FREE ESSAY ON HEMINGWAY'S WORKS

HEMINGWAY'S WORKS

Ernest Hemingway pulled from his past present experiences to develop his own thoughts
concerning death, relationships, and lies. He then mixed these ideas, along with a
familiar setting, to create a masterpiece. One such masterpiece written early in
Hemingway's career is the short story, Indian Camp. Indian Camp was originally published
in the collection of in Our Time in 1925. A brief summary reveals that the main
character, a teenager by the name of Nick, travels across a lake to an Indian village.
While at the village Nick observes his father, who is a doctor, deliver a baby to an
Indian by caesarian section. As the story continues, Nick's father discovers that the
newborn's father has committed suicide. Soon afterward Nick and his father engage in a
discussion about death, which brings the story to an end. With thought and perception a
reader can tell the meaning of the story. The charters of Nick and his father resemble
the relationship of Hemingway and his father.
Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, a middle class suburb, under the watchful eye of his
parents, Ed and Grace Hemingway. Ed Hemingway was a doctor who occasionally took his son
along on professional visits across Walloon Lake to the Ojibway Indians during summer
vacations (Waldhorn 7). These medical trips taken by Ernest and Ed would provide the
background information needed to introduce nick and his father while on their medical
trip in Indian Camp. These trips were not the center point of affection between Ed and
Ernest, but they were part of the whole. The two always shared a close father-son bond
that Hemingway often portrayed in his works: Nick's close attachment to his father
parallels Hemingway's relationship with Ed. The growing boy finds in the father, in both
fiction and life, not only a teacher-guide but also a fixed refuge against the terrors of
the emotional and spiritual unknown as they are encountered. In his father Ernest had
someone to lean on (Shaw 14).
In Indian Camp, nick stays in his father's arms for a sense of security and this
reinforces their close father-son relationship. When Nick sees the terror of death, in
the form of suicide, his father is right there to comfort him. From this we are able to
see how Nick has his father to, physically and mentally, lean on, much like Hemingway did
(Shaw 11).
Hemingway's love for his father was not always so positive though, and he often expressed
his feelings about his situation though his literature. When Hemmingway was young, his
father persuaded him to have his tonsils removed by a friend, Dr. Wesley Peck. Even
though it was Dr. Peck who performed the painful operation, Hemingway always held it
against his father for taking out his tonsils without an anaesthetic (Meyers 48).
Hemingway saw the opportunity to portray his father in Indian Camp as the cold-hearted
man who had his tonsils yanked out without anaesthetic. In a reply to Nick's question
about giving the Indian woman something to stop screaming, his father states, No. I
haven't any anaesthetic...But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because
they are not important. (Tessitore 18)
Hemingway lashed out at his father one more time before the story ends. In Indian Camp,
Hemingway uses the conversation between Nick and his father, concerning the suicide of
the Indian, to show his distaste for his own father's suicide:
'Why did he kill himself, Daddy?'
'I don't know Nick.'
'He couldn't stand things, I guess.'
'Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?'
'Not very many, Nick...'
'Is dying hard, Daddy?'
'No, I think its pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.'
(Hemingway 19)
Hemingway saw his father as a weak working man who served his wife, Grace,
unconditionally. Ed worked a full day to come home to clean house, prepare food, and tend
to the children. He had promised Grace that if she would marry him, she would not have to
do housework for as long as he lived. Ill and depressed, Ed committed suicide in 1928.
Hemingway later referred to the situation by stating:
I hated my mother as soon as I knew the score and loved my father until he embarrassed me
with his cowardice...My mother is an all time all American bitch and she would make a
pack mule shoot himself, let alone poor bloody father. (Meyers 212) 
Hemingway uses Indian Camp to express his feelings that his father was a coward. He did
this by having Nick's father refer to suicide as being pretty easy, which is comparable
to a coward's way out of life. Therefore, Hemingway uses the story to portray his
father's death as cowardly.
The characters and setting of Indian Camp are undoubtedly influenced by Hemingway's
Childhood. In much of the same respect, Hemingway's second novel, A Farewell to Arms, has
influences from his adult years spent in the war. 
A Farewell to Arms is a tragic love story in the midst of war. The main character,
Fredrick Henry, is an ambulance driver in World War I who is wounded in the trenches.
Henry, now a casualty, is sent to recover at an American hospital in Milan. During his
stay, henry falls in love with a nurse by the name of Catherine Barkley. The couple then
heads for Switzerland to escape the war and have a child. The novel takes an evil twist
at the end though. Catherine dies while she is in labor, leaving Henry alone in the
world.
When comparing Ernest Hemingway and the character Frederick Henry, there are some very
obvious resemblances. After not being allowed to join the army due to bad vision in his
left eye, Hemingway joined the war effort during 1918 in Italy as an ambulance driver.
Likewise, Hemingway made sure that Henry was also an ambulance driver in A Farewell to
Arms. The most noticeable similarity is Hemingway's war wound. While passing out
chocolate and cigarettes to soldiers at night, Hemingway was hit by a mortar shell.
Wounded, but not dead, Hemingway picked up an nearby casualty and began carrying him off
the battlefield. He succeeded in making it to the first aid center but was hit in the
knees by machine-gun fire while on his journey. During his recover in Milan, Hemingway
recorded his firsthand account of the action in a letter written to his parents. In it he
stated:
The 227 wounds I got from the trench mortar didn't hurt a bit at the time, only my feet
felt like I had rubber boots full of water on. Hot water. And my kneecap was acting
queer.
(Meyers 32) 
Hemingway survived a terrifying attack, which would serve as great material for A
Farewell to Arms. In the novel, Henry suffers from an identical wound by a trench mortar.
Henry states that:
My legs felt warm and wet and my shoes were wet and warm inside. I knew that I was hit
and leaned over and put my hand on my knee. My knee wasn't there. My hand went in and my
kneed was down on my shin. (Hemingway 55)
Hemingway recalled his war wound and wrote of the same experience in the novel. In both
the novel and real life, it is easy to visualize the same picture of the wound, so bloody
that Hemingway's own shoes filled up with warm blood.
Hemingway does not stop there with his similarities though. He digs further into the past
to create the love that exists between characters Frederick henry and Catherine Barkley.
In the war, Hemingway was sent to Milan to recover from his injuries. During his stay at
the hospital, he fell in love with an American nurse by the name of Agnes von Kurowsky.
The two were very affectionate in their love and wrote letters to each other when
separated. Kurowsky even signed up to work nights so that she could spend more time with
Hemingway. There was even a possibility of marriage, which later fizzled out. When
Hemingway healed, he was sent home and Kurowsky fell in love with another, a devastating
event that haunted Hemingway long after. (McDowell 20) Kurowsky did not come out ahead
though; her newfound love dissolved only after a short while. In much the same way as
Hemingway's life, the character Henry falls in love with Catherine.
After being wounded by a trench mortar, Henry is also sent to Milan to recover from his
injuries. While at Milan, he becomes romantically involved with Catherine and the two
marry. Even though Hemingway and Kurowsky did not marry, the marriage of Henry and
Catherine is a prelude to a more devastating event. The sexual activity of the couple
leads to the pregnancy of Catherine, which convinces them to leave the war. During
childbirth, Catherine dies, thus leaving Henry all alone in the world: In the novel,
though not in actual life, the submissive Catherine . . . is 'punished' by death in
childbirth (Meyers 41). The reason for this variation between real life and the novel is
based on how Hemingway felt at the time. Apparently to Hemingway, Kurowsky was not
punished enough for her deceit toward him. With his feelings full-blown, Hemingway
produced a character that suffered the way he felt she should suffer. From the wounds to
the love affair, it is fair to say that the book is the crystallization of the war
experiences (Shaw 54).
After the war, Hemingway returned to Oak Park for a brief stay at home. Mentally and
physically hurt from his war wounds and failing romance with Kurowsky, Hemingway entered
into an idle part of his life. All the returning soldiers had great war stories; most of
them embellished beyond truth. Hemingway fell into this norm of lying about war
experiences, which eventually made him sick of disgust:
The deceptions he practices at home . . . uncomfortably remind him of the lies he and
others have been forced to tell in order to sensationalize for home consumption the dull
reality of war. (Meyers 55)
Hemingway was later able to reflect his disgust of home life when he purposely portrayed
himself as the character Krebs in Soldier's Home. Krebs, a World War I veteran, is forced
to lie about his involvement in the war just to be heard:
Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done this twice
he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for
everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told.
(Hemingway 69)
Krebs, along with Hemingway, fell into a slump after the war. While recalling his lost
love of Agnes von Kurowsky, Hemingway produced a character troubled by female
companionship. Krebs wants a woman, no doubt, but he was not about to work for it. Krebs
considers relationships too complicated and painful, something he has learned from a
previous engagement. This previous engagement was the relationship of Hemingway and
Kurowsky, a relationship that had badly hurt Hemingway. There is no way that Krebs, nor
Hemingway, is about to go through that again. 
Krebs continues, without a woman, lying around at home doing little or nothing. Tensions
deepen between him and his parents and he is eventually driven out. This is approximately
the same thing that happened to Hemingway. Hemingway's sister, Marcelline, wrote, shortly
after his twenty-first birthday . . . his mother issued an ultimatum that he find a
regular job or move out (Waldhorn 9). Both Hemingway and Krebs moved out and got jobs. 
Beyond a doubt, Hemingway wrote from his past experiences. In Indian Camp, Hemingway used
his own relationship with his father to breathe life into the fictional characters of
Nick and his father. By leaving his childhood and entering the war, Hemingway recalled
his own accounts of injuries and love that made up the character Henry and Barkley in A
Farewell to Arms. And finally, with his return home after the war, Hemingway uses Krebs
in Soldier's Home to express his distaste for the home life.
Bibliography
Gajduske, E. Robert. Hemingway's Paris. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Mahoney, John. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Barnes and Noble INC., 1967.
McSowell, Nicholas. Life and Works of Hemingway. England: Wayland, 1988.
Meyers, Jeffery. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985.
Shaw, Samuel. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Fredrick Ungar Publishing Company, 1974.
Tessitore, John. The Hunt and The Feast, A life of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Franklin
Watts, 1996.
Waldhorn, Arthur. A Reader's Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New York: Octagon Books, 1978.
Hemingway, Ernest. Indian Camp. In Our Time. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1970.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1995.