Ernest Hemingway

3 Pages 771 Words

Ernest M. Hemingway Do you ever ask yourself what makes life meaningful? For American novelist and short-story writer Ernest Hemingway, it was courage. The characters in his works might not win, but they always live and die bravely. Hemingway told it how it was and didn't hold anything back. Hemingway is well known for his novels of war, big game hunting, fishing, and bullfighting. One of his most famous works, "The Old Man and the Sea," describes an old fisherman's fight to keep a giant fish he caught from being eaten by sharks. Another of his famous works, "For Whom the Bells Tolls," describes a guerrilla fighter during the Spanish Civil War who knew he was doomed to fail. Ernest used his life when he wrote; including everything he did and everything that ever happened to him. He nevertheless remained a private person while wanting his stories to be read but also wanting to be left alone. He once said, "Don't look at me. Look at my words." During World War I Ernest served as an ambulance driver, in Italy, for the American Red Cross and very much like Frederick Henry of, "A Farewell to Arms," was shot in his knee, recuperates in a hospital and tended by a caring nurse. Like the hero, in the book, he fell in love with the nurse and was given a medal for his heroism. In addition they both enjoyed drinking large amounts of alcohol as well. In "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Hemingway summarizes his own dissatisfaction about his father when he recalls his father's suicide and a character, Jordan, says, "I'll never forget how sick it made me the first time I knew he was a … coward." This goes back to support how Hemingway wasn't afraid to speak his mind and also how he used his life when he wrote. I believe that Hemingway was obsessed with death. In the book, "A Farewell to Arms," Henry met his love, Catherine Barkley, before he was shot, but Catherine and her child died while she was giving birth. Many times Hemingway did not want to expose h...