Independant reading post 2

For my Research, I have decided to investigate and look at the life of Ernest Hemingway and his writing and literature. I was originally going to research overfishing but that turned out to be an extremely dull topic. Hemingway was born in Oak Park to a father who was physician. During World War one, Hemingway worked in an ambulance crew that went around battlefields helping wounded soldiers and picking up the dead. Because of this, Hemingway saw a lot of gore and blood during the war. His experience during the war and the wounds and death that he saw during one of the bloodiest wars in history would go on to shape his writing later on. The war created his unique writing style of being very straightforward and direct in his literature. His books often featuring the back drop of stereotypical, hyper-manly sports such as big game hunting and fishing. His writing style is believed to be so heavily influenced by the war because of its haunting emptiness and sort of uninvolved feeling in his scenes and descriptions.

            The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most famous works and was his last major book release. Hemingway often used himself as base for his works. He used his time in Paris to write The Sun Also Rises and used his war experience for A Farewell to Arms. The Old Man and the Sea used the book as a metaphor for his present state and his frustration with his writing. During the 1920’s and 30’s, Hemingway was very poplar. During the 40’s and the time that He wrote The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway had gone for about ten years without publishing a major work. During the 40’s, Hemingway covered the Second World War. After the war, in 1950, Hemingway published Across the River and Into the Trees. The book was critically mauled immediately and his reputation as a great writer was in danger of being taken away.

            The Old Man and the Sea was Hemingway’s answer to the disastrous release of his last book. It was a final effort to prove that he was still a great writer. The novel’s protagonist, Santiago, shows a lot of parallels to Hemingway. Santiago is an old fisherman who used to be considered a great fisherman but has since gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and has since been considered a has been and incapable. This is very similar to the way many critics considered Hemingway’s best years to be gone and that his writing ability has faded away. Santiago finds a huge marlin and struggles with it out to sea where he kills it. On the way back to shore, sharks come and eat the fish to the point where he has nothing to show for his efforts or his mastery to the other fisherman. This is a very clear metaphor for Hemingway’s struggle in his old age to write and create a masterpiece that will then be devoured and taken apart to the point of nothing, which is what happened with Across the River and Into the Trees and what he believed would happened with The Old Man and the Sea.