Monday, April 1, 2019

Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry

Impact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry1.1 IntroductionWhen orb struggle1 bust out in 1914, it ended al intimately 100 years of recounting peace in europium. the States at that fourth dimension adopted a polity of neutrality and isolation regarding fight. This approach was fully supported by the stack of the States at that eon exactly later, in 1917 the Ger homosexual submarines entered the US marine territories against which the US g altogether in all overnment fin e precisey had to break the ice. So, as a reply to Ger authorizedity invasion the States fin whollyy launched a counter attack and consequently the undivided nation plunged into the extensive solid ground fight1. Una state of strugglef atomic number 18farg genius of the consequences the States unwillingly had to participate in the keenest final solution of the world kn h sure-enough(a) as the domain War1.the States would neer induct buy the farm a part of legitimateness War1 and study stuck to its neutral policy hardly the German submarines defied the US marine laws and entered the US territories on January 9th, 1917. Woodrow Wilson the US pre locatingnt at that time fin bothy asked congress to declargon struggle on Germ e genuinely and it was April 2nd, 1917. As a result of this legitimate order the States joined the struggle a desire with the opposite Allies.On the a nonher(prenominal) arrive at the continent of europium was under the attack of war where human being War1 come up exchangeable a wall of blood red mountains. Despite having abundant military and great weapons war killed ten million europiumans, close of them were little s oldishiers, nurses and subjects and all became the dupes of ultimate death brought by heavy war weapons, loyal jets and bullets swimming in the air. It was deaths command everywhere and when death comes to its empire it kills all what it finds.Similar was the situation in America where men, women and children all were on the pardon of a single bullet. Four million Ameri sack up spends were killed in war and al n ahead of time equal number of civilians got killed and injured men, women and children unexpended(p) homeless payable to the great wreckage all around with the spread of epidemic affection that resulted in the cause of further deaths of m some(prenominal) civilians.It was a chaotic situation aft(prenominal) the war ended in 1919. People were completely disappoint and stupefy by the after(prenominal)maths of the globe War1. They were hopeless and unaw atomic number 18 of their futures. The raw material matrix of intent was completely dissolved by the cruel war and gay beingnesss refining became a victim of demolition. People doomed their trustingness in grassroots norms and value of livelihoodtime as war took away with it their hopes, happiness and applaud mavens too. They searched completely anomic with having no basic aim under situation existence alive . Young men and women of America started living equivalent herds of sheep and were spending liveliness just for the sake of killing time.Eventually the war ended exactly it left understructure its impact on the mind of masses and its flagellum got stored into the minds of the post-war coevalss. People became mentally sick and nevertheless after the war was over they felt its aftershocks later on in their lives. World War1 was the greatest accidental injury of the lives of a great number of Ameri fires who survived the brutal attack of the war. The post-war Ameri neverthelesst joint turn tail became a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental unsoundnesss which were the result of the shocks minded(p) by the World War1. post harmtic stress upset is a severe kind of state of mind after a great shock or accident that leads a human being to pass away a patient of insomnia and several other mental retardations. Al closely for apiece one union and every cla ss in Americas post-war inn became a victim of posttraumatic stress disorder which became a cause of disbelief and disgracing of the fliped-down conduct fashion on part of Ameri undersurface genesis.Watching all the above mentioned even outts and incidents in the midst of the battle fields and among the victims of the World War1 was present Ernest Hemingway, an American bolshie Cross ambulance driver who witnessed and used all these war events and post-war set apart of the baseball club as a scope of his literary whole kit. Hemingway represented the American hostelry and a post-war perturbed American multiplication which is go to sleepn as the Lost extension of America. Hemingway being a spokesman of the deep in thought(p) times, masterly managed to give a whimsical account of events and incidents that took place in the war and changed the lives of millions of Americans. Hemingways main concern was the American lodge and its subdivisions who were suffering fro m a post-war disturbed psychological state of mind. Aiken (1926) delivers in his es formulate as edited by Meyers (1982) as followsThe half twelve characters, all of whom be eagle-eyed to the curious and sad little world of disillusion and rudderless expatriates who make what home they can in the cafes of genus capital of France, be seen short and unsentimentally by Mr. Hemingway and are put before us with a maximum of economy 1. (90)As we acknowledge wars strike always been a cause of destruction, devastation and demolition on a great outmatch since the descent of mankind on earth. There is no doubt that wars split the matrix of human nuance and bring forth despair, death and illness for mankind. Surpassing all the previous wars, the great World-Wars dismantled the hopes, dreams and plays on a large home plate and nations falling victims of disillusionment, floating(a)ness and mental stress and material disorders. One of the greatest diseases that damage the brain after a war is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a severe state of human mind after a shock or a trauma. Durand and Barlow (2000) chin-wag on PTSD as followsIn recent years we generate heard a great deal intimately the severe and lasting ablaze disorders that can occur after a variety of traumatic events. possibly the around impressive traumatic event is war, hardly emotional disorders in like manner occur after carnal assault (particularly rape), car accidents, instinctive catastrophes, or the sudden death of a lie with one. The emotional disorder that follows a trauma is known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2. (131) thusly I. Sarason and Sarason (2006) in their take on Abnormal Psychology chin-waggingPTSD involves an extreme experience, such as war, a livelihoodlike catastrophe (for typeface an earthquake), a physical assault, or a serious car crash. The traumas wheel from those that are directly experienced (e.g., being threatened with death) to those that are witnessed (e.g., family fraction being threatened with death). The onset of the clinical occasion in posttraumatic disorders varies from curtly after the trauma to long after it has occurred. Most studies take in put higher rates among women than men. The prevalence of PTSD in the general world is somewhat 0.5% in men and 1.2% in women (Andreasen and Black, 2001). Because life today is considered to be high in trauma for the universe of discourse in general, it is estimated that Americans currently moderate a 5 to 10% chance of developing PTSD at roughtime during their lifetimes. The combination of vulner business leader circumstanceors and exposures earlier in life to traumatic experiences increases the likelihood of PTSD. For font, having been abused as a child or adjudge had other previous traumatic experiences increases the risk for PTSD, especially for individuals who generally shoot emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression 3. (256)Now hold ing in mind the American society which is the sole area of our research, we instal the reason behind PTSD in American society and the characters introduced to us by Ernest Hemingway in his kit and boodle. And that reason was the First World War and its aftermath. The lives of millions of muckle were badly influenced by World War I in America and in europium as well. The great final solution changed the whole archetype of life by destroying the basic norms and traditionalistic beliefs in all separate of the world.Priestley (1962) descriptions on World War I as followsIn the very middle of this age the First World War rises like a wall of blood-red mountains. Its frenzied butchery, indefensible even on a military basis, killed at least ten million Europeans, well-nighly two-year-old and free from obvious physical defects. After being dressed in uniform, fed and drilled, cheered and cried over before they were packed into their cattle-trunks, these ten million were and so f illed with hot lead, ripped apart by shell splinters, blown to bits, bayoneted in the belly, choked with poison gas, suffocated in mud, trampled to death or dr own, buried in collapsing dugouts, dropped out of burning aero planes, or allowed to die of diseases, after rotting to long in trenches that they taked with syphilitic rats and typhus-infested lice. Death, having come into his empire, demands the best, and got it 4. (321)Almost all the utilizations of Ernest Hemingway are a result of his freshman-hand experience of war and his staunch ceremonial occasion of life around him. Most of his brings prove to be autobiographic in nature and Cooperman (1964) rumourmongers on autobiographical nature of Hemingways full treatment as followsThree elements in Hemingways life do many of his carriages, and indeed regulate a great deal of his plant the event that in World War I, he suffered a painful and terrible mortar aggravate, which do him conscious of the catch possibil ities of the loss of manhood the fact that his father committed suicide and the fact of his growing old and the fears created by old age itself. Similar to Frederic enthalpy in A Farewell to Arms, Jake Barnes in The sunniness withal Rises, and capital of Chile in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was afflicted with the fear of letting go and the fear of thinking. The wickednessmare of chaos, of passivity, loss of will, loss of initiative, loss of masculine habit was a terrible darknessmare, and one to be avoided at all be 5. (85-92)It has already been observed that all the Hemingway fablealisation comes from his war experiences and the aftermath of the war. many an(prenominal) critics generate commented on this experience-establish technique of Ernest Hemingway. check to Putnam (2006), Tobias Wolff at the Hemingway centennial solemnization said, Hemingways great war deed deals with aftermath. It deals with what happens to the soul in war and how commonwealth deal with that afterward.Putnam (2006) further commentsNo American author is to a greater extent associated with bring through about war in the aboriginal twentieth century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it first basehand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable induces 6.Ernest Hemingway is best known as the representative of the Lost times of America. He as an artist and generator of literature selected characters from the post-war American society as he was himself a instalment of that society and he observed it staunchly. Most of his works are ground on his personal experience of the society and that is why he is very oft himself present in his novels as a leading character. Asselineau (1980) comments on Hemingways fiction as followsIt was indeed a lose generation in ofttimes(prenominal) senses than one. Yet, Hemingway among others survived the Great War for over forty years and, after be as the cynica l and disillusioned Byron of twentieth century, ultimately turned into a new t from each oneer of athletes and a professeur d energie a la Barres. A rather surprising change and a very spectacular recovery, which we can follow step by step in his works, since his novels make up an interminable Bildungsroman whose hero is always himself 7. tour going through the works of Ernest Hemingway one unfeignedizes that Hemingway has very skillfully managed to present before us a group of expatriates who had left their homeland America after getting disillusioned by the war and were living as useless great deal in different split of Europe under a special reckon of life. Asselineau (1980) comments as followsAll the veterans of foreign wars who appeared in Hemingways fiction are joined by a common belief in an unwritten enrol. They are morally and physically very tough. They can take it. They keep a stiff upper lip. They grin and bear it. They refuse to discuss their own emotion and desp ise loquacious swaggerers like Robert Cohn. They hate gushing. They believe in self control and self imposed discipline. They assume reached true information in the etymological meaning of the word wisdom. They are those who know- who know that they are mortal and that in shorter or later life ends in death. They know that man- whatever he does- will before longer or later be crushed by the hostile forces which surround him and is bound to be defeated- defeated, but not vanquished, for, like Pascal, they believe in the dignity of man, a mere reed, and the weakest that can be establish on earth, but even when the universe crushes him, man is still nobler than what kills him, for he knows that he is dying, while the avail that the universe has over him, the universe is unaware of it. 8 (1844) punty (1986) has to a fault commented on the lost generation as followsMan adolescent batch the post-World War 1 period had lost their American ideals. At the corresponding time America lost many fine little writers- like e.e. cummings and Hemingway- because they had moved to Paris. Fitz Geralds first novel, This Side of nirvana (1920), describes this new generation. They had braggart(a) up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all religions in man shaken. Two concerns now filled their lives the fear of poverty and the worship of success. 9 (143)Hemingways The insolate likewise Rises proves to be the best of his works and it was also his first proper novel on lost generation of America. The novel stands as a monument over which the whole drama of the lost generation of America has been carved. It was Gertrude stein the American authoress and Hemingways mentor who for the very first time told E. Hemingway You are all a lost generation. Hemingway was struck by the comment and used it as an epigraph and also the theme of his first novel, Fiesta (called The Sun Also Rises in US. Ousby (1979) in his audition The Lost coevals comments as followsToday the lost propagation has come to front an over-worked catchphrase. Used haphazard in its own era, the backup has been claimed by successive generations of writers and applied retrospectively to earlier schools, such as the American naturalists. Yet the term system useful in discussing the novelists of 1920s, if whole when because epitomizes the way they liked to see themselves. 10 (205)Ousby (1979) further explains the characteristics of the writers of lost generation in following wordsTheir eccentric and common experience was a disillusion bred by the First World War. They returned from that conflict to a society whose set seemed hollow and artificial by comparison with the harsh authoritative(a)ities of the battle-field. Their alienation from America often took the form of comport and expatriation Hemingway and Dos Passos fagged most of their early adult lives in Europe, while Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe were frequent visitors. It would hardly be an exaggeration to ord er that Paris became the extra-parliamentary centre of American culture in 1920s. It was the shrine to which most ambitious small writers of the era do their pilgrimage. 11 (206) Ousby (1979) in the said(prenominal) es plead tells us the factors which affected the makeups of the writers of lost generation in the following wordsDisillusioned with society in general and America in particular, the novelists of the Lost Generation cultivated a quixotic self-absorption- a deliberate retreat into private emotion. They became precocious experts in tragedy, suffering and anguish. The early novels of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald are sightd by sad, bitter one-year-old men who find lost all illusions at an early age Amory Blaine of This Side of promised land and Jake Barnes of Fiesta are the prime examples. They are haunted by war memories and by images of violence, cynical about idealism in any form, and condition to only the most cryptic and laconic expressions of feeling. 12 (206 )Ousby (1979) also comments on the characters introduced to us by the writers of lost generation as followsThe characters of Lost Generation novels live in restless pursuit of excitement and pleasure. Their Europe is not the gallery of cultural objects embed in Hawthornes and Jamess fiction it is a Europe of elegant restaurants, picturesque bars and intriguing local customs. They delight in kicking over the conventional traces (and in the resultant cries of middle- class horror), tomfoolery in heavy drinking and casual sex. 13 (207)It was only Ernest Hemingway, who among the most famous writers of lost generation of America has been able to won the prenomen of the avant-garde writer of the lost generation. His novel The Sun Also Rises was recommended all over the world as a true drool featuring material tribe from the lost generation. This novel also made Hemingway a world-known celebrity. Nagel (1996) in his evidence Brett and the separate Women in The Sun Also Rises commen tsThis record made him, almost instantly, an international celebrity identified with an entire generation, torn by war and grieving throughout the Roaring Twenties for their lost romanticist idealism. Although he was nearlywhat ill-suited for the procedure, because he was a hard-working young writer with a wife and a son to support, he came to be regarded as the spokesman for American expatriates, those disillusioned and disaffected artists, writers, and intellectuals who worn-out(a) the decade on the Left slang in Paris. 14 (87)In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway uses Jake as a puppet, a narrator and also his famous code hero. Jake narrates the whole boloney which Hemingways eye saw sincerely. Nagel (1996) again in his es place Brett and the different Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on the character of Jake Barnes as followsHe is certainly one of the most isolated and vulnerable figures in American literature, and he narrates out of his disillusionment and pain, his grief evident throughout. As he says about himself, all he wants is to figure out how he can live in the world. It would seem that telling what happened is part of the process of study how to live in the special circumstances of his world. 15 (90)Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on Jake being a representative of lost generation in following words Hemingway humanized this wave-particle duality in the character of Jake Barnes by creating a man who bears the breaks of the war in a profoundly personal way yet combines his disillusionment with traditional American values of hard work and just compensation. It is surely an simplism to see Jake as an uncompromised representative of lost generation radicalism, for he exhibits much(prenominal) of the midwestern values he sometimes satirizes Above all, it is his judgment that provides the prescriptive sensibility for assessing the quite a little and events of the novel. But to grasp t he meaning of what he relates, it is requisite to understand the psychological context in which he tells it. 16 (91) dame Ashley Brett is another important character from the lost generation. She is pure nymphomaniac ramify of a char and is a true representative of the women of the early twentieth century. accord to Nagel (1996), Brett is by no means the first representation of a sexually liberated, free-thinking char in American literature but rather an embodiment of what became known as the New Woman in nineteenth-century fiction.Nagel (1996) further saysBrett is not only a women but an wonderful woman for the age, a point not clear unless she is considered in historical context. wreak this perspective, the women in The Sun Also Rises might be regarded as to a greater extent interesting then the men. The role of women in society had been changing with each decade for a century, always with a computable deal of fond conflict and ideological struggle. 17 (92)Keeping in min d the twisting of Jake collectable to his relation with Brett, we may easily nominate him as the most suffering person in the novel. His love with Brett makes him feel the pain of his wound which he got during the war, because he could not physically fulfill what he felt. According to Nagel (1996)From the beginning, the world is out of sexual order, the amicable evening is a fraudulence of erotic potential, and the deeper irony is that this pathology is at the very heart of Jake and Bretts relationship. Their conversation in the taxi reveals the central problem of the novel that they one another, that they feel that thither is nothing they can do about it, that it is painful and destructive for them to be together. Whatever else happens is driven by this fact, and it is impossible for them to change it. The central quandary for Jake is whether he can change the situation by finding some satisfaction in life. The problem for Brett is that she needs companionship of a man, and no one but Jake can byer her much beyond zip sexual pleasure. 18 (94)Jake truly deserves pity because he is the one who lost the most he had during war and even afterwards. His love with Brett gives him nothing shut pain and he is also unable to sleep at night due to the ache brought by his love for Brett. Nagel (1996) commentsThe loss in the lost generation is sustained primarily by him, and it makes for powerful fiction. The novel works, ultimately, because Jake, in anomalous circumstances, nevertheless presents a normative sensibility in the stratum he tells. He emerges as a man of intelligence, humor and groovy sense who lost more than he deserved in World War 1 but learned how to make a life for himself. 19 (105)According to Martin (1987)Jake Barnes and his friends- all of them- are a group because they grapple the homogeneous beliefs and experiences. Except for Robert Cohn, whose differences are less heinous than Jake sometimes thinks them to be, the displaced Americans and Britons are moving through a festival period in their lives, punctuating their aimless existence abroad with an organized visit to Spain for the bullfights. 20 (07)The characters introduced to us by Hemingway live under a peculiar but yet an frightful code of life. They be suffer like a community of people communion similar set of thoughts and beliefs. Martin (1987) in her New Essays on The Sun Also Rises saysA key theme is the notion of community These are people who understand each other, the rules they live by, and the reasons for their choices. Only someone right(prenominal) that community will hold in difficulty with the social code. Count Mippipopolous may be a st seether to the group, but he understands the code and fits into the society. Robert Cohn, although he spends much time with the processs of the group and thinks himself a special friend of both Jake and Brett, never manages to assimilate the rules. Jake, however, is clearly in charge- of the plans, the gues t list, the activities, and the emotional nuance. He is the patent hero of the novel, and his approval or disapproval sets the pattern for the other characters response to things. 20 (08)All the characters in the novel The Sun Also Rises seem dissatisfied and unhappy and most of the time they feel themselves useless. Martin (1987) comments on this condition of the characters in following wordsThere are many reasons for these characters unhappiness. To worry on irony and pity is just a pastime the real issues are the lack of alignment amidst profession and occupation, amid lovers, between vacation and work, between ideals of Spain and France, between nature and the commercial. As full of disjunctures as a picture puzzle, The Sun Also Rises still presents a fib whole, its fragments necessarily scattered throughout the narrative, and readers accept the fragmentation as one the marks of Hemingways truth. They seize on the purity of Pedro Romero, the wit of the bemused mike Campbe ll, the taciturn acceptances of Jake Barnes, the flip bravado of Brett Ashley as the symbols of the characters who survive the onslaught of real life. 21 (16) Chapter 2Life and Works of Ernest Hemingway2.1 Birth and ParentageErnest milling machine Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21st, 1899. His father was a doctor. He worn-out(a) much of his time in his early days roaming about in the woods, rifle on his shoulders, or rowing out crossways the water of a large lake in quest of big fish. Although his family owned a cottage on a lake, he usually slept distant in a tent, the dim light of a ke ruddinessne lantern flicker long hours into the night over his temporary cot as he laid reading.2.1.1 His SchoolingIn June 1917, Hemingway graduated from Oak Park noble School toward the bottom of his class. Meanwhile, war had broken out in Europe and, preferring fighting to college, he tried to get enlisted in the army but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Frustrated, he went away to live with an uncle in Kansas metropolis where he found a job as a newsperson in a newspaper. He liked his writing job, but he still had a compelling urge to get into the war, and the opportunity came currently afterwards. On eruditeness that Italy was recruiting ambulance drivers to serve on the Italian front he gave up his job and became an ambulance driver in Italy.2.1.2 Injuries of WarHemingway had been driving behind the lines for only a few days when he found that his work was too safe, in fact, dull. He wanted to serve on the frontlines in the thick of things. So he volunteered for canteen service and was soon equitation a bicycle, handing out escape, tobacco, and chocolates to soldiers in the trenches. On his tenth day in Italy as he was handing a chocolate bar to a soldier, a large mortar shell fell near by. Hemingway was almost buried. His organic structure was filled below the waist with over 250 pieces of shrapnel, but after comeback consciousness, he rescued a badly wounded Italian soldier and was turning to help others when he was hit again, with a machine-gun bullet, below the left knee.2.1.3 Falls in esteem with a NurseHe worn out(p) several weeks in a tearing Cross hospital and on that point he fell in love with an English Nurse Agnes. speckle in Europe, he received several medals for bravery, and then was sent home, hitch on a cane. The Hemingway who went back to America was different person from the young man who had left. War, death, suffering, new people, a new language and love had all been crowded into a short period of time.2.1.4 Disappointment in bashWhile his feet and legs healed, he read a lot and impatiently watched the ring armor until, one day after receiving a letter, he suddenly became ill. He retired into seclusion and for days hardly left his room. Finally, on being repeatedly asked by his family, he revealed that the letter has came form Agnes informing him that she was not culmination to America an d that she had married an Italian army major.2.1.5 Failure and FameSad and disappointed, Hemingway went to Paris for study and to make a living by writing. There, he met and became cordial with some of the worlds greatest literary figures of that day- James Joyce, Gertrude stein, Ezra Pound, and others. But despite their advice and help, he could not sell his literary attempts. Manuscript after manuscript unploughed flood tide back from editors, usually without a single word of encouragement, and with only a printed rejection slip. One day, he was sitting at a side walk caf on the Left brim in Paris and kvetch to a friend about his ill luck. The friend observed that possibly the reason why Hemingways writings did not sell was that he had not suffered enough and that he did not know misery. Hemingway bitterly replied, So I soak up not known misery So thats what you think thus at first seemingly lost in memory, he narrated the grade of his lost love, Agnes, the English nurse . He told his friend about the suffering he had endured in World War 1. Later, he put the fable on paper in the form of a novel, A Farewell to Arms. The book proven to be immensely popular and Hemingway found himself famous. We could probably say that an unhappy love affair and his unhappy experiences in war were the motivation factor which made him being a great author.2.1.6 Reporting in SpainHe went on writing and was now a successful and accomplished writer. He traveled extensively, hunting in Africa and the Far East, sport seek in numerous oceans and seas. He felt greatly attracted by bull-fighting in Spain and spent several years in that country. He covered the Spanish civilized War for American newspapers and could not resist getting into the fight in Madrid. By then, he was known as Papa, a whiskery huge figure of a man who joked and swore with the best of the soldiers.2.1.7 World War IIWhen World War II began, Hemingway, then living in Cuba, armed his own boat as a submar ine pursuer and patrolled the Atlantic Coast murder the United States. But in 1942, he was in the thick of battle again as a cartridge clip correspondent. He flew from England on bombing missions and became an expert on German rockets. sound the end of the war, he was among the first wave of troops to storm the Normandy set down in 1944. After the war, he retired to Cuba to fish and write. One book proven a failure, and his critics remarked that Papas carrier was over.2.1.8 The Nobel treasure and then, in 1952, after years of work, he brought out The Old Man and the Sea, a tale of the struggle of a single, old fisherman against the powers of fate and the ocean. It was the story he had been trying to write all his life, and it brought him the Pulitzer cabbage for 1953. In the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Suffering from injuries in plane crashes while hunting wild jeopardize in Africa, Hemingway could not go to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize but in a letter to the Academy he declared that the writers life was a lonely one, and that if he shed his loneliness, his work would deteriorate. Still living in Cuba, Hemingway continued writing short stories, novels, and pickup articles. But he also began to take life easier, spending more time on his fishing boat with his wife, whom he called Miss Mary. No one can work everyday in these hot months without going stale, he wrote during this period. To break up the pattern of work, we fish the Gulf Stream in the spring and spend months and in the fall.2.1.9 A Life of AdventureHemingways sixty-two years were packed with excitement. Living through adventure after adventure, he told stories of his life and love on jungles, the two World Wars in which he played a part in Europe, and a giant 1000-pound fish he battled off the Coast of Cuba. But his writing was more than just adventure stories he helped to set the agency for the modern novel. His lean, muscular prose and dramatic plo ts have, by chance, been copied more than any other modern authors and his work has been translated into all the worlds major languages.2.1.10 Ill health and SuicideBut Hemingway was growing old. His hair and beard had turned white. His old wounds were bothering him. He had to keep standing while writing, and he was frequently unwell. and then Castro took over in Cuba, and Hemingway and Miss Mary returned to America, living in Idaho. He spent a few months in hospitals, began losing weight, and saw his creative index declining. Early one morning on July 1961, he slipped on the steps in his home and, not wishing to prolong his suffering, killed himself with a gun. peradventure he had concluded, like the old fisherman in his novel, that he had no luck anymore.2.2 His WorksInfluenced by Ezra Pound and particularly by Gertrude Stein whose style strongly affected him, Hemingway published Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923 and In Our Time (a collection of short stories) in 1925. The se early stories exhibited the billet of mind and technique for which Hemingway later became famous. As the leading spokesman for the lost generation, he expressed the feelings of war-wounded people disillusioned by the loss of faith and hope, and so thoroughly defeated by the collapse of former values that they could turn only to a stoic acceptance of primal emotions. The stories are mainly concerned with tough people, both intelligent men and women who have dropped into an exhausted cynicism or such primitives as frontiers-men, IImpact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways PoetryImpact of WW1 on Ernest Hemingways Poetry1.1 IntroductionWhen World War1 broke out in 1914, it ended almost 100 years of relative peace in Europe. America at that time adopted a policy of neutrality and isolation regarding war. This approach was fully supported by the people of America at that time but later, in 1917 the German submarines entered the US marine territories against which the US government finally had to break the ice. So, as a reaction to German invasion America finally launched a counter attack and consequently the whole nation plunged into the great World War1. Unaware of the consequences America unwillingly had to participate in the greatest holocaust of the world known as the World War1.America would never have become a part of World War1 and have stuck to its neutral policy but the German submarines defied the US marine laws and entered the US territories on January 9th, 1917. Woodrow Wilson the US president at that time finally asked congress to declare war on Germany and it was April 2nd, 1917. As a result of this legitimate order America joined the war along with the other Allies.On the other hand the continent of Europe was under the attack of war where World War1 rose like a wall of blood red mountains. Despite having broad military and great weapons war killed ten million Europeans, most of them were young soldiers, nurses and subjects and all became the victims of ultimate death brought by heavy war weapons, fast-flying jets and bullets swimming in the air. It was deaths command everywhere and when death comes to its empire it kills all what it finds.Similar was the situation in America where men, women and children all were on the tenderness of a single bullet. Four million American soldiers were killed in war and almost equal number of civilians got killed and injured men, women and children left homeless due to the great wreckage all around with the spread of epidemic disease that resulted in the cause of further deaths of many civilians.It was a chaotic situation after the war ended in 1919. People were completely disillusioned and immobilize by the aftermaths of the World War1. They were hopeless and unaware of their futures. The basic matrix of life was completely dissolved by the cruel war and human civilization became a victim of demolition. People lost their faith in basic norms and values of life as war took away with it their ho pes, happiness and loved ones too. They seemed completely lost with having no basic aim behind being alive. Young men and women of America started living like herds of sheep and were spending life just for the sake of killing time.Eventually the war ended but it left behind its impact on the mind of masses and its disquietude got stored into the minds of the post-war generations. People became mentally sick and even after the war was over they felt its aftershocks later on in their lives. World War1 was the greatest trauma of the lives of a great number of Americans who survived the brutal attack of the war. The post-war American race became a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental disorders which were the result of the shocks given by the World War1. PTSD is a severe kind of state of mind after a great shock or accident that leads a human being to become a patient of insomnia and several other mental retardations. Almost each community and every class in America s post-war society became a victim of PTSD which became a cause of disbelief and disgracing of the traditional life style on part of American generation.Watching all the above mentioned events and incidents in the midst of the battle fields and among the victims of the World War1 was present Ernest Hemingway, an American Red Cross ambulance driver who witnessed and used all these war events and post-war condition of the society as a backdrop of his literary works. Hemingway represented the American society and a post-war perturbed American generation which is known as the Lost Generation of America. Hemingway being a spokesman of the lost generation, masterly managed to give a erratic(p) account of events and incidents that took place in the war and changed the lives of millions of Americans. Hemingways main concern was the American society and its members who were suffering from a post-war disturbed psychological state of mind. Aiken (1926) writes in his essay as edited by Meyers (1982) as followsThe half 12 characters, all of whom belong to the curious and sad little world of disillusioned and aimless expatriates who make what home they can in the cafes of Paris, are seen abruptly and unsentimentally by Mr. Hemingway and are put before us with a maximum of economy 1. (90)As we know wars have always been a cause of destruction, devastation and demolition on a great scale since the descent of mankind on earth. There is no doubt that wars rend the matrix of human civilization and bring forth despair, death and disease for mankind. Surpassing all the previous wars, the great World-Wars dismantled the hopes, dreams and races on a large scale and nations falling victims of disillusionment, aimlessness and mental stress and physical disorders. One of the greatest diseases that damage the brain after a war is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a severe state of human mind after a shock or a trauma. Durand and Barlow (2000) comment on PTSD as followsIn recent years we have heard a great deal about the severe and lasting emotional disorders that can occur after a variety of traumatic events. Perhaps the most impressive traumatic event is war, but emotional disorders also occur after physical assault (particularly rape), car accidents, natural catastrophes, or the sudden death of a loved one. The emotional disorder that follows a trauma is known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2. (131) consequently I. Sarason and Sarason (2006) in their book on Abnormal Psychology commentPTSD involves an extreme experience, such as war, a natural catastrophe (for instance an earthquake), a physical assault, or a serious car crash. The traumas range from those that are directly experienced (e.g., being threatened with death) to those that are witnessed (e.g., family member being threatened with death). The onset of the clinical condition in posttraumatic disorders varies from soon after the trauma to long after it has occurred. Most studies have found h igher rates among women than men. The prevalence of PTSD in the general population is about 0.5% in men and 1.2% in women (Andreasen and Black, 2001). Because life today is considered to be high in trauma for the population in general, it is estimated that Americans currently have a 5 to 10% chance of developing PTSD at sometime during their lifetimes. The combination of vulnerability factors and exposures earlier in life to traumatic experiences increases the likelihood of PTSD. For instance, having been abused as a child or have had other previous traumatic experiences increases the risk for PTSD, especially for individuals who generally have emotional difficulties, such as anxiety and depression 3. (256)Now belongings in mind the American society which is the sole area of our research, we found the reason behind PTSD in American society and the characters introduced to us by Ernest Hemingway in his works. And that reason was the First World War and its aftermath. The lives of mi llions of people were badly influenced by World War I in America and in Europe as well. The great holocaust changed the whole theory of life by destroying the basic norms and traditional beliefs in all parts of the world.Priestley (1962) comments on World War I as followsIn the very middle of this age the First World War rises like a wall of blood-red mountains. Its frenzied butchery, indefensible even on a military basis, killed at least ten million Europeans, mostly young and free from obvious physical defects. After being dressed in uniform, fed and drilled, cheered and cried over before they were packed into their cattle-trunks, these ten million were then filled with hot lead, ripped apart by shell splinters, blown to bits, bayoneted in the belly, choked with poison gas, suffocated in mud, trampled to death or drowned, buried in collapsing dugouts, dropped out of burning aero planes, or allowed to die of diseases, after rotting to long in trenches that they shared with syphili tic rats and typhus-infested lice. Death, having come into his empire, demands the best, and got it 4. (321)Almost all the works of Ernest Hemingway are a result of his first-hand experience of war and his staunch notice of life around him. Most of his works prove to be autobiographical in nature and Cooperman (1964) comments on autobiographical nature of Hemingways works as followsThree elements in Hemingways life shaped many of his attitudes, and indeed shaped much of his works the fact that in World War I, he suffered a painful and terrible mortar wound, which made him conscious of the taking into custody possibilities of the loss of manhood the fact that his father committed suicide and the fact of his growing old and the fears created by old age itself. Similar to Frederic enthalpy in A Farewell to Arms, Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, and capital of Chile in The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was afflicted with the fear of letting go and the fear of thinking. The nightmar e of chaos, of passivity, loss of will, loss of initiative, loss of masculine role was a terrible nightmare, and one to be avoided at all be 5. (85-92)It has already been observed that all the Hemingway fiction comes from his war experiences and the aftermath of the war. some critics have commented on this experience-based technique of Ernest Hemingway. According to Putnam (2006), Tobias Wolff at the Hemingway centennial festivity said, Hemingways great war work deals with aftermath. It deals with what happens to the soul in war and how people deal with that afterward.Putnam (2006) further commentsNo American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it firsthand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable works 6.Ernest Hemingway is best known as the representative of the Lost Generation of America. He as an artist and writer of literature selected characters from the post-war American society as he was himself a member of that society and he observed it staunchly. Most of his works are based on his personal experience of the society and that is why he is often himself present in his novels as a leading character. Asselineau (1980) comments on Hemingways fiction as followsIt was indeed a lost generation in more senses than one. Yet, Hemingway among others survived the Great War for over forty years and, after appearance as the cynical and disillusioned Byron of twentieth century, ultimately turned into a new teacher of athletes and a professeur d energie a la Barres. A rather surprising change and a very spectacular recovery, which we can follow step by step in his works, since his novels make up an interminable Bildungsroman whose hero is always himself 7. While going through the works of Ernest Hemingway one realizes that Hemingway has very skillfully managed to present before us a group of expatriates who had left their ho meland America after getting disillusioned by the war and were living as useless people in different parts of Europe under a special code of life. Asselineau (1980) comments as followsAll the veterans of foreign wars who appeared in Hemingways fiction are united by a common belief in an unwritten code. They are morally and physically very tough. They can take it. They keep a stiff upper lip. They grin and bear it. They refuse to discuss their own emotion and despise loquacious swaggerers like Robert Cohn. They hate gushing. They believe in self control and self imposed discipline. They have reached true wisdom in the etymological meaning of the word wisdom. They are those who know- who know that they are mortal and that sooner or later life ends in death. They know that man- whatever he does- will sooner or later be crushed by the hostile forces which surround him and is bound to be defeated- defeated, but not vanquished, for, like Pascal, they believe in the dignity of man, a mere reed, and the weakest that can be found on earth, but even when the universe crushes him, man is still nobler than what kills him, for he knows that he is dying, while the vantage that the universe has over him, the universe is unaware of it. 8 (1844)High (1986) has also commented on the lost generation as followsMan young people the post-World War 1 period had lost their American ideals. At the selfsame(prenominal) time America lost many fine young writers- like e.e. cummings and Hemingway- because they had moved to Paris. Fitz Geralds first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), describes this new generation. They had bighearted up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. Two concerns now filled their lives the fear of poverty and the worship of success. 9 (143)Hemingways The Sun Also Rises proves to be the best of his works and it was also his first proper novel on lost generation of America. The novel stands as a monument over which the whole drama of t he lost generation of America has been carved. It was Gertrude Stein the American authoress and Hemingways mentor who for the very first time told E. Hemingway You are all a lost generation. Hemingway was struck by the comment and used it as an epigraph and also the theme of his first novel, Fiesta (called The Sun Also Rises in US. Ousby (1979) in his essay The Lost Generation comments as followsToday the lost Generation has come to seem an over-worked catchphrase. Used licentiously in its own era, the title has been claimed by successive generations of writers and applied retrospectively to earlier schools, such as the American naturalists. Yet the term mud useful in discussing the novelists of 1920s, if only because epitomizes the way they liked to see themselves. 10 (205)Ousby (1979) further explains the characteristics of the writers of lost generation in following wordsTheir unique and common experience was a disillusion bred by the First World War. They returned from that co nflict to a society whose values seemed hollow and artificial by comparison with the harsh realities of the battle-field. Their alienation from America often took the form of expatriation and expatriation Hemingway and Dos Passos spent most of their early adult lives in Europe, while Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe were frequent visitors. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Paris became the extra-parliamentary centre of American culture in 1920s. It was the shrine to which most ambitious young writers of the era made their pilgrimage. 11 (206) Ousby (1979) in the same essay tells us the factors which affected the writings of the writers of lost generation in the following wordsDisillusioned with society in general and America in particular, the novelists of the Lost Generation cultivated a romantic self-absorption- a deliberate retreat into private emotion. They became precocious experts in tragedy, suffering and anguish. The early novels of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgera ld are peopled by sad, bitter young men who have lost all illusions at an early age Amory Blaine of This Side of Paradise and Jake Barnes of Fiesta are the prime examples. They are haunted by war memories and by images of violence, cynical about idealism in any form, and given to only the most cryptic and laconic expressions of feeling. 12 (206)Ousby (1979) also comments on the characters introduced to us by the writers of lost generation as followsThe characters of Lost Generation novels live in restless pursuit of excitement and pleasure. Their Europe is not the gallery of cultural objects found in Hawthornes and Jamess fiction it is a Europe of elegant restaurants, picturesque bars and intriguing local customs. They delight in kicking over the conventional traces (and in the resultant cries of middle- class horror), self-indulgence in heavy drinking and casual sex. 13 (207)It was only Ernest Hemingway, who among the most famous writers of lost generation of America has been able to won the title of the avant-garde writer of the lost generation. His novel The Sun Also Rises was recommended all over the world as a true story featuring real people from the lost generation. This novel also made Hemingway a world-known celebrity. Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises commentsThis book made him, almost instantly, an international celebrity identified with an entire generation, torn by war and grieving throughout the Roaring Twenties for their lost romantic idealism. Although he was somewhat ill-suited for the role, because he was a hard-working young writer with a wife and a son to support, he came to be regarded as the spokesman for American expatriates, those disillusioned and disaffected artists, writers, and intellectuals who spent the decade on the Left Bank in Paris. 14 (87)In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway uses Jake as a puppet, a narrator and also his famous code hero. Jake narrates the whole story which Hemin gways eye saw sincerely. Nagel (1996) again in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on the character of Jake Barnes as followsHe is certainly one of the most isolated and vulnerable figures in American literature, and he narrates out of his disillusionment and pain, his grief evident throughout. As he says about himself, all he wants is to figure out how he can live in the world. It would seem that telling what happened is part of the process of learning how to live in the special circumstances of his world. 15 (90)Nagel (1996) in his essay Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises comments on Jake being a representative of lost generation in following words Hemingway humanized this duality in the character of Jake Barnes by creating a man who bears the wounds of the war in a profoundly personal way yet combines his disillusionment with traditional American values of hard work and just compensation. It is surely an oversimplification to see Jake as an uncompromised representative of lost generation radicalism, for he exhibits much of the midwestern values he sometimes satirizes Above all, it is his judgment that provides the normative sensibility for assessing the people and events of the novel. But to grasp the meaning of what he relates, it is inwrought to understand the psychological context in which he tells it. 16 (91) skirt Ashley Brett is another important character from the lost generation. She is pure nymphomaniac come apart of a woman and is a true representative of the women of the early 20th century. According to Nagel (1996), Brett is by no means the first representation of a sexually liberated, free-thinking woman in American literature but rather an embodiment of what became known as the New Woman in nineteenth-century fiction.Nagel (1996) further saysBrett is not only a women but an extraordinary woman for the age, a point not clear unless she is considered in historical context. stimulate this perspecti ve, the women in The Sun Also Rises might be regarded as more interesting then the men. The role of women in society had been changing with each decade for a century, always with a good deal of social conflict and ideological struggle. 17 (92)Keeping in mind the agony of Jake due to his relation with Brett, we may easily nominate him as the most suffering person in the novel. His love with Brett makes him feel the pain of his wound which he got during the war, because he could not physically fulfill what he felt. According to Nagel (1996)From the beginning, the world is out of sexual order, the social evening is a mockery of erotic potential, and the deeper irony is that this pathology is at the very heart of Jake and Bretts relationship. Their conversation in the taxi reveals the central problem of the novel that they one another, that they feel that on that point is nothing they can do about it, that it is painful and destructive for them to be together. Whatever else happens is driven by this fact, and it is impossible for them to change it. The central plight for Jake is whether he can change the situation by finding some satisfaction in life. The problem for Brett is that she needs companionship of a man, and no one but Jake can offer her much beyond flying sexual pleasure. 18 (94)Jake truly deserves pity because he is the one who lost the most he had during war and even afterwards. His love with Brett gives him nothing only pain and he is also unable to sleep at night due to the agony brought by his love for Brett. Nagel (1996) commentsThe loss in the lost generation is sustained primarily by him, and it makes for powerful fiction. The novel works, ultimately, because Jake, in anomalous circumstances, nevertheless presents a normative sensibility in the story he tells. He emerges as a man of intelligence, humor and good sense who lost more than he deserved in World War 1 but learned how to make a life for himself. 19 (105)According to Martin (1987)J ake Barnes and his friends- all of them- are a group because they share the same beliefs and experiences. Except for Robert Cohn, whose differences are less heinous than Jake sometimes thinks them to be, the displaced Americans and Britons are moving through a festival period in their lives, punctuating their aimless existence abroad with an organized visit to Spain for the bullfights. 20 (07)The characters introduced to us by Hemingway live under a peculiar but yet an extraordinary code of life. They behave like a community of people communion similar set of thoughts and beliefs. Martin (1987) in her New Essays on The Sun Also Rises saysA key theme is the notion of community These are people who understand each other, the rules they live by, and the reasons for their choices. Only someone outside that community will have difficulty with the social code. Count Mippipopolous may be a stranger to the group, but he understands the code and fits into the society. Robert Cohn, although he spends much time with the members of the group and thinks himself a special friend of both Jake and Brett, never manages to assimilate the rules. Jake, however, is clearly in charge- of the plans, the guest list, the activities, and the emotional nuance. He is the discernible hero of the novel, and his approval or disapproval sets the pattern for the other characters reaction to things. 20 (08)All the characters in the novel The Sun Also Rises seem dissatisfied and unhappy and most of the time they feel themselves useless. Martin (1987) comments on this condition of the characters in following wordsThere are many reasons for these characters unhappiness. To pout on irony and pity is just a pastime the real issues are the lack of alignment between profession and occupation, between lovers, between vacation and work, between ideals of Spain and France, between nature and the commercial. As full of disjunctures as a picture puzzle, The Sun Also Rises still presents a story whole, its fragments necessarily scattered throughout the narrative, and readers accept the fragmentation as one the marks of Hemingways truth. They seize on the purity of Pedro Romero, the wit of the bemused microphone Campbell, the taciturn acceptances of Jake Barnes, the flip bravado of Brett Ashley as the symbols of the characters who survive the onslaught of real life. 21 (16) Chapter 2Life and Works of Ernest Hemingway2.1 Birth and ParentageErnest moth miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21st, 1899. His father was a doctor. He spent much of his time in his early days roaming about in the woods, rifle on his shoulders, or rowing out crossways the water of a large lake in quest of big fish. Although his family owned a cottage on a lake, he usually slept outside in a tent, the dim light of a kerosene lantern flitter long hours into the night over his temporary cot as he laid reading.2.1.1 His SchoolingIn June 1917, Hemingway graduated from Oak Park High School to ward the bottom of his class. Meanwhile, war had broken out in Europe and, preferring fighting to college, he tried to get enlisted in the army but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Frustrated, he went away to live with an uncle in Kansas city where he found a job as a newsman in a newspaper. He liked his writing job, but he still had a compelling urge to get into the war, and the opportunity came soon afterwards. On learning that Italy was recruiting ambulance drivers to serve on the Italian front he gave up his job and became an ambulance driver in Italy.2.1.2 Injuries of WarHemingway had been driving behind the lines for only a few days when he found that his work was too safe, in fact, dull. He wanted to serve on the frontlines in the thick of things. So he volunteered for canteen service and was soon travel a bicycle, handing out mail, tobacco, and chocolates to soldiers in the trenches. On his tenth day in Italy as he was handing a chocolate bar to a soldier, a large m ortar shell fell near by. Hemingway was almost buried. His consistence was filled below the waist with over 250 pieces of shrapnel, but after regain consciousness, he rescued a badly wounded Italian soldier and was turning to help others when he was hit again, with a machine-gun bullet, below the left knee.2.1.3 Falls in Love with a NurseHe spent several weeks in a Red Cross hospital and there he fell in love with an English Nurse Agnes. While in Europe, he received several medals for bravery, and then was sent home, hobble on a cane. The Hemingway who went back to America was different person from the young man who had left. War, death, suffering, new people, a new language and love had all been crowded into a short period of time.2.1.4 Disappointment in LoveWhile his feet and legs healed, he read a lot and impatiently watched the mail until, one day after receiving a letter, he suddenly became ill. He retired into seclusion and for days hardly left his room. Finally, on being r epeatedly asked by his family, he revealed that the letter has came form Agnes informing him that she was not coming to America and that she had married an Italian army major.2.1.5 Failure and FameSad and disappointed, Hemingway went to Paris for study and to make a living by writing. There, he met and became brotherly with some of the worlds greatest literary figures of that day- James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and others. But despite their advice and help, he could not sell his literary attempts. Manuscript after manuscript unbroken coming back from editors, usually without a single word of encouragement, and with only a printed rejection slip. One day, he was sitting at a side walk caf on the Left Bank in Paris and kvetch to a friend about his ill luck. The friend observed that perhaps the reason why Hemingways writings did not sell was that he had not suffered enough and that he did not know misery. Hemingway bitterly replied, So I have not known misery So thats what you think and then at first seemingly lost in memory, he narrated the story of his lost love, Agnes, the English nurse. He told his friend about the suffering he had endured in World War 1. Later, he put the story on paper in the form of a novel, A Farewell to Arms. The book proved to be immensely popular and Hemingway found himself famous. We could probably say that an unhappy love affair and his unhappy experiences in war were the propel factor which made him being a great author.2.1.6 Reporting in SpainHe went on writing and was now a successful and establish writer. He traveled extensively, hunting in Africa and the Far East, fishing in numerous oceans and seas. He felt greatly attracted by bull-fighting in Spain and spent several years in that country. He covered the Spanish cultured War for American newspapers and could not resist getting into the fight in Madrid. By then, he was known as Papa, a beard huge figure of a man who joked and swore with the best of the soldier s.2.1.7 World War IIWhen World War II began, Hemingway, then living in Cuba, armed his own boat as a submarine pursuer and patrolled the Atlantic Coast off the United States. But in 1942, he was in the thick of battle again as a magazine correspondent. He flew from England on bombing missions and became an expert on German rockets. earnest the end of the war, he was among the first wave of troops to storm the Normandy border in 1944. After the war, he retired to Cuba to fish and write. One book proved a failure, and his critics remarked that Papas carrier was over.2.1.8 The Nobel PrizeThen, in 1952, after years of work, he brought out The Old Man and the Sea, a tale of the struggle of a single, old fisherman against the powers of fate and the ocean. It was the story he had been trying to write all his life, and it brought him the Pulitzer Prize for 1953. In the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Suffering from injuries in plane crashes while hunting wil d game in Africa, Hemingway could not go to Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize but in a letter to the Academy he declared that the writers life was a lonely one, and that if he shed his loneliness, his work would deteriorate. Still living in Cuba, Hemingway continued writing short stories, novels, and magazine articles. But he also began to take life easier, spending more time on his fishing boat with his wife, whom he called Miss Mary. No one can work everyday in these hot months without going stale, he wrote during this period. To break up the pattern of work, we fish the Gulf Stream in the spring and pass months and in the fall.2.1.9 A Life of AdventureHemingways sixty-two years were packed with excitement. Living through adventure after adventure, he told stories of his life and love on jungles, the two World Wars in which he played a part in Europe, and a giant 1000-pound fish he battled off the Coast of Cuba. But his writing was more than just adventure stories he helped to se t the style for the modern novel. His lean, muscular prose and dramatic plots have, perhaps, been copied more than any other modern authors and his work has been translated into all the worlds major languages.2.1.10 Ill wellness and SuicideBut Hemingway was growing old. His hair and beard had turned white. His old wounds were bothering him. He had to keep standing while writing, and he was frequently unwell. Then Castro took over in Cuba, and Hemingway and Miss Mary returned to America, living in Idaho. He spent a few months in hospitals, began losing weight, and saw his creative ability declining. Early one morning on July 1961, he slipped on the steps in his home and, not wishing to prolong his suffering, killed himself with a gun. Perhaps he had concluded, like the old fisherman in his novel, that he had no luck anymore.2.2 His WorksInfluenced by Ezra Pound and particularly by Gertrude Stein whose style strongly affected him, Hemingway published Three Stories and Ten Poems in 19 23 and In Our Time (a collection of short stories) in 1925. These early stories exhibited the attitude of mind and technique for which Hemingway later became famous. As the leading spokesman for the lost generation, he expressed the feelings of war-wounded people disillusioned by the loss of faith and hope, and so thoroughly defeated by the collapse of former values that they could turn only to a stoic acceptance of primal emotions. The stories are mainly concerned with tough people, both intelligent men and women who have dropped into an exhausted cynicism or such primitives as frontiers-men, I

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