8/04/2013
Q) Hemmingway’s depiction of the condition of man in a society that has been upset by the violence of war, in light of “The Sun also Rises” and “A Farewell to Arms”.
No American writer is more associated with writing about war in the early 20th century than Ernest Hemingway. He experienced it first hand, wrote dispatches from innumerable frontlines, and used war as a backdrop for many of his most memorable works. Commenting on these experience years later in Men at War, Hemingway wrote: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it."
Many persons whose outward lives do not in the least resemble that of a typical ‘Hemingway’s character’ are still conscious of the dislocation due to war, and of which he has made himself the outstanding fictional spokesmen of our time. Hemingway’s characters are soldiers, sportsman, Prize fighter and his world of fiction swarm with ferrets, drunkards and prostitutes. He is greatly pre-occupied with death and violence. ‘A Farewell to Arms’ shows Hemingway’s ability to create life like character, both male and female, in such a way as to make us feel that we have actually met them.
The First World War plays an important role in the novels of Ernest Hemingway. He has depicted all real war experience in his novel. The war led up to a deep distrust of all established institutions and values religions, ideals, society, patriotisms etc. Only concrete experiences were valued. Thus, Hemingway emphasized the sense and the experience
Cited: http://onviolence.com/?e=313 http://www.hrmars.com/admin/pics/1043.pdf http://www.amazon.com/Hemingway-War-Ernest/dp/0743243293 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/spring/hemingway.html Book: Hemingway on War