modernism was to break away from what were perceived as the overdecorous and genteel literary influences of earlier generations. In that regard, Smith's examination of a controversial 1924 short story that lampooned the T.S. Eliots and another literary couple, the Chard Powers Smiths, "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot." The story concerns people of high reputation and chaotic sex lives. Smith says that the story belongs to
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sea Kilimanjaro, Smiths Elliot, Ernest Hemingway's, Ernest Hemingway, John Donne, Rises Hemingway, Bell Tolls, Martin Hemingway, Arms Boardman, Californian Hemingway, bell tolls, real life, bell tolls fiction, hemingway's novels, civil war, hemingway produced, farewell arms, personal experience, spanish civil, spanish civil war, tolls fiction, sun rises,
Approximate Word count = 1387
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Ernest Hemingway