Essay, Research Paper: Ernest Hemingway's

Ernest Hemingway

Of all of the writer's of the 20th century, none has had a more profound impact on American culture than Ernest Hemingway. As western society rose from the ashes of World War I, Hemingway came to the realization that the western Judeo-Christian morals and values had failed to bring about any area of peace and prosperity. Instead, these values had led western society in to war after war, bringing about unquantifiable pain and destruction. In response, Hemingway, through his writing, proposed a new system of values to create a better world. At the very heart of this moral code was the belief that war makes man incapable of loving. War's destruction of love is the central theme in many of Hemingway's works.
Hemingway was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he went to write for the Kansas City Star in 1917. In 1918, Hemingway joined the Red Cross to serve as an ambulance driver, where he was wounded. This wound changed his perspective on life, and was a great influence in his writing. In 1921, he moved to Paris where he met fellow expatriates Gertrude Stein, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Proud, and Ford Madox Ford. In Paris, he started writing. His first novel was The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926. Throughout his life, Hemingway enjoyed bullfighting, big-game hunting, and fishing, and his characters are often portrayed engaging in these pursuits. In his life, he was married four times and had three children. On June 2, 1961, after battling depression and high blood pressure, Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself with his double-barrelled shotgun.
From the very start of his writing career, Hemingway emphasized the destructive effect war has on the human psyche. Early in his career, Hemingway published the short story collection In Our Time. In this collection is the short story "Solidier's Home," which tells the story of Krebs, a soldier returning from World War I. Krebs felt that trying find love after war "wasn't worth it" (In Our Time, 71), and he declared that "I don't love anybody" (IOT, 76). The war had so devastated the young soldier so terribly that he did not want to, and if fact, could not love.
In his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway depicts a group of expatriates traveling through Europe. Hemingway's integration of the message that war makes people incapable of loving is very subtly integrated in the story. Jake Barnes, the narrator, is a World War I veteran who "had an accident" (The Sun Also Rises, 120) which renders him impotent. Even though Jake and Brett "could have had a damned good time together" (TSAR, 251) as lovers, Jake's war wounds, symbolic of the damage caused to the "Lost Generation" by World War I, prevent that from happening. As Carole Gottlieh Vopat puts it:
"romantic love is instead a compulsion and misery, a neurotic and scarcely uncontrollable sickness which, rather than shore up his tentative masculinity, only serves to castrate him further." (The End of the The Sun Also Rises: A New Beginning)
The war totally obliterated any possibility of Jake finding love.
In The Sun Also Rises, there is also the highly sexed Lady Brett Ashley. She goes around trying to find love in every man she meets, but ultimately ends up being disappointed. This is because her "true love" (TSAR, 46) has "kicked off with the dysentery" (TSAR, 46) during the war. The Lady has lost the single person she can love, and now cannot find someone new to foster love with. Due to the effect of the war, Brett is left alone with no one to love.
Robert Cohn, a Jew who tags along with Jake and his friends, is touched by the war in a different way. Rather than being directly affected by war's evil as Jake and Brett have, Cohn's inability to find love is found in his inability to relate to his peers. Cohn did not fight in, nor was he directly affected by the war as his peers were. He does not see the world with the sober, disillusioned eyes that the war forced upon the other characters, and therefore behaves in a less mature manner. He still clings on to the old chivalric (Christian) code, that Hemingway believed had failed the world. Critic Mark Spilka spells it out best:
"He is the last chivalric hero, the last defender of an outworn faith, and his function is to illustrate its present folly-to show us, through the absurdity of his behavior, that romantic love is dead, that one of the great guiding codes of the past no longer operates." (The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises)
Cohn is a romantic, who still clings to the old chivalric code of knights from days gone by. Cohn's lack of war experience causes him to cling to these idealistic, outdated values, while his contemporaries have been disillusioned by the devastation caused by war. Ultimately, Cohn is left unable to relate to peers and find love because of the scourge of war.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway's epic novel about the Spanish Civil War. As in The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls depicts the war's dark power to destroy love.
The prime example of this in the fate of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. Jordan is and American sent to aid guerrillas fighting for the Republic against the fascists. While aiding Pablo and his group of freedom fighters, Jordan meets and falls in love with Maria, a girl rescued during an attack on a fascist train Their love affair is so passionate that the only way Maria can describe it is to say that "the earth moved" (174). The lovers even begin make plans for their future after Jordan's current mission has been completed.
"...I will take care of thee. I will not ever leave thee. I will go with thee to the Seguridad to get papers. Then I will go with thee to buy those new clothes..." (Jordan, 344)
However, the happy future the star-crossed lovers look forward to is shattered by the terror of war. After a successfully demolishing the bridge, the band attempts to make their retreat on horseback. However, when the retreat is disrupted by the breaking of Jordan's leg after his horse falls on him, Jordan realizes he must stay to keep Maria safe from their pursuers. Because of the war, Jordan must abandon the woman he deeply loves, and any chance they have at enjoying love. Jordan and Maria are prevented from finding love with each other by the war, which forces them to separate.
The leader of the anti-fascist group in the hills, Pablo, is married to Pilar, who hates her husband. Prior to the war, Pilar was involved with a matador named Finito de Palencia. Pilar loved Palencia and "was never unfaithful to him" (190), but he died after years of punishing his body through bullfighting. Following Palencia's death, Pilar married Pablo. After years of war together, the two now hate each other. Pablo has become disillusioned after years of fighting, and does not want die for the cause. This greatly upsets Pilar, who is fiercely loyal to the Republican cause, and declares to Pablo that "there is not room in one bed for me and thee and thy fear all together" (90). The war has ruined the relationship of Pablo and Pilar, rendering them incapable of finding love with each other.
Throughout his literary career, Ernest Hemingway has subtly integrated one major theme throughout his many fabulous writings: war makes man incapable of love. This single guiding theme, with its universal meaning, has made Hemingway and his writing immortal.