ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Icebergs, Heroes, and Nada

from Fight Club

Narrator: If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?Tyler: Alive or dead?Narrator: Doesn't matter, who'd be tough?Tyler: Hemingway. You?Narrator: Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner.

POSTMODERNISM1940s - TODAY

Puritanism

1472 - 1750 Rationalis

m1750 - 1800

Romanticism1820 - 1860

Transcendentalis

m1830 - 1860

Realism

Naturalism

Regionalism

1860 - 1920

Imagism1912 - 1927

The Harlem

Renaissance

1920 - 1935

The Lost Generation1920 - 1930

MODERNISM1900-1940s

American Literary Movements

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. He was a journalist (1917), then a volunteer

ambulance driver and active duty soldier (1918) during WWI.

In 1921, he married the first of his four wives and left the U.S. to join the growing band of artists and writers who were gathering in Paris.

Loves: African safaris, heavy drinking, cock fighting, deep sea fishing, other macho stuff

He won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1954.

He committed suicide in 1961.

Ernest Hemingway

The Lost GenerationThis name was given to a group of

authors and artists who came of age during WWI.

The phrase was coined by writer Gertrude Stein. She told Ernest Hemingway, “That is what you are. That is what you all are. You are a lost generation.”

This group included The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot, the author of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

The Iceberg Principle

“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show.”

“This Is Just To Say”I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

“Hills Like White Elephants”The story takes place at a train

station in the Ebro River valley of Spain.

The two main characters are a man (only referred to as “the American” and his female companion (referred to as “Jig.”)

Allusion: White ElephantA white elephant is an idiom for

a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth.

“Hills” Close Reading1. Put yourself into a partnership, preferably a boy-

girl pair. Each person should grab a marker.2. Highlight/underline the second-to-last sentence

in the first paragraph: “It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes” (Hemingway 211).

3. Highlight/underline: “‘That the train is coming in five minutes’” on p. 214.

4. Do now: Assign parts. Boys are the American; girls are Jig. Read this story out loud, as if it were a play. Think carefully about how each character would say his/her lines; consider tone.

5. THINK-PAIR-SHARE: What have these two been doing for thirty-five minutes???

The Iceberg Principle

What does Hemingway

keep underwater

in this story? (#3)

Tension! (#2)Jig The American

(1) The Operation

(2) White Elephants

(3) Ordering Drinks

Symbolism of the Setting (#1)

Hemingway’s Code HeroHemingway defined the Code Hero

as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful."

Code Hero Attributes

1. He is disciplined.He chooses to live a very

structured life amidst a chaotic world.

2. He acts without emotion. He is a doer, not a talker.He doesn’t brag about his

accomplishments.3. He desires women and alcohol. These indulges especially

occur at night to counteract the fear of the dark.

Code Hero Attributes4. He is often afraid of the dark.The dark reminds him of

death.5. He faces death valiantly.He faces death with

dignity because that is the only guarantee a hero can hope for.

6. He does not believe in an afterlife.He believes in Nada,

the Spanish word for “nothing.”

Apprentice HeroesIn Hemingway stories, code heroes are

those characters who have recognized and accepted the reality of nada and who live in compliance with the code.

Apprentice heroes are those characters who are either struggling with the fear, anxiety, and loss of control which the recognition of nada brings, or who are in the process of learning the requirements of the code.

“Indian Camp”

Hemingway’s Style

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”