Ernest Hemmingway Research Paper

Steven Glansberg English Comp II Research Paper 3/28/12 Every writer has his or her own unique style of writing. Writing is such a personal matter that authors have no choice but to get creative. One of the most famous, classic American writers and journalists was Ernest Hemmingway. Ernest Hemmingway had one of the most unique writing styles of all time. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and public image.

Ernest Hemingway's fictional style of writing was successful due to the fact that the characters he presented exhibited authenticity that resonated with his audience. He created characters that would directly relate and grow upon the audience of his work. Ernest Miller Hemmingway was born on July 21st, 1899. He was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemmingway led a normal life and after his high school graduation he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. After that job he left for the Italian front where he became an ambulance driver during World War I.

Unfortunately Hemmingway was seriously injured during his duty and returned home to the states in less than a year. This over-seas experience during war would later be the basis for his novel “A Farewell to Arms. ” Ernest Hemmingway did most of his literary work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. His career in writing ended shortly after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. In his career Hemmingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction work.

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An additional three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Hemmingway’s first novel was “The Sun Also Rises”. The New York Times wrote on this novel saying, “It was a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts most literary English to shame and also no amount of analysis can convey the quality of this novel. ” This novel was written in a spare, tightly written prose, which Hemmingway was notorious for. Hemmingway had one of the most distinct styles of writing in all of iterature. Many literature analysts believe that his writing style was influenced by his time spent in World War I. It is also thought that while at war Hemmingway lost his faith in the central institutions of Western civilization. Hemmingway created his own style of writing that reacted against the "elaborate style" of 19th century writers. By creating a style in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silence he was able to create a fiction in which nothing crucial is stated explicitly. He said everything while keeping “under the radar” per say.

That is how the Iceberg Theory came into place with Hemmingway’s writing style. The Iceberg Theory, also know as the Theory of Omission, was a theory that was all about how Hemmingway kept the he facts floating above the “water” but keeps the supporting structure and symbolism operate out-of-sight just like the structural view of an iceberg. In other words the meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface.

In Hemmingway’s novel "The Art of the Short Story," he explains, "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit. " Hemmingway clearly states that by leaving out obvious facts, you unintentionally strengthen your writing by making your audience think and ask questions about certain topics that you wanted to focus on in the first place.

A famous piece of writing by Hemmingway that clearly supports the Iceberg Theory was “The Old Man and the Sea. ” This novel centers upon Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. The plot of this story consists of the aging fisherman Santiago that sails out to see, catches a great white marlin, but then struggles all the way back to shore fighting off sharks to the point where he ends up with nothing but the carcass of the marlin.

This story doesn’t seem like it has any literary significance on the surface but if you read between the lines you find out that this novel is a meditation upon youth and age. Even though the protagonist, Santiago, spends little or no time thinking of those terms you can see that the details point towards a struggle between ages. Another story that also has an underlying reflection upon the struggle between ages is “A Clean Well Lighted Place. ” In this novel there is an internal struggle between the young and the older waiter in a restaurant.

The struggle between characters in this novel is that the younger waiter thinks that he know more about life and love than the older waiter. Hemmingway doesn’t have the younger waiter come out and directly say he knows more than the older waiter for a specific reason. By not making the younger waiter say that he strengthens that topic because then his audience is now asking themselves questions about the young and old waiter’s feud. In this story Hemmingway used a large portion of dialogue.

The reason for this is to create a constant back and forth motion between the two waiters. With this constant back and forth it is much easier to make a comparison between the two waiters. Hemmingway also did something very unique in this story. He used Spanish language in this story to even further the excellence of his language use. Ernest Hemmingway’s writing style can never be recreated or copied by anyone. He knew how to get the most from the least in his writing. He mastered the art of pruning language. Getting ever last drop of language genius out.

No one knew how to multiply intensities as well as he did or knew how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth. Unfortunately Ernest Hemmingway committed suicide in the summer of 1961. Even though he is gone his literary legacy lives on through his works still being read and used all around the world. His unique style of writing and his very interesting way of leaving out a topic that was important in order to strengthen his argument will be a great example for other writers even as the years pass.

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