Ernest Hemingway, who revolutionized modern literature with his concise and powerful prose. We delve deeply into his life and the literary world born from his experiences, including the Spanish Civil War, examining his stories that capture human nature and the essence of life.
Hemingway’s literary world is one where violence and death abound, reminiscent of the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’. Our era has become a ‘world beyond salvation’, one where we must look to God for redemption. It is universally acknowledged that this is not merely the pessimistic lament of a fin-de-siècle spirit. According to critic Wilson, the characters Hemingway depicts are “bullfighters, horse racing operators, gangsters, soldiers, prostitutes, drunks, drug addicts, and the like.” One wonders whether the figures appearing in his works truly represent only one facet of society.
It seems more accurate to view these characters not as embodiments of specific social classes or traits, but rather as intense portrayals of peculiar aspects of human nature—both internal and external. Moreover, they are depicted as ‘natural men,’ stripped of all mental and intellectual elements, seemingly devoid of human emotions like love, pangs of conscience, or jealousy. Only animalistic, instinctual emotions dominate them; all seem to live in a world of greed, lust, murderous impulses, and other sensual drives. Therefore, Hemingway employed a ‘hard-boiled’ style, almost devoid of adjectives or modifiers, to depict this instinctual, sensory world. For him, using a rough style to describe harsh situations seemed unavoidable.
In other words, this rough style can be said to have been created to express the nihilism flowing beneath the work. The world of brutal violence and death in which the characters were immersed can also be seen as Hemingway’s own world, and the world of modern man’s nihilism. Readers must strive to discover for themselves what ethical stance Hemingway sought to assert within the modern wasteland depicted in his works—a world that rejects all established religions and ethical standards.
Ernest Hemingway was born in July 1898 in the suburbs of Chicago, the son of a physician. His father possessed a strong wild streak, passionate about hunting, fishing, and sports, while his mother was an intellectual and cultured woman who enjoyed music and reading. The writer Hemingway inherited a complex temperament from both parents. However, it is evident that his father’s influence exerted a more powerful effect on his writing life and works.
After graduating high school, he attempted to enlist in World War I but was rejected due to poor eyesight. Not yet 18, he joined The Kansas City Star, taking his first steps as a journalist. The following year, he served on the Italian front as a stretcher-bearer. His novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) emerged from these experiences. Alongside this work, the story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” also included in this book, depicts author Hemingway’s fear of death.
In other words, this rough style can be said to have been created to express the underlying sense of futility flowing through his work. The world of brutal violence and death in which the characters were immersed can also be seen as Hemingway’s own world, and the world of modern existential emptiness. Readers must strive to discover for themselves what ethical stance Hemingway sought to assert within the modern wasteland depicted in his works, or within a world that rejected all established religions and ethical standards.
From 1928 to 1938, Hemingway lived on Key West, at the tip of the Florida Peninsula on Thompson Island, leading a wild life devoted to sports like fishing, hunting, and boxing. Works from this period include To Have and Have Not (1937), Green Hills of Africa—a product of his travels in Africa—and “The Short Happy Life of Francis McCormack,” considered one of his finest late short stories. Earlier, in 1936, he traveled to Spain and worked for the Spanish Republican government. He also promised French writer André Malraux that they would each write a novel about the Spanish Civil War from a democratic standpoint. André Malraux wrote Man’s Hope, and Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. This work is highly un-American in that it praises the totalitarian philosophy that the individual must sacrifice for the whole. Thus, we see that Hemingway was a writer who lived with his times rather than clinging rigidly to his own ideas.
After that, the old man dreamed of a long, golden beach. He saw several lions coming down to the dark beach in the early dawn. Soon, other lions began to appear. The old man rested his chin on the wooden plank of the foreign vessel. There, the boat lay anchored, catching the gentle breeze blowing in from the land. He waited to see if more lions would appear. And he was happy.
This is a part of The Old Man and the Sea. What remained for Hemingway in his later years might have been the happiness that appeared in the old man’s dream, as seen in the passage above. One might even call this a kind of Stoicism.
People often compare The Old Man and the Sea to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. They say the latter has symbolism, while the former lacks it, as if the symbolism were tacked on. They also say the latter has philosophy, a grand epic, and intense individuality, but that Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is devoid of all these things.
Yet, there is a clear question as to whether this work should truly be treated as a failure. There is not a shred of ideology, philosophy, or concept. There is only the sea and the fish, the old man and the boy. The sea is simply the sea, the clouds are purely clouds, and the flying fish are nothing but flying fish. Hemingway merely presents a primitive man whose very essence is physical action and the psychology directly tied to what he seeks to express, devoid of ambiguous thoughts or abstract notions. Through this primitive man—the old man—the author clearly expresses his own self-awareness.
To reiterate, in The Old Man and the Sea, there are no thoughts, no concepts, no symbols, or anything even remotely similar beyond physical action and the psychology directly tied to it. And at the end of the old man’s struggle, which is neither ultimate victory nor defeat, there is a happiness akin to the dream of a lion. If what Hemingway grasped after his long struggle with life and death was Stoicism, then even if Hemingway had committed suicide by accidental misfire, what would his suicide signify?
Hemingway had filled the hollow void left by negation and nihilism within the modern world and society through physical, action-oriented justice. That was his sole spiritual affirmation and the ethics of modernity. In The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway depicted an ideal human being—one his own subjectivity could acknowledge—through pure, objective external description. That man was the old man Santiago.
