hemingway Essay -- essays research papers

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He committed suicide in 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho (Burges 17). Even today Hemingway is one of the most recognized authors in the world. Hemingway’s experiences during World War I are directly shown in many of his works. His general outlook on life is reflected in the adventures of his characters. It is clear that Hemingway had a desire to be part of the war even though, due to bad vision he was unable to enlist in the army and fight in the war. Instead he lied about his age and went to Italy to become an ambulance driver. While in Italy he experienced many things that he would later go on to write about in works such as A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bells Toll. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21st, 1899 in Oak Park, IL. He was the second of six children born to Grace Hall Hemingway, an aspiring opera singer, who gave up a career for marriage and six children. His father, Clarence Edmunds Hemingway, was a family physician and avid outdoorsmen. Clarence shared his love for the outdoors with his young son, Ernest, who found a liking for the outdoors from a young age. His first trip to the great outdoors was when he was just six weeks old. The Hemingway family and Ernest’s nurse went to Lake Walloon in upper Michigan each summer. Perhaps it was this early exposure to nature that fostered Hemingway’s sense of adventure (Baker 45). During Hemingway’s sixty- two years he was married four times. First to Elizabeth Hadley Richardson on September 3,1921. During their six-year marriage they lived in Paris, where Ernest was a war correspondent for the Toronto Star. Elizabeth’s trust fund made their life much easier. Their marriage ended in 1927. Shortly after his divorce from Hadley, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer. He and Pfeiffer lived in Key West for the majority of their marriage. In 1940 Hemingway would marry fellow war correspondent Martha Ellis Greenhorn. This would be his shortest marriage, lasting only five years. His final marriage was on March, 14, 1946 to Mary Welsh Monks They were married for fourteen years, during which they lived at Hemingway’s Lookout Farm in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba (Hemingway 34). When the call went out that ambulance drivers for the war were needed, Hemingway, a recent high school graduate volunteered immediately. He said â€Å" I wante... ...est I can write ever for all of my life. It will destroy the criticism that claims I can write about notheing except myself and my own experiences.†(Baker 67) The story he would write was eventually called The Old Man and The Sea. This was a story that he had been thinking about since he first heard it in 1935. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman who fought a swordfish for four days and nights only to lose it to sharks. It was first published as a story called â€Å"On The Blue Water† in Esquire. Then it became the novella, The Old Man and The Sea. It was published in Life and was a Book-of-the Month selection (Baker 174). At this point his celebrity really took off but his personal life seemed to come apart. Hemingway achieved many great things in his life such as being honored with the Nobel prize for literature and being recognized in the media as the first American wounded in Italy. He was a lonely and unhappy man. His wife and mother had died and he was in ill health. In July of 1961 he took his own life with a shotgun blast to his head (Hemingway 165). Hemingway was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century whose stories and legacy will always live on.