| Pop Lotty |
06-04-06 01:30 AM |
Ernest Hemingway was easily one of the greatest writers of American Literature. He influenced other great writers, and won many awards for his work. He was also pretty successful. For any average man you would think life was incredible, and there was no worries, but for Hemingway, it was all but that. On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway blasted he brains in his lap with a shotgun. Why would anyone do this, let alone Ernest? What was it? Depression.
When Ernest was younger, his mom wanted him to be a girl so bad, she would dress him up as one. This means putting on pretty little pink dresses, styling his hair like a little girl, and things like that. She even called him "Ernestine" when he was younger. This is probably what made him want to be a manly man more than ever. He always wanted to do the little outdoor activities like hunting, fishing. He participated in sports like football and boxing during high school, but during this time he was also developing his writing skills that would make him, him.
After Hemingway left high school, he worked for the Kansas City Star in 1917, then World War I came and he was out to go do some manly man stuff. Funny thing is, he wasn't allowed to go fight, and he was sent to Italy for another job. Before he went to Italy, he stopped in Paris where the Germans would bomb daily. In his job in Italy, he had to pick up dead bodies after a bombing happened in an ammunition factory. You would think this would be easy for him, but now, he was scared as hell. He'd wonder how some soldiers lived like this, he was shook and changed his mind after he got shot, while dragging a wounded soldier to safety, and came back to America.
Ernest Hemingway saw his army experience as a failure. When he arrived in America, he became an alcoholic (he was so addicted he moved to Canada because of Prohibition), and was dumped by the first love of his life. All of this, from the army to the lost love, was what made him write his classic, "A Fairwell To Arms." The book was remade into movies twice, both were up for Oscars in their years.
In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway had a drink together at a bar and became fast friends. This would be good for both as they both helped each other's writing skills which would lead to them both being heralded as two of the greatest writers in the 20th century. Being best friends, they would be together alot, and this wouldn't sit well with Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. She suspected that Hemingway was a homosexual and that all the time her husband has been spending with him, they might be doing more than just drinking. With Ernest being the "manly man" he was, he was outrage, and he would make fun of gays whenever he got a chance, especially Jean Cocteau. Even with all this, it was too late, everyone was convinced, he's gay, hiding in the closet, and lying to the world. They say this is what led to his first successful novel, "The Sun Also Rises."
Along with the perception he was a gay, in 1927, Hemingway lost love again when Pauline Pfeiffer divorced him...because she was a lesbian. Then in 1928, misery came knocking at his door again when he learned his father had shot and killed himself and then his friend Harry Crosby did the same. Hemingway had to think the whole world was against him during what was supposed to be one of the best times of his life. He was successful, but criticized, put down, hated, and put down, hated, and criticized by the media, peers and everyone else again and again. Some would say that he was an idiot, some called him a "fag" and said he used to beat his wives, some said the content in his writing wasn't about anything that really mattered (this made him write stories like "To Have and Have Not"). some said he was biting, or copying, other people's style, some just said he sucked like. This would make Hemingway very angry, sometimes these comments, went to confrontations, and those went to blows. Like when Max Eastman provoked him to the point the men got into a little scuffle.
The drunk and hated Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida to get away from all the negative people in his life, and he would take back and forth trips to Spain to learn about bullfighting for a new book called Death In The Afternoon. There he examined how bullfighting had some type of relation religion, (yeah, he really is a nut). Then he journied to Africa on a safari which made him put together the books of short stories called "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
As quick as Hemingway adapted to his new life he was back to square one after losing his residence in Spain to Francisco Franco's people and his house in Key West because of a love lost again. Another mess up, another book based loosely on him. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" in 1940 was about a man at war with Spanish republicans trying to keep what's his.
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