A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms By Ernest Hemingway

Early Life • Ernest Hemingway was born on 21st July 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago, the second of six children. • Ernest's father taught his children to love nature and the outdoors. He insisted on the proper handling of guns, rods and tackle and he taught Ernest physical courage and endurance. • On his twelve birthday, he was given a present of a single barrel 20 gauge shotgun. • Ernest loved to dramatize everything. He made up stories in which he was invariably the swashbuckling hero. • Academically he was good at English but not interested in most other subjects. He wrote articles for the school's weekly newspaper. • He learned to box and it was said there was a streak of bully in his nature.

Grace Hall Hemingway dressed Ernest like a girl for the first two years of his life. .

Early Writing Career • After he graduated from high school, Hemingway wanted to join the forces and learn to write. • His father forbade him to join up for the First World War. Instead, Ernest applied for a job as a journalist at the Kansas City Star. • Ernest's job on the Star was to cover the 'short-stop run,' which entailed the 15th Street Police Station, the Union Station and the General Hospital. • This meant he had to write about everything that went on in the Police Station, the train station and the hospital. So his first training in writing was reporting stolen goods and crime, accidents and any famous people who might have passed through the Union Station.

Early Writing Careercont. • He learned at The Star that professional reporters stated the way things are using short, vigorous English, rather than long rambling sentences. • At The Star, Hemingway also found a mentor in Lionel Calhoun Moise. As a young rookie, Hemingway was impressed with Moise's facility with words,his hard drinking, and his undisciplined lifestyle of alcohol and violence. • Even though Hemingway learned a great deal at The Star, he quickly became bored with mundane news stories and desperate to see some real action. He wanted to become involved in the First World War.

The Call to War • Hemingway had a defective left eye, which made his entry into the forces unlikely. • On Feb. 22, 1918 - The Star carried this headline: ``Red Cross Calls Men.'' Also needed, listed in fine print: ``Four ambulance drivers for Italy.” • Some stories state that Hemingway saw this article before it was actually printed in the newspaper and got accepted before over 200 other men applied for the position. • After only six months employment as a journalist, Ernest left the Star newspaper. It was April 30th 1918. • The Red Cross accepted Hemingway as an ambulance driver, but recommended that he saw an optician and bought a pair of glasses. • Hemingway ignored the advice, underwent his indoctrination period of two weeks and by May 23rd he was bound for Italy.

Passport photo 1918- Age 18

Hemingway, the Ambulance Driver • On the morning of June 7, 1918, 18-year-old Hemingway assumed the duties of a Red Cross. • Ambulance drivers had to risk their own lives on the battlefields to pick up the wounded,carry them back to the ambulance, and drive them on to makeshift hospitals. Or in the worst case, pick up the dead and take them to the mortuary. • As soon as Hemingway arrived in Milan an entire munitions factory exploded. He picked up the bodies of the dead and carried them to an improvised mortuary. • Feeling he was not properly involved in the war and wanting to see action, Hemingway signed up for canteen duty, where he fed and provided for the troops who were on the battlefield.

Battle Scars · On July 8, 1918 Hemingway was hit by Austrian artillery, six days before his nineteenth birthday. • He had been carrying a supply of cigarettes, postcards and chocolate when a projectile, the size of a five gallon tin and filled with steel rod fragments, exploded. • Although wounded, Hemingway managed to carry another badly wounded man to the command post. • As he was doing so he was hit by machine gun fire. It was two hours before a doctor came and administered morphine to him. • He was injured in his knee and foot and had to be hospitalized. He had many operations on his wounded limbs. • It wasn't until two months later that he was able to walk with the aid of crutches. • He was promoted to First Lieutenant and awarded a silver medal of valor. • By October, Hemingway briefly returned to his regiment, but then contracted jaundice and returned to hospitalization. • By December 1918 he left the service and by January 1919 he was back in America with 227 scars on his wounded leg.

Amore • In Milan he was put into a large mansion along with three other wounded men. • There were 18 Red Cross nurses to look after them. • Hemingway had a machine gun slug in his right foot and another lodged behind his right kneecap. He was nicknamed 'Broken Doll.' • Hemingway was popular with all the nurses and he enjoyed their company, but he liked one nurse especially: Agnes Von Kurowsky, a tall dark haired girl, from Washington, D.C. • All the men admired her and joked about who was to have a date with her first. • Hemingway was the hero in the hospital. He was the first American to be injured in Italy and he had been injured in a very heroic way, saving the life of another man. Every nurse and wounded soldier admired Hemingway. • He got the first date with Agnes.

Agnes Von Kurowsky ·Hemingway was nineteen years old and fell wildly in love with Agnes, who was 26. • It was his first adult love affair and he hurled himself into his emotions. Agnes did not fully respond. • Ernest wanted to marry her, but she was committed to her nursing career. • Agnes called Ernest 'Kid' and herself 'Mrs. Kid' and kept a picture of him in her pocket and wrote to him nightly, despite seeing him every day. • After two months of looking after Hemingway in Milan, Agnes was posted to another hospital near Florence. • They wrote to each other regularly, sometime three or four times a day. • Ernest was very sad, but resolved to return to the front. Then he was forced to return to the hospital in Milan with a severe case of jaundice. • Agnes returned to Milan, she knew of course what had happened to him, because of their daily letters. She only stayed a week with Hemingway in the Milan hospital before she left to go to Treviso, to look after more sick American troops.

Heartache ·Once he was well, Hemingway went to the hospital in Treviso to surprise Agnes in the hospital. It was not a very successful meeting. • She persuaded Hemingway to return to his home, but hinted that maybe they would get married in a few years. • She wanted to pursue her career as a nurse and she was worried about their age gap. • They remained in touch but their relationship ended when Agnes sent him a letter of rejection several months later. • Later Hemingway later wrote a story that summarized his love affair with Agnes in Milan, concluding with an account of his homecoming and her letter of rejection. • Eleven years later, in 1929, Hemingway was still coming to terms with his love affair with Agnes. He wrote A Farwell to Arms, a story based on himself and Agnes. He was still trying to purge himself of his first real love. • His five month love affair with Agnes was to live with him for the rest of his life.

Marriage • Hemingway went back to the U.S. after leaving the ambulance service. • He found a job as a reporter for the Co-operative Commonwealth, monthly magazine where he earned just forty dollars a week. • He met Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, who at twenty eight, was eight years older than Hemingway. • They married on September 3rd 1920.

*Hemingway wrote to Agnes and told her of his marriage. She responded writing to him: “I always knew it would turn out right in the end, and you would realize it was the best way, as I'm positive you must believe, now you have Hadley.…”

Married Life • Hemingway quit his job with the Co-operative Commonwealth. • He and his wife, Elizabeth, known as Hadley, lived on her trust fund income, although Hemingway still submitted the occasional article to the Toronto Star. • Hemingway yearned to see the world, so in 1922 they moved to Paris. There, Hemingway set to work writing on a novel. He also befriended Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. • Later they went to Milan, where Hemingway, with the aid of his Press Card ,arranged a meeting with Mussolini, the emergent leader of the Black Shirts. • Hemingway went to Constantinople to cover the war between Greece and Turkey. • He was away for three weeks covering the war and when he returned his hair was so filled with lice his head had to be shaved.

Hemingway rented himself out as a sparring partner while living in Paris to make extra money in his early days as a writer.

Travel and Writing • Hadley became pregnant and they took a trip to northern Spain, Pamplona. • There they experienced bullfights and the running of the bulls in the streets. • This trip was to be the foundation of his novel, The Sun Also Rises, also sometimes called Fiesta. • They returned to the U.S. so their baby could be born on American soil.

Although Hemingway was an aficionado, he never ran with the bulls in Pamplona.

Hemingway (white pants) tries his luck at bullfighting during the "amateurs" in 1925.

Writing • By this time Hemingway had written a series of sketches called 'Three Stories and Ten Poems' which were to be published. • Hadley gave birth to a boy to be called, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. • Hemingway was now a full-fledged author and his newspaper work was confined to feature articles for the Star Weekly. • He did not enjoy journalism any more and he wrote to Gertrude Stein, now a very good friend in Paris, that he was going to give journalism up and concentrate solely on writing novels.

Trouble in Paradise • True to his word on January 1st 1924, Hemingway resigned from the Star. On January 13th Hemingway, his wife and their baby son returned to Paris. • Hemingway and Hadley did a lot of traveling to Spain and Switzerland during their marriage. Hemingway wrote a second novel, The Torrents of Spring, during their five year marriage. • They separated after Hadley found out about his affair with a Vogue Editor from Arkansas named Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway dedicated The Sun Also Rises to Hadley and to his son, John. It was, he said, the least he could do. • Hemingway also gave all royalties from the book to Hadley. Friends said he was devastated to lose the woman he had loved and still loved.

Man Without Women • Hadley had insisted that in order for Hemingway to gain a divorce from her, that Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer were to live apart for six months and if, after that time, they were still in love, she would give him a divorce. • During this six month period when Hemingway had neither Hadley or Pauline to comfort him, he felt both alone and guilty. • He wrote to Pauline of suicide. She was in America and he still in Paris to comply with Hadley's separation terms for a divorce. It was the fall of 1925 and Hemingway wrote to Pauline telling her it would be best for both of them if he died and went to hell. • He wrote 'Another Country' during this period. The story tells of his physiotherapy in Italy. The central character was an Italian Major whose wounded right hand had turned into a claw and whose young wife has just died of pneumonia. • 'Men without Women' was also being formed during 1925 and 1926.

Marriage #2 • On January 27th 1927 Hemingway was divorced from Hadley and on May 10th 1927 Hemingway married Pauline. • Pauline's and Hemingway's three week honeymoon was spent at a small hotel in France. Sea, sun, fishing, swimming and writing occupied his time, but he cut his foot badly which became infected with anthrax. • On his return to Paris in June after his honeymoon he spent ten days in bed with fever and nursing his swollen, infected foot. • Hemingway fell into a period of depression when he couldn't write, he was worried about his health and failing eyesight and he was trying to write a really good book about his experiences in the war. He was also desperate to leave Paris and to go back to America.

Hemingway and second wife, Pauline (front row, left side), enjoy a day at the arena.

Fame ·By now Hemingway had some slight notoriety both for his journalism and for his service in the ambulance corps and his first portrait was painted by Henry Strater. • It was the first likeness of Hemingway to show the new moustache he had begun to cultivate.

Key West • He and Pauline went to Key West, Florida. Pauline was pregnant and wanted, like Hadley, to have her baby on American soil. • Hemingway fell in love with Key West calling it a “paradise” and quickly fell into a routine of fishing and writing, apart from the odd night on the town, drinking heavily, followed by what he called 'gastric remorse.’

Key West (cont.) • His closest friendship was with a man named Charles Thompson; both men shared a love of hunting and fishing. • Key West became their base, but Hemingway, sometimes with Pauline, continued taking trips to Europe. • Pauline had her baby by caesarian section, it was a boy, although Hemingway wanted a girl. They called the baby Patrick, nicknamed Sunny. • Two years later, Pauline had another baby, Gregory Hancock. Shortly after this Death in the Afternoon was finished.

Family Tragedy • In 1928 Hemingway's father committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. • He was suffering from diabetes and angina pectoris. • Hemingway was now head of another family, that of his mother's and her two small boys. • In 1929 he wrote A Farewell to Arms, which became hugely successful, topping the bestsellers list and enabling Hemingway to send money to his mother to help her difficult finances. • Farewell to Arms was dramatized in New York, although it was unsuccessful in the theatre and closed after three weeks. The novel was sold for $24,000 movie rights.

Adventure • 'Winner Takes Nothing was completed before Hemingway took a hunting trip to Africa to shoot lions. • During the trip, he contracted dysentery and had a prolapse of the lower intestine. • When he returned he started to write a book about his African safari called 'The Green Hills of Africa'. • He took ownership of a cruiser, the Pilar. He spent months fishing with his friends on his boat, often leaving Pauline alone with their two boys.

Hemingway enjoyed hunting big game animals (like this lion) on foot.

Competition ·In 1935 he won his first fishing competition at Bimini in the British West Indies. • Foreigners were unpopular in Bimini and Hemingway's victory provoked a number of quarrels. He offered the fishermen $200 to the man who could stay in the boxing ring with him for four rounds. No-one won the money, Hemingway beat them all. • In 1936 Hemingway met the journalist, Martha Gelhorn and began an affair with her. They planned to cover the Spanish Civil War together. • In 1937 and 1938 he was in Spain with Martha, writing To Have and Have Not and a play, The Fifth Column. This he wrote while his Madrid hotel was under gunfire. • By 1939 Hemingway and Pauline separated. Hemingway again suffered from guilt and shortly after their separation he wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls, which sold 500,000 copies in the first five months.

Marriage #3 ·Hemingway divorced Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn on November 21, 1940. ·But when they set off for the Far East to cover Chiang Kai-Shek's war against Japan in January 1941 their relationship was already strained. ·Hemingway could not cope with a wife who had a career of her own. ·He bought a house in Cuba with the proceeds from For Whom the Bell Tolls. • He found himself alone for most of the time in Cuba, Martha was acting as a reporter in wartime England.

Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn, the third Mrs. Hemingway, marry in Key West.

In England • In March 1944, he went to England at Martha's urging. • Soon after he arrived he was involved in another car accident. • Several newspapers incorrectly reported his death. • In May 1944, he met Mary Welsh (in London) and fell in love with her. • Between June and December 1944 Hemingway covered the European conflict. • He followed the Fourth Infantry on his reporting missions, but became so involved in the actual fighting his articles were just a pretext to remain at the front. • By early January he was back in Paris with Mary. His marriage to Martha Gellhorn was over.

Marriage #4 • Hemingway returned to Paris and then Cuba with Mary Welsh in 1945. • Guilty again about his failed marriage to Martha, he fell into a state of alcohol and indulgence. • After drinking too many daiquiris he had another serious car crash. • On March 14 1946, with his divorce finalized from Martha, he married Mary Welsh. • He also started work on two projects The Garden of Eden and the first part of his proposed World War Two trilogy, which was published after his death as Islands in the Stream. • His health deteriorated and his drinking increased. His writing had almost come to a grinding stop. With the death of many of his close friends including his second wife, Pauline Pfieffer, his mother, and his publisher, Charles Scribner, Hemingway often found himself contemplating his life and what he felt was his immediate death. • Hemingway and Mary went to Northern Italy so he could relive his ambulance driving days.

Hemingway brought all of his famous friends who visited him in Havana to The Floridita, his favorite bar. Here he entertains Spencer Tracy (left) and Mary, his fourth wife (right).

Affairs • In 1950, he met a woman called Adriana Ivancich and had an affair with her. This meeting inspired Across the River and Into the Trees. • The novel was panned by critics, but Hemingway quickly followed that novel with The Old Man and the Sea, which won him critical acclaim again and he won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1953. • In 1953, he traveled on to Mombassa and here he conducted a ritual courtship with a young Wakambu girl.

Later Life • His accidents continued in 1954 when he had two plane crashes, the second so serious that once again news of his death was published. • On October 28, 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was too ill to receive the award in Stockholm, but held a party at his home in Cuba. • Filming of the Old Man and the Sea started in the mid 50's and he became involved in that. • In the Spring of 1960 he completed his memoirs of life in Paris in the early twenties called AMoveable Feast. • Hemingway left Cuba for the last time in July 1960 and returned to the U.S. • He was already showing signs of mental illness, his health had collapsed and he was forced more and more to rely on alcohol.

A Tragic End ·On 30th November he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic for the first time. He stayed about a month. ·He was readmitted three months later and stayed another two months. ·His memory was deteriorating and he couldn't write anymore. • Hemingway killed himself on a log cabin in Ketcham, Idaho on Sunday 2 July 1961. • He pulled the trigger of his double-barreled shotgun and was instantly killed. • He was 61.

The Lost Generation ·“The Lost Generation” is a phrase that is often associated with Hemingway because it appears atthe front of Hemingway's 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. ·Hemingway attributed the phrase to Gertrude Stein who supposedly heard her French garage owner speak of his young auto mechanics, and their poor repair skills, as "une generation perdue." ·Stein would expand the remark to describe all the disillusioned young men who had survived World War I and who seemed to end up in France with no real purpose, but because of its relatively low cost of living. • For the most part the "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The World War seemed to destroy for many the idea that if you acted properly, good things would happen. But so many good young men went to war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally, that their faith in the moral guideposts that had given them hope before, were no longer valid...they were "Lost."

Writing Style • Hemingway pioneered a new style of writing that is almost commonplace today. • He did away with all the florid prose of the 19th century Victorian era and replaced it with a lean, clear prose based on action rather than reflection. • He also employed a technique by which he would leave out essential information of the story under the belief that omission can sometimes add strength to a narrative. • It was a style of subtlety which contrasted greatly (and in a way enhanced) the themes he wrote about...war, blood sports like bullfighting or boxing, crime, etc. • It is hard to find anyone writing today who doesn't owe a debt of influence to Hemingway.

The “Iceberg Principle” • In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway outlined his "theory of omission" or "iceberg principle." • He states: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing." • The main working corollary of Hemingway’s “iceberg principle” is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.

A Farewell to Arms