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Use of Personal Experience by 3 Authors

Novelists often derive elements of their work from their own lives, shaping themes, developing characters, and even borrowing entire situations from their own experience. Every artist does this, turning to his or her own experience in some degree as a source, with resulting correspondences between their own experience and their work ranging from slight to extensive. The way three authors used their own experience in their work--Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, and Chinua Achebe--shows how the life experience of an author becomes fodder for his or her literary output, and especially how it shapes the development of the main characters they create.

The main character in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms shares much in common with the author, who used his own World War I experiences as an ambulance driver in telling the story of Frederick Henry and his love affair with Catherine Barkley. Many of the themes apparent in the works of Ernest Hemingway can be related to events and attitudes in his own life. Hemingway grew up in Michigan, in a family that placed an emphasis on outdoor activities. As a boy, Ernest was strong and strong-willed, with physical capabilities that would hold him in good stead until the latter days of his life (Hardy and Cull 10-11). Ernest became a reporter rather than going to college as his father wanted, and he became interested in the war raging in Europe (World War I) and decided to go there to see it for himself. All this was part of his attitude toward masculinity in men, something he prized highly (Hardy and Cull 14-15). In many of his short stories, the character of Nick Adams represents Hemingway himself. Nick Adams is a young man who travels a good deal, and some psychoanalytical critics see significance in this in the character and in Hemingway himself. They note that Hemingway also established a lifestyle of escapism and ran whenever problems or people started to move in on him. He took ...

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Use of Personal Experience by 3 Authors. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:26, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692974.html