Turtl-E | Blogs | Wartime and Wilderness in the West: Ernest Hemingway

Wartime and Wilderness in the West: Ernest Hemingway

Posted on May 16, 2019

As a man disillusioned by the ravages of war and lost love, Ernest Hemingway penned male-centric fictional works that spoke brusquely of the unpredictable American psyche and, as a result, has been considered a notable trailblazer in 20th-century naturalist literature in the United States.

Born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero, Illinois, Hemingway was raised conservatively in the suburbs yet enjoyed frequent vacations with his family at their cabin in Northern Michigan, where he became skilled in such outdoor activities as hunting and fishing. In high school, Hemingway was highly active as a writer in the school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula, and his early experience as a journalist came in handy in his first job as a Kansas City Star reporter. He was only 18 years old, with an adventurous spirit that refused to be bogged down by college and the quiet academic lifestyle.

In 1918, Hemingway served in World War I as an American Red Cross ambulance driver for the Italian Army. However, he sustained injuries in Fossalta di Piave, Venice, and was hospitalized in Milan, where he met a nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky; the two would shortly be engaged to be married, but Kurowsky later left Hemingway for another man. Hemingway preserved his trauma from these events and translated it into his future written works.

In the mid-1920s, after meeting and receiving encouragement from a few established American writers in Paris-such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, known as the “Lost Generation”-Hemingway shifted from journalistic to fictional writing. His first published novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), was widely successful and based on his travels and experiences in Europe. The postwar modernist novel centers on a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to Spain, where their friendships and relationships are radically tested and transformed.

After settling down in Key West, Florida, with his second wife and son, Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms (1929), the novel that would quickly cement his place in American literary history. Set during World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the tragic love story of American lieutenant Frederic Henry and English nurse Catherine Barkley, who struggle to keep their love and hopes-and themselves-alive in a time of violence, death, and disease.

Hemingway spent much of the 1930s traveling and indulging in various outdoor activities-including hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, and deep-sea fishing (even buying his own fishing boat) in Florida-so much so that his public image as an outdoorsman would become as highly recognized as his written works. His travels spawned such works as the following: Death in the Afternoon (1932), a nonfictional study into the sport of bullfighting in Spain; Green Hills of Africa (1935), another nonfiction piece on big-game hunting in Africa; and To Have and Have Not (1937), a novella about a Floridian fishing boat captain in dire straits during the Great Depression.

Serving as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Hemingway based his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) on his experiences in Spain; it would become his most commercially successful work among his other novels. Titled after a meditation quote from metaphysical poet John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls tells the story of a young American caught in the midst of the Spanish Civil War and whose role in the war’s guerrilla movement could change Spanish history in a single blow.

After World War II, Hemingway moved to Cuba and continued traveling and writing. In 1951, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, a novella about the maritime misadventures of a Cuban fisherman in hot pursuit of a long-sought-after giant marlin. The Old Man and the Sea was incredibly well received, winning the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and earning Hemingway the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Hemingway moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, in 1960. Suffering from anxiety and depression as well as the ghosts of long-ago war and traveling injuries, the writer was hospitalized twice at the Mayo Clinic before shortly thereafter taking his own life with a shotgun at his Idaho home.

Follow our Author Highlights entries on the 1-Hour Proofreading blog for more!

Sources:

Disclaimer: Image is not ours. Credit to the owner.

About 1-Hour Proofreading
1-Hour Proofreading is a growing start-up offering fast and efficient editing services at a reasonable price with the assurance that the document is publication-ready the soonest you need it. Its team of highly competent professional editors is committed to helping those in need of quality editing services while facing tough deadlines.

Visit 1hourproofreading.com for more details.
Follow us:

Back to Grammary

In this series, we shine a spotlight on the most unsung heroes of language: punctuation marks. For this part of the series, we’re going to talk about quite a breathtaking mark. Like others, this one gets overlooked a lot, but if not for this particular punctuation mark, we probably would have run out of air. Let’s all take a pause and talk about the comma.

Behind the Mark

We can trace the roots of the comma back to third century BC in a system of single dots that indicated the “amount of breath” one was to take when reading verses aloud. The comma is a mark that is used across different languages and is available in different typefaces.

The comma shares a symbol similar to the apostrophe and the single quotation mark: a small dot with a tail. The difference is in placement because unlike the apostrophe and the single quotation mark, the comma is placed at the bottom of the line.

How to Use It in English

There are several uses for the comma, but generally, the comma has two functions: pauses and linkage. This is because the commas are used to distinguish separate but related ideas.

For one, commas are used to separate items in a list. The use of the comma in lists indicates not only separation but also the link between all the items within the list.

The new subjects include geography, biology, ethnography, and statistics.

Another important use of the comma is to separate clauses. Two dependent clauses may be separated by a comma. This again goes back to the idea that commas are used for distinguishing related ideas.

Ginger wanted to become a doctor, but she also wanted to teach.

Some adverbs also require the use of the comma when they are used. These include therefore, however, nevertheless, and others. Should these adverbs be used in the middle of a sentence, they would have to be preceded and followed by a comma.

Furthermore, studies show that smoking causes harm to both the smoker and anyone inhaling the smoke for cigarettes. It is recommended, therefore, that smoking be banned from public places.

In some cases, commas are used in place of parentheses, as in the case of parenthetical phrases. These phrases contain information that are not necessary to the meaning of the sentence.

Kath’s grandmother, whom she considers her closest relative, will be attending her graduation.

The comma is also a valuable punctuation mark when using vocatives and quotations.

In his speech today, the mayor said, “Students who apply for scholarships will also be eligible to receive a monthly allowance.” And that, Rose, is why you should aim for better grades this semester.

The comma also has plenty of uses outside of grammar. In mathematics, commas are used to separate numerical values. They are also used to separate geographical locations, names, and titles, as well as dates.

There are 525,600 minutes in one year.

I used to live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Today’s keynote speaker is Charles Xavier, PhD.

In speech as well as literature, commas mark a pause (as opposed to the full stop indicated by periods). The comma also retained its original use of marking breaths.

The Oxford Comma

One of the most controversial issues surrounding the comma is its elevated form, the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is a highly contested and highly polarizing use of the mark. People either feel that it is absolutely necessary or absolutely useless.

The Oxford comma, or the serial comma, is an “optional” comma that comes before the word and on the last item of a list. For cases such as single-word lists, the serial comma may seem unnecessary, such as in the example below.

Popular dog breeds for large families include the Golden Retriever, the Labrador Retriever and the Newfoundland.

However, some lists may be confusing without the extra comma. Read this sentence below to see what I mean.

The lawyer’s clients include a teacher, a newly divorced mom and an accused murderer.

See the problem? Without the Oxford comma, two meanings could be gleaned from the above sentence: the lawyer has three distinct clients, or the lawyer’s client is a teacher, mom, and murderer all in one. Here it is easy to see the importance of the Oxford comma.

As is the case with plenty of rule makers (grammarians and linguists included), one of the aims is to standardize the use of the Oxford comma, making it more than just an option. While practitioners of the language are yet to come to an agreement, for now, the rule of thumb is to follow what the style guide you’re using says about the subject. For example, most academic style guides always require an Oxford comma, but most publication style guides don’t. It all boils down to whom you’re writing for.

Phew! Safe to say, that was more than just a pause. Safe to say, the comma is one punctuation mark that’s sure to pack a punch. We hope you learned plenty today, and we hope you stick around for the rest of 1-Hour Proofreading’s Punctuation Series!

Still unsure about the comma? We’ve got your back! Send your documents through our main page here at 1hourproofreading.com and we’ll make sure to keep all of them in check.

Sources:

Visit 1hourproofreading.com for more details.
Follow us:

Back to Grammary

Wartime and Wilderness in the West: Ernest Hemingway

As a man disillusioned by the ravages of war and lost love, Ernest Hemingway penned male-centric fictional works that spoke brusquely of the unpredictable American psyche and, as a result, has been considered a notable trailblazer in 20th-century naturalist literature in the United States.

Categories

LATEST POST

A Pause for the Comma

COMPANY

DIRECTORY