Why was Hemingway so fascinated with death?

In his book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway observed that, "All stories, if continued far enough, end in death." Death looms large in Hemingway's novels, most of which end with the explicit or implied demise of a major character. In his personal life, Hemingway deliberately courted danger and exhibited a fatalistic disregard for his own life. Some of Hemingway's biographers have speculated that his apparent fascination with death arose from the nearly fatal injuries that he received in World War I. Hemingway saw very little action on the Italian front and may have felt a compulsion to repeatedly test his own courage. Plainly, in his books and in his own life, Hemingway considered confrontations with death to offer an "opportunity to define oneself.

Why did Hemingway commit suicide?

Like his father and in contrast to Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway took his own life. This seems odd given the quality of endurance that Jordan, the old fisherman Santiago, and Frederic Henry display in his works. Yet all of these characters retain the capacity to function, and this stands in sharp contrast to Hemingway's physical and mental condition in the last years of his life. Hemingway never full recovered from the tandem airplane crashes that he suffered while on Safari. This left him incapable of pursuing the robust activities that he so loved. At the same time, Hemingway's chronic depression was treated with shock therapy, and its effects eventually made it impossible for him to continue his writing career. In a sense, Hemingway committed suicide because he could no longer act like Hemingway, and in his worldview, this meant that he had already died.

Was Hemingway a misogynist?

Even if Hemingway had not titled one of his early short story collections Men Without Women, it is plain that males predominate in his fiction and that females, as epitomized by Lady Brett Ashley, are characterized as threats to manly integrity. Hemingway did see at least some women as castrating impediments to the realization of the heroic. As an adult, Hemingway rarely spoke of his mother Grace; on those few occasions that he referred his mother it was as "that bitch." He clearly resented Grace Hemingway's efforts to mold him into middle-class respectability and especially her command that he leave the refuge of his family's northern Michigan cabin after he return from World War I and resume a "normal" civilian life. Clearly, Hemingway harbored a deep resentment against Grace and women at large.

What explains Hemingway's successive marriages?

Hemingway was married four times, prompting one of his friends to comment that he needed a new wife for each of his major novels. His divorce from Hadley Richardson occurred after the success of his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, and may have been influenced by a change in his artistic and financial status. His marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer ended when she divorced him and seems to have had a political dimension, Pauline supporting the fascist side in the Spanish Civil War as an outgrowth of her devotion to the conservative Catholic Church and its backing of Franco. His third wife, Martha Gelhorn, also divorced Hemingway, partly because of his increased consumption of alcohol while he was in London covering World War II. He remained with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, from the War's end to his suicide in 1961. From all this, we can conclude that Hemingway was a very difficult man to live with, particularly given his somewhat self-centered preoccupation with dangerous adventures and a self-destructive life-style.

Was Hemingway a "leftist" or "communist"?

Hemingway was among the first American authors to denounce Mussolini, he actively supported the Socialist Eugene Debs in the 1920 presidential election in which Warren Harding defeated James Cox, and he labored with communist elements in the fight against the fascists in Spain. During the Depression Era of the 1930s, Hemingway contributed an article to the left-wing journal New Masses. Throughout his work, Hemingway displayed compassion for the common man and a keen awareness of the corrupting influence of wealth and power. There is evidence that American communists tried to recruit Hemingway to their cause but were unsuccessful; Marxist reviewers of For Whom the Bell Tolls were highly critical of its implied preference for the republicans in the Loyalist camp over their communist allies. Moreover, at bottom, Hemingway, the rugged individualist was a Jeffersonian democrat. He distrusted government and voiced his discontent with taxes used to support the Washington bureaucracy. Hemingway was not an ideologue, and although he expressed admiration for the Marxists fighting against Franco, he never endorsed communist ideology.

How did Hemingway influence the form and style of the modern story?

Hemingway's texts were stripped down into direct uncomplicated plots with short powerful sentences. Written in colloquial language, the dialogue and description evades superfluous explanation of the emotional or philosophical realm. Hemingway viewed himself as a realist, whose work went much further than the surface: "I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not just to depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing." The shortest sentences contain the most power, intense and enigmatic, which engages the reader into a direct experience of the dialogue ("Hills Like White Elephants"):

"What did you say?"
"I said we could have everything." "We can have everything."
"No, we can't."
"We can have the whole world."
"No, we can't."
"We can go everywhere."
"No, we can't. It isn't ours any more."
"It's ours."
"No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back."
"But they haven't taken it away."
"We'll wait and see."
"Come on back in the shade," he said. "You mustn't feel that way."
"I don't feel any way," the girl said. "I just know things."
"I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do-."
"Nor that isn't food for me," she said.
"I know. Could we have another beer?"

How much of Hemingway's stories are fiction and how much are fact?

Ernest always blurred the line between fiction and fact. He felt that fiction was a magnification of reality. He found it hard to tell the difference between fantasy and fact when he told a story. For instance, the question arises as to whether or not Ernest had a secret marriage with an eighteen year old Wakamba girl named Debbie, along with owning her seventeen year old sister who was widowed, as occurs in True at First Light. Ernest confided to A. E. Hotchner: "September I will have an African son. Before I left I gave a herd of goats to my bride's family. Most over-goated family in Africa. Feels good to have African son. Never regretted anything I ever did."

How did Ernest feel about the nobel prize for literature?

When Faulkner won it in 1949, Ernest was quoted as saying, "No son of a bitch who ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards." It might be interpreted as mere jealousy, but then when he won it himself, he spoke of Jean-Paul-Sartre's refusal of the prize: "I guess Sartre knew that the Prize is a whore who can seduce you and give you an incurable disease. I knew that once but now I've got her and she's got me, and you know who she is, this whore called 'fame'? Death's little sister."

How did Hemingway's abundant letter writing contribute to his fiction?

Ernest wrote letters to relax from the immense concentration required from writing fiction. He could freely write letters in a loose and reckless style, uninhibited by structure of any kind. His copious letters counterbalanced his stories that were so terse and disciplined with word choice and order paramount. He wrote letters to get him warmed up early in the morning before his regular session of serious composition, as well to calm down at the end of the day after he had completed a chapter or story. Writing letters allowed him to play instead of work, which gave him a spontaneous mindset as opposed to the struggle he endured in creating fiction. Finally, writing letters was a way for him to be in a constant flow of creativity.

How grammatically proficient was Hemingway?

Although Hemingway bragged that he was a better speller than Scott Fitzgerald, he made numerous spelling errors throughout his work; such as apalogize, responsability, optomistic, its-self, volumne, and monoever. He used "nor", "instead of", and "or" after a previous negative. He usually left the "e" on words when adding - "ing" and - "able"; such as "loveing" or "comeing". He never cared about making the difference between words like "who" and "whom", "lying" and "laying". In his letters, he usually left out apostrophes for contractions or possessives, and he almost never crossed a "t" or dotted an "i". His foreign language tags within his letters were often incorrectly spelled. He felt that other hired people could make the corrections.

What was "Hemingway Choctaw"?

Some examples were quoted in the "New Yorker" by Lillian Ross: 1) After being shown a hotel room once he said, "Joint looks okay." 2) After visiting the Metropolitan Museum he said, "Was fun for country boy like me." 3) At lunch, after chewing with much vigor he said, "Eat good and digest good." He seemed to be avoiding the use of the first person singular pronoun and articles such as "an" and "the". It could have also been a result of his affinity for the language of cables as well as the fact that he thought it was more real and down to earth, as opposed to pretentious and superfluous speech.

What was Hemingway's bad side like?

Hemingway stated at one point on 1926 when his private life was particularly tumultuous, that he was "not a saint nor built like one." Letters that he wrote were full of backbiting with a vengeance; probably due to his famous short temper when provoked by any kind of criticism. In his personal life, he rejected those closest to him. For instance, his mother made some unfavorable comments about The Sun Also Rises and in turn Hemingway accused her of disloyalty. His older sister chastised him for leaving his first wife and his younger sister married against his wishes; consequently Hemingway rejected both of them. He gave scathing critiques of his victims; such as, Robert McAlmon, Max Eastman, Edmund Wilson, Gertrude stein, and Wyndham Lewis. He called many people whom he did not like jerks: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marshal Bernard Montgomery, General Jacques Leclerc, Andre Malraux, Cardinal Spellman, and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

What was Hemingway's good side like?

Some of Hemingway's good characteristics included fortitude, honor, courage, and honesty. He was very generous, always sympathetic to the sick, elderly, and the misfortunate. He had a respect for the skill and endurance of sportsman; ranging from hunters to fishermen to boxers. Fatherhood was very important to him; with three sons that he passed on his practical wisdom and knowledge to. His letters to them are full of advice and caring passages. He had an enormous love and generosity towards his friends; often inviting his closest friends on hunting and fishing adventures, where much drinking and conversation would take place. A sociable and gregarious man, Hemingway needed friends who were of a similar mind-set who he could laugh with, boast, tell stories, drink and engage in sports.

How did Hemingway see himself?

Hemingway considered himself a teacher, who was eager to share his experience. He could teach anyone how to win roulette, horse racing or poker. He could give directions from Paris to Montreux, New York to Nairovi, or Chicago to Horton Bay. He could show you how to make a Bloody Mary, how to win at boxing and how to out-maneuver a customs officer. Hemingway possessed what he called "the gen," defined as the latest knowledge and information that could be trusted: what baits to use for marlin, which guns to use for a particularly dangerous game, or what vitamins to take for better health.

What were the details and events surrounding Hemingway's death?

He had been on a three-day drive through some states in the north and was reported to have enjoyed himself. When he got home he had a nice dinner with his wife Mary, who sang on of their favorite songs called "Tutti Mi Chiamano Bionda". The next morning, Mary heard a shotgun go off in the house and she ran downstairs to find that Ernest had supposedly shot himself by accident while cleaning his guns. This was the cover up story she gave to the press. Although he didn't believe in suicide, as many of his stories and letters reveal, he must have found it was the only way out. A close friend, A.E. Hotchner, remarked that Hemingway did not feel like himself anymore and couldn't bear to live that way. Hemingway was quoted as saying, "Every man's life ends the same way and it is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguishes one man from another."