- Hemingway's characters come to life instantly - this is because of the
extreme use of dialogue.
- The Love and War themes co-exist in the novel; an unlikely
combination.
- Rain, pregnancy and death all set the mood for the rest of the novel.
- There are six stages each for the Love and War themes:
Fred - participation/action & wounding/recuperation/retreat/desertion
Cathy - affair/love/conception/staying in the Alps/hospital/death
- The overall theme of the novel is "Life is a struggle in which the
loser takes nothing."
- Fred stands for many men - his desertion summed up many US
servicemen's feelings.
The Hemingway Hero
- wounded - physically and psychologically
- broken (or breaking) from organised society
- the character has developed from a difficult childhood and adolescence
- honest, verile, and very sensitive
- outdoor man, but nervous
- cannot sleep unless he stops thinking
- wants to escape from the society that wounded him
- the CODE HERO represents a code by which the real hero, if he could
get it, would be able to live in the world. Also known as an IDEAL
HERO.
- the hero makes "a man a man".
Hemingway's World
The world has shown Hemingway what to write about.
- world at war, both physically and figuratively.
- pleasure in haste/apprehension/emergency/fear.
- pressures felt are limited to those the senses can convey.
- down to earth morals - "what do you feel good with?"
- explode/break/decompose/eaten away - WORLD. nothing beautiful.
- saved from misery by visions of hope, courage, love and sport.
- the characters depicted do not mature - a narrow world.
- Hemingway believed in peace, even though he could not see it.
- We don't want to be a part of the world shown - we don't want to admit
that this is the real world, OUR world. The "heros" are real people.
Hemingway's Style
- clones are unsuccessful
- the style is easily recognised, especially by diction and sentence
structure.
- uses short, common words - nothing complicated.
- sentences are descriptive and simple - again, nothing complicated.
- adjectives are rare.
- "clean", direct and to the point.
- Hemingway worked slowly and revised extensively.
- the stories are always sequential - no jumping about.
- You get sensations by yourself - intense objectivity.
- irony and understatement are used frequently.
- Hemingway narrows down to a particular point.
- Dialogue used extensively - concentrates on overtones and characters
of speech. Strips responses to a minimum - gives an illusion of
reality.
- the style is a direct parallel to the characters being portrayed.
- Mindlessness of style is an expression of the way that you have to
stop thinking to forget what has happened before.
- images, dialogue and events create the atmosphere.
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