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Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway has been labeled a drunk, womanizer, lunatic, and several other names. However, he is considered to be one of the greatest writers of our time. Which is bigger, the man or the maniac? Sadly, we may never know.
He lived life to the fullest, but he ended his life tragically and prematurely on July 2, 1961. Many critics believe he had an abusive childhood and that is what most influenced his writing. It may have physiologically damaged him also. The truth is that he had no abuse during childhood from family or friends. During infancy, his father, Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, and mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, provided for him perfectly.
They did many outdoor activity in his childhood days such as hunting, fishing, and camping. There must be no killing for killing sake, was told to Hemingway by his father. This was something he forgot in his adulthood (Burgess 9). Had he not been an adventurous person, he would have been indoors stuck in a popular adventure magazine or be daydreaming about pirates and faraway places (Russell 6). He was not a wimp by any means. In High School, he wrote for the school newspaper.
He participated in boxing, which would help him make money as a sparring partner in Paris in later years. During his senior year in high school, World War 1 was intensifying in Europe. The United States tried to stay out for as long as possible, but when German submarines sank four American ships, America declared war in April 1917. Most of his friends either enlisted or were drafted. He wanted to join the war but, his father thought he was too young so he got a job as a reporter on The Kansas City Star (Russell, 7). Throughout these hectic months his thinking about joining the war intensified.
Due to his vision problem in his left eye he was unable to join the army. However, it did not stop him from becoming an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. He and a friend went to Italy to begin their duties. When he arrived, he was engulfed by Italian soldiers and civilian casualties from a factory bombing outside of Milan. As soon as he got the chance he volunteered to man the Red Cross canteens which where near the front lines. He also carried cigarettes to soldiers fighting in the trenches.
It was while doing this one night in July that Hemingway was severely wounded (Russell 10). An Austrian mortar shell blew up near the trench and sent shrapnel into Hemingway's legs, knees, and feet. Despite the shock, he was able to pick himself up, hoist a wounded Italian soldier onto his shoulders and make his way to safe ground at headquarters. As machine gun fire carried in the back round he experienced something that in a matter of seconds would change his life forever. While he waited to be treated he found himself surrounded by the shouts of the wounded. Blood was everywhere.
To his right and left were soldiers on stretchers with hands and feet blown off, all shrieking for attention. Doctors moved swiftly from one patient to another, trying to stop the bleeding of one, administering medicine to another. Hemingway did not die that night, however the sights and sounds would stay with him forever (Russell 11) Two days later he found himself in a hospital in Milan undergoing surgery to take out bullets and shrapnel from his legs, knees, and feet. The damage was substantial enough to keep him in the hospital for five months.
When he learned from the doctors that he would recover the full use of his legs he wrote home to his parents about the ordeal. During this time he fell in love with a nurse attending him. The book A Farewell to Arms, was based after this. He was awarded The Italian Medal of Valor several years later, and was also the first American soldier to be wounded in Italy. This started a lifetime of fame for Ernest Hemingway. When he returned home he was only 19 and still immature in many ways but he had drastically changed.
He wrote home to his parents from Milan in 1918, Dying is a very simple thing. I have looked at death and really I know. It was from the time of his injury that started his morbid side. This also gave Hemingway the belief that there might be no tomorrow, so should enjoy life as it is. Soon afterwards, he found the liquor.
The book For Whom the Bell Tolls was written from experiences he reported from the Spanish civil war. He interviewed soldiers and learned a lot. He lived in Spain for a while where he fell in love with the art of bullfighting. He had respect for the matador as well as the bull.
He saved another person from dying by helping save an amateur bullfighter. That is where he was influenced for the book The Sun also Rises. During World War 2, Hemingway went to Cuba used it as his base of operation. He signed on as a war correspondent, and was stationed in England in May 1944. A month later he witnessed the invasion of the beach at Normandy in France. Two months later he participated in the liberation of Paris from the Germans.
This was the last war that he would cover. When he went back to Cuba he fished a lot which also influenced him to write The Old Man and the Sea. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and Life magazine even devoted an entire issue to the story. In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
The last years of his life were hard. He had several bad relationships with several women. He was married four times. He was on a trip to Africa on a Safari when he was in two plane crashes. He and his wife Mary received severe injuries.
Hemingway suffered a concussion, damaged his kidney, liver and spleen, and had burns all over. He would never fully recover from these injuries, but he was still able to get back to his regular pace of writing, reading, and greeting a steady wave of fans and students who had come to meet the renowned writer (Russell 43). In 1960, he was hospitalized for depression and treated with electro-shock therapy. He was released only to be put back in because of threats of suicide.
They gave him electro-shock therapy and he was released again. He later proved true to his words. Like his father before him, he tragically took his life with a shotgun on July 2, 1961. You have no right to forget anything. You have no right to shut yours eyes to any of it nor to soften it nor to change it (Hemingway).
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