Known for his works, full of masculinity and adventure, Ernest Hemingway became one of the greatest writers of the twenty-first century, he wrote novels and short stories about outdoorsmen, soldiers and other men of action, all of these, characteristics of his own persona.
Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, to Clarence Edmunds and Grace Hemingway, both strict Congregationalists (Smith). Hemingway's early years were spent largely in combating the repressive feminine influence of his mother and nurturing the masculine influence of his father (Hemingway). He spent the summers with his family in the woods of northern Michigan, where he often accompanied his father on professional calls (Hemingway). He started writing when he was a teenager, penning a weekly column for his high school newspaper (Smith). During this period, he also began to write poems and stories, some of which were published in his school's literary magazine (Smith). After graduating high school in 1917, Hemingway started his career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, covering city crime and writing feature stories (Smith). The position helped him develop a journalistic style, which would later become one of the most identifiable characteristics of his fiction (Smith).
When World War I broke out, he volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy (Smith). Hemingway next enlisted in the Italian infantry, served on the Austrian front until the armistice, and was decorated for bravery by the Italian government (Hemingway). Like many of his compatriots of the Lost Generation, Hemingway left America for Europe, where he joined the group of literary expatriates in Paris, including Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Smith). He lived in Paris for the next seven years, working on his fiction and serving as a European correspondent for American newspapers (Smith) From 1937 to 1938, he covered the Spanish Civil War (Smith). Seventeen months