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Hemingway's genius as an American original was evident long before
he produced his novels that are today considered masterpieces of American
literature. Both critics and readers have hailed his short stories as proof that a
pure, true American literature was finally possible. American literature was
no longer merely watered-down British reading fare. American literature had
at last come into its own. Hemingway set the standard — and the writers who
came after him honored his achievement.
Hemingway's Style
A great deal has been written about Hemingway's distinctive style. In
fact, the two great stylists of twentieth-century American literature are
William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and the styles of the two writers
are so vastly different that there can be no comparison. For example, their
styles have become so famous and so individually unique that yearly contests
award prizes to people who write the best parodies of their styles. The
parodies of Hemingway's writing style are perhaps the more fun to read
because of Hemingway's ultimate simplicity and because he so often used the
same style and the same themes in much of his work.
From the beginning of his writing career in the 1920s, Hemingway's
writing style occasioned a great deal of comment and controversy. Basically,
a typical Hemingway novel or short story is written in simple, direct,
unadorned prose. Possibly, the style developed because of his early
journalistic training. The reality, however, is this: Before Hemingway began
publishing his short stories and sketches, American writers affected British
mannerisms. Adjectives piled on top of one another; adverbs tripped over
each other. Colons clogged the flow of even short paragraphs, and the
plethora of semicolons often caused readers to throw up their hands in
exasperation. And then came Hemingway.
An excellent example of Hemingway's style is found in "A Clean,
Well-Lighted Place." In this story, there is no maudlin sentimentality; the
plot is simple, yet highly complex and difficult. Focusing on an old man and
two waiters, Hemingway says as little as possible. He lets the characters
speak, and, from them, we discover the inner loneliness of two of the men
and the callous prejudices of the other. When Hemingway was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, his writing style was singled out as one of
his foremost achievements. The committee recognized his "forceful and
style-making mastery of the art of modern narration."
Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialogue; in story
after story, novel after novel, readers and critics have remarked, "This is the
way that these characters would really talk." Yet, a close examination of his
dialogue reveals that this is rarely the way people really speak. The effect is
accomplished, rather, by calculated emphasis and repetition that makes us
remember what has been said.
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Perhaps some of the best of Hemingway's much-celebrated use of
dialogue occurs in "Hills like White Elephants." When the story opens, two
characters — a man and a woman — are sitting at a table. We finally learn
that the girl's nickname is "Jig." Eventually we learn that they are in the cafe
of a train station in Spain. But Hemingway tells us nothing about them — or
about their past or about their future. There is no description of them. We
don't know their ages. We know virtually nothing about them. The only
information that we have about them is what we learn from their dialogue;
thus this story must be read very carefully.
This spare, carefully honed and polished writing style of Hemingway
was by no means spontaneous. When he worked as a journalist, he learned to
report facts crisply and succinctly. He was also an obsessive revisionist. It is
reported that he wrote and rewrote all, or portions, of The Old Man and the
Sea more than two hundred times before he was ready to release it for
publication.
Hemingway took great pains with his work; he revised tirelessly. "A
writer's style," he said, "should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and
earthy, and his words simple and vigorous." Hemingway more than fulfilled
his own requirements for good writing. His words are simple and vigorous,
burnished and uniquely brilliant. Certainly each of the short stories
represents a finished, polished "gem" — Hemingway's own word for his
short stories. No word is superfluous, and no more words are needed. Along
with such well-known short-story writers as William Faulkner, Flannery
O'Connor, and John Steinbeck, Hemingway is considered by literary critics
to be one of the world' s finest.
Style
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” is set in the African savanna, to
which Mr. and Mrs. Macomber have come on a hunting expedition, led by
Robert Wilson. The hunting expedition ends in tragedy when Mr. Macomber
stands his ground before a charging buffalo and is shot by his wife.
Symbolism
Point of View
Irony
Irony is an essential element of this story. The most obvious and striking
example of irony is the title itself. Certainly, Macomber’s life is “short,” but is it
“happy” ? It is also ironic that his wife, the very person who should protect him,
is the cause of his death. Furthermore, the fact that it may have been her impulse
to protect Macomber which destroys him makes the climax of the story ironic.
Hemingway uses irony to provide enough ambiguity in the narrative for the
outcome of the story to be unclear.
The Old Man and the Sea, one of Ernest Hemingway's most famous
works, was published on this date in 1952. Critics praised the novella, which
was Hemingway's last major work of fiction, and he won 1953's Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction and the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of
Letters. In 1954, Hemingway was presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature
"for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old
Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary
style."
The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary
reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novella
was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence
in Hemingway's capability as an author. Its publisher, on an early dust jacket,
called the novella a "new classic," and many critics favorably compared it with
such works as William Faulkner’s "The Bear" and Herman Melville’s Moby-
Dick.
Style
Point of View
All novels use at least one point of view, or angle of vision, from which to
tell the story. The point of view may be that of a single character, or of several
characters in turn. The Old Man and the Sea uses the omniscient, or "all-
knowing," point of view of the author, who acts as a hidden narrator. The
omniscient point of view enables the author to stand outside and above the story
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itself, and thus to provide a wider perspective from which to present the
thoughts of the old man and the other characters. Thus at the beginning of the
tale, the omniscient narrator tells us not only what Santiago and the boy said to
each other, but what the other fishermen thought of the old man. "The older
fishermen looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it."
Setting
The Old Man and the Sea takes place entirely in a small fishing village
near Havana, Cuba, and in the waters of the Gulf Stream, a current of warm
water that runs north, then east of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea. Hemingway
visited Cuba as early as 1928, and later lived on the coast near Havana for
nineteen years, beginning in 1940, so he knew the area very well. The references
to Joe Dimaggio and a series of games between the Yankees and the Detroit
Tigers in which Dimaggio came back from a slump have enabled scholars to
pinpoint the time during which the novel takes place as mid-September 1950. As
Manolin also reminds readers, September is the peak of the blue marlin season.
The story takes three days, the length of the battle against the fish, but as
Manolin reminds the old man, winter is coming on and he will need a warm
coat.
Structure
Like the three-day epic struggle itself of Santiago against the fish,
Hemingway's story falls into three main parts. The first section entails getting
ready for the fishing trip; then the trip out, including catching the fish and being
towed by it, which encompasses all of the first two days and part of the third;
and finally the trip back. Another way of dividing and analyzing the story is by
using a dramatic structure devised by Aristotle. In the opening part of the story,
or rising action, the readers are presented with various complications of the
conflict between the other fishermen's belief that Santiago is permanently
unlucky and Santiago and the boy's belief that the old man will still catch a fish.
For example, readers learn that some of the other villagers, like the restaurant
owner Pedrico, help Santiago, while others avoid him. The climax of the story,
when Santiago kills the fish, marks the point at which the hero's fortunes begin
to take a turn for the worse. This turning point becomes evident when sharks
start to attack the fish and leads inevitably to the resolution (or denouement) of
the drama, in which Santiago, having no effective weapons left to fight the
sharks, must watch helplessly as they strip the carcass of all its remaining meat.
Perhaps showing the influence of modern short story writers, however,
Hemingway has added to the ending what James Joyce called an epiphany, or
revelation of Santiago's true character. This moment comes when the author
implicitly contrasts the tourist's ignorance of the true identity of the marlin's
skeleton to Santiago's quiet knowledge of his skill and his hope, reflected in his
repeated dreams of the lions on the beach, that he will fish successfully again.
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Symbolism
The story begins at a cafe very late at night. Two waiters are watching
their last, lingering customer, an old man who is by now very drunk. These are
the story’s three major characters. The older of the two waiters informs the
young one that the old man tried to commit suicide the previous week. They
then watch a couple go by, a soldier and a young woman, and comment on the
soldier’s chances of going undetected after curfew.
Next, the young waiter moves into action. When the old man indicates
that he wants another drink served the young waiter mutinies. He decides he
wants to go home, regardless of an unspoken rule that dictates he not go until the
last customer voluntarily leaves. He pretends not to know what the old man
wants. The old man realizes that the younger waiter is being offensive, but
ignores him and asks out loud for the drink. When the waiter brings it, he makes
it spill deliberately. Moreover, knowing that the old man is deaf, as he walks
away he says, “You should have killed yourself last week.” With these actions,
the character of the young waiter is established.
The two waiters then have a number of conversations about the old man
and his suicide and situation. These talks are interrupted by the younger waiter
finally telling the old man to leave, which he does. We learn various facts from
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these interchanges. For example, the young waiter is “all confidence,” he is
married, he has a job, he is content with life and has little pity for those who are
not content. He defends his actions (being churlish and making the old man
leave): a cafe is not an all-night venue; if the old man were considerate he would
let the waiters go home to their beds; there are bars and bodegas for people
wanting to stay out late. The older waiter resembles the old man: he is lonely
and he lives alone with no wife. He is an insomniac. He insists that special
deference is due the old man because of his recent suicide attempt.
Once the cafe is tidied and locked, the two waiters part amicably enough.
The reader now finishes out this very short story with the older waiter. He does
not go straight home. He thinks how he completely understands the old man’s
desire to linger at a cafe, because the ambiance of a cafe is entirely different
from that of a bar or bodega. He ends up, however, at a bar. All the cafes are,
after all, closed. The old waiter looks at the bar where he stands and points out
to the barman that his venue is well-lighted, but not clean: “The light is very
pleasant but the bar is unpolished.” The barman ignores the waiter. The waiter
does not stay for a second drink. Apparently, he now feels strong enough to go
home to his insomnia: “He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe
was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he went home to his
room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep.
After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”
Style
Minimalism
A short story as glaringly brief and simplified as this one is rightly called
“minimalist” in its aesthetics (the word aesthetics refers to how the author tells
his or her story). It uses the minimum building blocks necessary to accomplish
the job of telling a story. Hemingway uses simple diction, usually monosyllabic
words of Anglo-Saxon, as opposed to Latin, origin. Grammatically, he uses
simple as opposed to complex sentences. There is little figurative language —
no metaphor or simile, for example. Character and plot are minimized. These
three characters do not even have names. All that happens is that the two waiters
talk, the old man drinks, and then they all go home.
Repetition
Point of View
Plot summary
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regard to the future. In a dream he sees a plane coming to get him and take him
to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Style
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the sentences in the earlier italic dream segments were. The contrast between the
“real world,” in which Harry’s gangrene has killed him, and the dream world, in
which he is flying toward the “unbelievably white” peak of Mount Kilimanjaro,
is accentuated in the final section, in which the narrator returns to his short,
declarative sentences.
Flashback
Allusion
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lived through from the time he begins falling to the time that the rope’s slack
runs out. Just like in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the seeming salvation for the
hero existed only in the hero’s mind.
novella = a fictional tale in prose, intermediate in length and complexity between a short story
and a novel, and usually concentrating on a single event or chain of events, with a surprising
turning point. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) is a fine example; Henry James and
D. H. Lawrence also favoured the novella form. The term comes from the Italian word
novella (‘novelty’; plural novelle), which was applied to the much shorter stories found in
Boccaccio's Decameron (1349–1353), until it was borrowed at the end of the 18th century by
Goethe and other writers in Germany, where the novella (German, Novelle) in its modern
sense became established as an important literary genre. In France it is known as the nouvelle.
See also conte, novelette.
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