Hemingway

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life…. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day” (Hemingway). This was the written acceptance speech of Ernest Hemingway receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He was famous for many successful novels, his very distinct writing style, and his use of the “Iceberg theory” and the “Theory of Omission”.

Ernest Hemingway began his life in writing after graduating high school by becoming a junior reporter for the Kansas City Star. Not long after, Hemingway signed up with the Red Cross to be a WW1 ambulance driver on the Italian front lines. Hemingway had been injured while on the front line. While recovering in Milan, Italy he met his first love, Agnes von Kurowsky. Agnes later left Hemingway for an Italian man, inspiring Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms.

Hemingway’s writing style was very unique at the time. He had acquired many techniques throughout his career. Through his work at the Kansas City Star he uncovered that facts lie below the surface of a story. This was known as the “Iceberg Theory” or the “Theory of Omission”(Hemingway). This was because his facts floated above water and the supportive details were beneath, out of sight. Hemingway’s writing style also included short, declarative sentences without the use of colons, semi-colons, exclamation points, dashes or parentheses. He avoided complicated syntax and about 70 percent of the sentences are simple sentences. This was suggested to be because of his journalism days, where he was to write to his audience as if they had an eighth grade reading level.

The war also shaped his writing. After WW1, he and many other modern writers went against the familiar 19th century style of writing. Instead they wanted to create meaning though dialogue, action and silences. Nature, love, war,...