The innovation of Ernest Hemingway’s prose
The greatest representative of the so-called “lost generation” is not accidentally considered Ernest Hemingway. His life experience was diverse, he was a participant of the First World War, the impression of which became his first university of life and reflected on all his work. Hemingway worked as a journalist for a long time, he witnessed a great economic crisis and another Greek-Turkish war, and also visited many different countries. He lived relatively little in the US and wrote little about this state, of which he was a citizen. It is no accident that in most of E. Hemingway’s novels the action takes place somewhere in Europe, America for this writer was the embodiment of humanity’s degradation. In the early works repeatedly the theme of the flight from the USA sounds in the search for first ideals, and then – only oblivion.
The main theme of his early work was the depiction of people who lost faith in society, in ideals, in their own strength
Hemingway described in detail the smallest changes in the location of the spirit, desires and sensations of the heroes of the works, but avoided portraying great feelings – not because they did not believe in them, but because they could not find them among their contemporaries.
Three works – “And the sun rises”, “Farewell to arms!” and “The
The hero “And the sun rises” – journalist Jake Barnes, after a serious injury in the First World War, seeks oblivion in alcohol, he loves Bret Ashley, but the consequences of injury do not allow him to find joy in love. He, crippled by war physically and morally, can not merge with the people around him, but they also do not know the meaning of life. The expression “lost generation” was made into an epigraph of this novel, which was a kind of manifesto of the early Hemingway. The subtext of the novel is so far easily deciphered. The manner of writing is extremely factual.
In the novel “Farewell to Arms!” the question of war-crippled human soul and the fate of the “lost generation” is revealed more widely. The war here is more than a natural disaster, the appearance of a “lost generation” is explained by social causes, but it does not boil down to them. The hero of the novel, Henry, is at first filled with patriotism, front-line events open his eyes to the fact that beautiful conversations actually cover a mass murder whose goals are very far from the ideals of justice, and meaninglessness has no boundaries. He thinks: “… I did not see anything sacred, and what was considered glorious does not deserve to be glorified, and the victims are very much like the Chicago carnage, only the meat here was simply buried in the ground.” He dares to protest and throws down his weapons, and this again is not an option, but a step towards a new tragedy… Each act of the hero follows from previous circumstances, and, in turn, becomes the basis for its further actions. Not separate causes are investigated – causes of causes.
The subtext in this novel is a deep symbolism – organic, realistic generalization is simply amazing. Hemingway himself implements a new creative credo – “create, instead of describing.” But this does not mean giving up love of facts, his creative background remains the literature of facts throughout his life. Simply the facts of actions or actions are enriched by a symbolic burden, and the causes, circumstances and even generalizations stand with them in a single row, as well as unconditional vital facts, but something of a different kind.
The story “The Old Man and the Sea” is one of the last completed works of this writer, an original outcome of creativity and a kind of top of his meditations on the meaning of life. Genre is a story-parable. That which arose earlier in the form of a question, sounds here already as an answer, but so allegorical that each reader perceives its content according to their own experience. The image of the old Santiago, however, is also the image of an ordinary poor fisherman and the image of a certain system of moral values, to which the modern world is indifferent. The detailed and realistically described sea is also not only a geographical object – it’s an eternity, and the power of nature. Symbolic and the plot itself: from the outside it is simple, but even the factography of events can be viewed as a meaningful image.
But the question of the meaning of human being has always been the cornerstone of philosophy, and those writers or artists in the broad sense of the word who were able to give an answer to their own art deserve to have their names stayed in literature forever. This is entirely true of the work of E. Hemingway, who is also called the legend of American literature.
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