Ernest Hemingway

1. Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961

2. Born in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, on July 21, 1899. His father was a doctor. • As a child growing up, Hemingway was an athletic young man who boxed and played football, but also wrote poetry and columns for the school newspaper.

3. After graduating high school in 1917, Hemingway desperately wanted to join the army and fight in WWI, but was rejected because of an eye injury from boxing and so he became a writer for the Kansas City Star. • After a year, Hemingway got his chance to see war as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy, but was wounded after only six weeks.

4. This experience in Italy and the injury greatly influenced Hemingway’s writing. He fell in love with a nurse while in an Italian hospital and she became the model for his novel A Farewell to Arms.

5. After the war, Hemingway returned to Michigan, but then set off for Paris in 1921 as a roving reporter for The Toronto Star. • While in Paris, Hemingway perfected his writing techniques along with other fellow expatriates F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. While there he published many short stories and a novel The Sun Also Rises about his time spent in Paris.

6. Throughout the rest of his life, Hemingway continued to travel and write. In 1940 he published For Whom the Bell Tolls. During WWII he traveled as a correspondent throughout Europe. • In 1953 he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea which is said to be a metaphor of Hemingway’s life.

7. Because of his successes, Hemingway became as famous as any movie star of the time. With this fame, Hemingway also suffered from depression. • After receiving treatment for depression at the Mayo Clinic, Hemingway returned to his home in Idaho and on July 2, 1961 and shot himself with a double barreled shotgun.