Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) is one of the best-know American novelist of his generation and of the 20th century, but the short stories that he was almost as well known for in his life are becoming less well read and appreciated even though they are finely crafted and take up the same themes that have made his novels so enduringly popular.
This paper looks at a trio of his short stories and at a theme that runs through them: The importance of home, or of places that serve for home. Before beginning this examination of these stories, a brief overview of his writing career and style will help place him within the historical literary landscape and also perhaps give us some insights into why it was so important for him and his characters to have a place to call home.
Hemingway's style as a writer was characterized by crispness, laconic dialogue, and emotional understatement. His writings and his personal life exerted a profound influence on American writers of his time and many of his works are regarded as classics of American literature.
After serving briefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star early in his writing career, he left his job to serve as a volunteer ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. He later transferred to the Italian infantry and was severely wounded. After the war he was a correspondent for the Toronto Star and then settled in Paris. While there, he was encouraged in creative work by the American expatriate writers Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. After 1927 Hemingway spent long periods of time in Key West, Florida, and in Spain and Africa and during the Spanish civil war, he returned to Spain as a newspaper correspondent. In World War II he was again a correspondent and later was a reporter for the U.S. First Army; although he was not a soldier, he participated in several battles. After the war Hemingway settled near Havana, and about 1958 moved to Ketchum, Idaho (Carter, 1999, p. 26).
Hemin...