The Impact of War on Hemingway’s Creative World.
Abstract
Hemingway is a prestigious writer of America. He has
produced a plethora of writing. Born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, he
committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho. In 1954, he won the Nobel
Prize for Literature. He is greatly preoccupied with death and violence. Violence,
death and suffering loom large in his works and they assume many forms. In
several of his stories and novels Hemingway made the theme of war, killing and
violence of his own, and became the chronicler of the disintegrating modern
civilization. In fact, his entire outlook on life was conditioned by war. The
prose style of The Sun Also Rises made Hemingway famous. It
was written in the spare, tight prose. The Old Man and the Sea has
been praised for its striking style. It is the apex of Hemingway’s work as a
model of tightly controlled style. Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style:
writers who came after him emulated it or avoided it.
Key Words: War, battlefield, disillusion,
style.
**********
In the realm of literature, Ernest
Hemingway is one of the most famous of modern American writers. The
reasons for his extraordinary popularity are somewhat difficult to define. He
was a living legend. His works have left an indelible mark on the literary
production of the world. It is he who produced a plethora of writing. In the
opinion of E.S. Oliver, Ernest Hemingway captured the imagination of a
generation of readers and writers in America more completely than has any other
literary figure of the twentieth century. He is the bronze god of the whole
contemporary literary experience in America. His stories and novels came nearer
to changing the course of story telling and giving a new cadence to the
language than has the work of any of his contemporaries.
In 1952 The Old Man and the Sea was published. It was a short
novel about an extraordinary battle between a tired old Cuban fisherman and a
giant marlin. It was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. A year later, Hemingway won the Nobel
Prize for Literature. The prize committee cited the power of his style and his
mastery of narration.
‘Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on
July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago.’1 ‘His
father was a well known physician and amateur sportsman. His mother had talent
both in music and in painting.’2 In 1917 he graduated from Oak Park
High School. It has been said that he was lonely in high school but there is no
reliable evidence in support of this view. He started his career as a writer in
a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United
States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the
Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the
Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return
to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers
and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.
In Paris, he associated with Ford,
Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein and became famous while still in his twenties. Hemingway’s
first really important publication was the slim Three Stories and Ten Poems
which came out in Paris in 1923. From 1928 to 1938 he lived at Key West,
Florida where he earned a great reputation as a sportsman. He was variously
involved in both the Spanish Civil War and in World War II. With his fourth wife,
Mary, he lived a semi-patriarchal life in Cuba, till the last years of his
life. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.
The popularity of Hemingway's work is based on the
themes. Love, war, wilderness and loss are the major themes of his work. Hemingway liked to portray soldiers, hunters,
bullfighters and sportsmen. At times he portrayed primitive people whose
courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who
in this confrontation lose hope and faith. He is greatly pre-occupied with
death and violence. In fact, the author ‘lived in one of the most violent
phases in human history.’3 During the second world war, Hemingway
had personal experiences of violence and death. That’s why violence, death and
suffering loom large in
his works and they assume many forms. In several of his
stories and novels Hemingway made the theme of war, killing and violence of his
own, and became the chronicler of the disintegrating modern civilization. In
fact, his entire outlook on life was conditioned by war. ‘In war badly wounded
Hemingway had felt its presence to close that nothing else afterwards could
ever seem as real. He must push nearer and nearer to whatever truth its
proximate held.’4 His vision is tragic, no doubt, but by no means
pessimistic.
The
Sun Also Rises (1926) is Hemingway’s first major novel that set the flags
for generation. It is not a war novel in the sense A Farewell to Arms and For
Whom the Bell Tolls are because there are no battle scenes, no soldiers and
no fire of bullets. In spite of the fact that there are no battle scenes, its
background is that of the First World War. In this novel Hemingway concentrates
on the artificiality and desperation of the life bred by the First World War.
It deals with the Post war disillusion and moral disorder. In its pervasive
mood of cynicism and disillusion with established values The Sun Also Rises caught the moods of its time. The Sun Also Rises is the definitive
account of the war oppressed sterile society. Its characters suffer acutely
because of the war. Hemingway, who also emerged scarred and wounded from the
trenches of the Italian field in the First World War, transmuted his
biographical experiences both thematically and artistically into the texture of
The Sun Also Rises.
The experiences of World War I became
invaluable fodder for his most famous war novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929). Fighting on the Italian front inspired
the plot of this novel. In December 1929, it was published. It is a
classic among war novels about the First World War. It is the study of an
American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a
deserter. This novel tells the story of a tragic love affair between an
American soldier and an English nurse set against the backdrop of war and
collapsing world order. It contains a philosophical expression of the Hemingway
code that man is basically helpless in a violent age. It deals with the cruelty
and stupidity of war, the greedy materialism and quest for power that cause
war, the platitudes and abstractions that glorify war, and the value of
enduring whatever must be endured. As the earlier novel reflects the cynicism
and disillusionment after the war, A
Farewell to Arms depicts the paradox of war itself. There is no hope and no
future for Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes; similarly Fredric Henry and
Catherine Barkley become the victims of a cruel and hostile age. By fleeing the
battlefield Henry makes a separate peace, and escapes with Catherine to
Switzerland, but he can’t evade death completely. The end of the novel proves
that. The book ends with Catherine’s death in child-birth and Henry’s lonely
return to the hotel in the rain which is symbol of disaster and an omen of
death in the novel. This novel, no doubt, ends on a tragic note
but has no depressing effect on us.
Hemingway laboured hard and devoted
fifteen months for his popular war novel
For Whom the Bell Tolls. The events of the Spanish Civil War gave him
material for this novel. Published in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls is at once the longest and the most
ambitious of Hemingway’s novel dealing with Spain, the Civil War, Fascism and
the individual. It is based on Hemingway’s first hand knowledge of Spain and
its people. A wonderfully clear narrative, it is written in less lyrical and
more dramatic prose than his earlier work. This novel narrates the story of
three days in the life of a young American who had aligned himself with the
Loyalist cause in Spain. It is a story of courage, of loyalty, of self
sacrifice, of love, of the human will to endure. Robert Jordan, an American
volunteer, is sent to dynamite a bridge of utmost strategic importance, at
present under the Fascist control. It will prevent the Fascist troops from
meeting a Loyalist attack. He spends three days and nights in the guerrillas’
cave and falls in love with Maria. Ultimately he gets success in blowing up the
bridge, but in the retreat he is wounded as his horse, hit by the Fascist
bullets, falls on his leg. At his own signal Pilar takes Maria away from him
and leaves him alone to die. Though wounded, he remains at his post till the
last breath and thus serves the cause he has cherished and stood for.
Among his later works, the most
outstanding is the short novel, The
Old Man and the Sea. It is poem in prose.
It is Hemingway’s masterpiece. It deals with the story of an old
fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and
his victory in defeat. The story of it appears as real. Hemingway himself
insisted that the story was about a real man and a real fish. No doubt, the book is notable for its realistic
portrayal but when we read it between the lines, several meanings emerge from the
story. It is many-faceted allegory and has been studied on various levels. In
this context the following opinion is important:
Some have seen it as a symbolic account of the
confrontation between Man and the Absolute, in which the Marlin represents the
Universe. Others have read it as a Christian allegory, with Santiago as Christ.
And more than a few critics have read it as a conscious allegory of Hemingway’s
own a career as an artist, in which the pursuit of the marlin equals his
pursuit of artistic perfection, and the sharks equal his unsympathetic critics.5
Indeed, The
Old Man and the Sea presents Hemingway’s pursuit of artistic excellence.
The author himself becomes the hero of this novel because he really finds
himself involved in the game situation. Like Santiago, Hemingway depends on
technique and courage, and wishes to be skillfully exact to welcome the luck
when it smiles on him once again. In Santiago’s determination to go far into
the sea, we see Hemingway’s daring soul seeking new experiences, reaching out
towards the unknown. Hemingway’s conception of a good writer is indeed one who
stands in majestic isolation and struggles alone in the face of eternity.
Throughout the novel Santiago’s loneliness is emphasized. In order to achieve
something remarkable he goes far away from the madding crowed, but it does not
mean that he should have no dependence on his fellow beings. He can endure much
but often in the face of unforeseen calamities, he craves for the company of
Manolin.
The Old Man and the Sea has
been written in a vain that separates it from Hemingway’s earlier works. It is
a different sort of book. There are no woman-characters, no subplot, and no
drinking, no social obligation as such and no tragic despair. The hero is not a
soldier or a matador but an old man. He is a skilful and tenacious fisherman.
Heroism, endurance and fortitude in the teeth of disaster are the hallmarks of
his character. He hooked a giant marlin and after a grueling battle with it he
is ultimately successful in killing it. But he has still the far greater ordeal
of fighting against the sharks. He faces it bravely and fights like a soldier.
It must be noted that the impact of the harrowing experiences of war had not
been completely effaced from the mind of Hemingway even in The Old Man and the Sea. When the sharks had started their work of destruction,
a umber of questions and regrets arose in Santiago’s mind. These problems and
regrets were prompted by the war psychosis of Hemingway who projected himself
in Santiago.
Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style:
writers who came after him emulated it or avoided it. He was appreciated for
his mastery of the art of narrative and for the influence that he has exerted
on contemporary style. He left
behind an impressive body of work and an iconic style that still influences
writers today. His personality and constant pursuit of adventure loomed almost
as large as his creative talent. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life
of adventure and his public image influenced later generations.
The prose style of The Sun Also Rises made Hemingway famous. It was written in the spare, tight prose. The Old Man and the Sea has been praised for its striking style. It is the
apex of Hemingway’s work as a model of tightly controlled style. It is a
characterized by definiteness of detail, precision of effect, unflagging
concentration and simplicity. This famous style of Hemingway is singularly
known for its colloquial favour, directness, extreme precision and correctness.
Hemingway’s
ideal is a prose without tricks and without cheating. It changed the nature of
American writing. Short words,
straightforward sentence structures, vivid descriptions, and factual details
combine to create an almost transparent medium for his engaging and realistic
stories. He avoided complicated syntax. About seventy percent of the sentences
are simple sentences, a childlike syntax without subordination. His
straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for
understatement are particularly effective.
Hemingway’s legacy is at times seen as
being sexist and homophobic. His pursuit of a masculine ideal has been
criticized for lacking the complexity of human endeavor. Yet, undoubtedly
Hemingway’s writing and life have had a profound impact on literature.
References:
1. Mundra, S.C. Ernest Hemingway: The Impact of War on His
Life and Works (Bareilly:
Prakash Book Depot, 1988), p. 21.
2. Tilak, Raghukul. History of American Literature (Bareilly:
Prakash Book Depot, 2003), p.
279.
3. Ibid. p. 305.
4. Cunliffe Marcuss. The Literature of the United States (Harmondsworth:
Pelican Books Ltd., 1967), pp.
284-85.
5. Graham Kenneth. Ernest
Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea (London: Longman
Group Ltd., 1980), p. 44.
Comments
Post a Comment