Teaching american fiction from stylistic perspective case study hemingways the old man and the sea

National University of HCM City College of Social Sciences and Humanities Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature -E D A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Submitted by PHAN KIM LOAN Supervisor: DƯƠNG NGỌC DŨNG, Ph.D Ho Chi Minh City, June 2005 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify that this thesis entitled “Teaching American Fiction from Stylistic Perspective – Case Study: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea” is my own work This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions Ho Chi Minh City, May 05, 2005 Phan Kim Loan ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Dung Ngoc Duong, who did provide me with constant guidance during my hours’ labour on the thesis and with many insightful and valuable comments My special thanks are also for Dr Dennis F Berg, who did give me much encouragement during the course; for all the students participating the study for their cooperation; and for my friends for their support, enthusiastic company and true friendship ABSTRACT It is so common that traditional courses of literature usually involve extensive surveys of literature history and teaching methods relying on lectures just help students to pass the required exam To put fresh momentum into the teaching of literature to stimulate students’ desire to read and to encourage their response, as Collie and Slater suggested (1987:8), this study made an attempt to apply the stylistic approach to teaching English literature, specifically American fiction to students at BDTTC 78 respondents of English 15C and 16 classes took part in the study by answering the questionnaire, taking an interview and having two tests of the first and second semesters The results of both qualitative and quantitative methods were consistent with the study hypothesis that 25 out of 35 English 16 students (71.45%) showed their positive attitude to the stylistic approach which really guided them to find a “way-in” to a literary work for themselves, and no respondents disapproved of this method Their test scores showed their improvement in the second semester compared with the first one but not very much The English 15C students got only 2.57% of good students (with the score being 8) greater than the first semester result Meanwhile, the English 16 students obtained 10.26% of good students (with the score ranging from to 10) greater than the first semester However, the study was performed on fiction with a small number of respondents at a provincial school, so it still had some limitation The findings of this study, as we hoped, can be used as a basic literature review for further researches on other genres of literature TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of originality Acknowledgement Abstract Table of contents List of tables i ii iii iv vii List of figures Abbriviations viii ix INTRODUCTION 0.1 THE PROBLEM 0.2 AIM OF THE STUDY 0.3 OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS Chapter 1: BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE SYLLABUS FOR THE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT BDTTC 1.2 SOME COMMONLY USED APPROACHES TO 14 TEACHING LITERATURE IN MANY COLLEGES SO FAR Chapter : LITERATURE REVIEW 17 2.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES 17 2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 19 Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 26 3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 26 3.2 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 27 3.2.1 PARTICIPANTS 28 3.2.2 MATERIALS 31 3.2.3 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 34 Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 37 4.1 RESPONSES TO THE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE 37 4.2 RESPONSES TO THE INTERVIEW 68 4.3 ANALYSES USING TEST SCORES 71 IN THE TWO SCHOOL-YEARS Chapter 5: APPLICATION TO TEACHING 77 5.1 THE AUTHOR: ERNEST M HEMINGWAY (1899-1961) 77 5.2 THE NOVELETTE THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA 82 5.3 COURSE SYLLABUS OF TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE 90 5.4 LESSON PLAN 92 5.5 SOME TYPICAL PROBLEMS STUDENTS EXPERIENCE…107 5.6 RECOMMENDATION 108 CONCLUSION 112 BIBLIOGRAPHY 114 APPENDIX 118 APPENDIX 120 APPENDIX 121 APPENDIX 123 APPENDIX 5: THE QUESTIONNAIRE 125 APPENDIX 6: Layout of data of question 130 APPENDIX 6’: Raw Data Collected From Question 16 131 APPENDIX & 7’: Test Scores of 15C & 16 students 132 APPENDIX 8: Terms of Figures of Speech 134 APPENDIX 9: Background Information 143 APPENDIX 10: Theory of Short Stories 151 APPENDIX 11: Hemingway’s Photographs 155 LIST OF TABLES PAGE Chapter 1: Table 1.0: The MOET’s 1997 Syllabus of English Literature…………………11 Table 1.1: The content of teaching Literature at BDTTC in 1999…………12 Chapter 3: Table 3.1: Summary of sample characteristics…………………………………………… 30 Chapter 4: Table 4.1.1: Different reasons of their attending the English course at BDTTC………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 38 Table 4.1.2: How you like the following subjects?……………………………… 41 Table 4.1.3: The students’ feelings before and after taking the literature course in the first semester (2002-2003)………………………………………………………… 43 Table 4.1.4: Their feeling of interest in the literature course after the 1st and 2nd semester………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 45 Table 4.1.5: Their feeling of boredom after the 1st and 2nd semesters… 47 Table 4.1.6: Their evaluation of the two methods of teaching…………………48 Table 4.1.7: The classroom activities in learning literature…………………… 52 Table 4.1.8: Their opinions about the teacher’s constant explanation… 55 Table 4.1.9: Their opinions about writing a reflection……………………………… 56 Table 4.1.10: The benefits from the stylistic approach in various English skills……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 58 Table 4.1.11: The problems students had in learning literature…………… 58 Table 4.1.12: The literary works that the students were most interested in ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 62 Table 4.1.13a: Their opinions about stylistic approach……………………………… 64 Table 4.1.13b: Their suggestions to improving teaching and learning literature at BDTTC………………………………………………………………………………………………….64 Table 4.1.14.1: Statistics of Question 17………………………………………………………….66 Table 4.1.14.2: Statistics of question 18………………………………………………………… 67 Table 4.2.1: The data collected from the interview………………………………… 68 Table 4.2.2: The students’ feedback to the teaching methods……………… 69 Table 4.3.1: Descriptive statistics of the test scores of the English 15C students (2001-2002)…………………………………………………………………………………………… 72 Table 4.3.2: Descriptive statistics of the test scores of the English 16 students (2002-2003)…………………………………………………………………………………………… 73 Table 4.3.3: Correlations of their learning results in the 2nd semester between the two courses……………………………………………………………………………………… 74 LIST OF FIGURES PAGE Chapter 4: Figure 4.1.1: Why to attend the course of English at BDTTC?……………… 39 Figure 4.1.2: The distribution of the 1st item of the two methods………… 50 Figure 4.1.3: The exhibition of their evaluation of the two methods… 51 Figure 4.1.4: The presentation of item in the two methods………………… 51 Figure 4.1.5: Differences of any items in classroom activities……………… 54 Figure 4.1.6: Skill improvements in values and percentages from stylistic approach……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 57 Figure 4.1.7: Their opinions about learning literature……………………………… 60 Figure 4.1.8: How you enjoy reading the following types of literary work?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 61 Figure 4.3.1: The distribution of score frequency of the English 15C students………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 75 Figure 4.3.2: The distribution of score frequency of the English 16 students……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 76 Figure 4.3.3: The scatterplot of the relationship between the two schoolyears’ test scores……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 76 APPENDIX TEST SCORES OF 15C STUDENTS MASV FIRST SEMESTER SECOND SEMESTER MASV FIRST SEMESTER SECOND SEMESTER AV15082 6.00 8.00 AV15102 7.00 6.00 AV15083 6.00 6.00 AV15103 6.00 7.00 AV15084 5.00 5.00 AV15104 7.00 7.00 AV15085 5.00 5.00 AV15105 7.00 5.00 AV15086 6.00 7.00 AV15106 6.00 5.00 AV15087 5.00 5.00 AV15107 7.00 7.00 AV15088 6.00 6.00 AV15108 8.00 7.00 AV15089 7.00 8.00 AV15109 7.00 8.00 AV15090 7.00 7.00 AV15110 5.00 6.00 AV15091 6.00 7.00 AV15111 6.00 7.00 AV15092 6.00 7.00 AV15112 5.00 5.00 AV15093 6.00 5.00 AV15113 5.00 7.00 AV15094 6.00 6.00 AV15114 7.00 6.00 AV15095 6.00 8.00 AV15115 6.00 5.00 AV15096 7.00 7.00 AV15116 7.00 6.00 AV15097 6.00 5.00 AV15117 7.00 6.00 AV15098 6.00 6.00 AV15118 8.00 7.00 AV15099 6.00 5.00 AV15119 6.00 5.00 AV15100 5.00 5.00 AV15081 8.00 7.00 AV15101 6.00 6.00 ENGLISH FACULTY DEAN NGUYỄN THỊ HẠNH APPENDIX 7’ English 16 Students' test scores MASV 1st semester 2nd Semester MASV 1st semester 2nd Semester AV16120 8 AV16141 8 AV16121 7 AV16142 7 AV16122 8 AV16143 9 AV16123 8 AV16144 7 AV16124 8 AV16145 5 AV16125 9 AV16146 6 AV16126 8 AV16147 8 AV16127 6 AV16148 7 AV16128 6 AV16149 8 AV16129 8 AV16150 6 AV16130 0 AV16151 8 AV16131 9 AV16152 7 AV16132 7 AV16153 6 AV16133 7 AV16154 7 AV16134 6 AV16155 8 AV16135 9 AV16156 8 AV16136 7 AV16157 6 AV16137 7 AV16158 8 AV16138 6 AV16159 8 AV16139 8 AV16160 0 AV16140 5 ENGLISH FACULTY DEAN NGUYỄN THỊ HẠNH APPENDIX 8: TERMS OF FIGURES OF SPEECH (Vũ Lộc Hà, Nguyễn Ngọc Hải & Phạm Tấn, 1999: 3-5) - Figurative language includes words and impressions that are not taken in the literal sense - It enables readers to get at the mood of the writer or to have profound understanding of what is meant - With just a few words, the writer can communicate volumnes about feelings and expressions SOME COMMON TYPES OF FIGURES OF SPEECH: Simile: A comparison that reveals similarities between otherwise dissimillar things - “My love is like a red red rose.” Metaphor: The application of a descriptive term or phrase to an object or action to which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable Here the comparison is not explixitly stated by ‘like’ or ‘as’ It is implied Metaphor may be grouped according to their parts of speech - Noun: She was breathing fire A flash of hope - Adjective: stony heart, burning eye - Verb: His eyes flashed angrily The different types of metaphor: - Personal metaphor: involves an implied comparison between a nonhuman thing and a human being A personal metaphor may be a noun, an adjective or a verb Noun: The dictates of conscience; the call of the sea Adjective: smiling sun; angry sea Verb: Fortune has smiled on his family - Extended metaphor: expressed through a series of images all bearing a central point of resemblance “All the world is a stage And all the men and women are merely players They have their exits and entrances …” - Dead metaphor: some words and phrases were originally metaphors and similes but as they are often used, the metaphorical characteristic is lost The foot of the hill; The face of a clock Personification: A figure of speech which gives the qualities of a person to an animal, an object, or an idea The writer uses it to show something in an entirely new light, to communicate a certain feeling or attitude toward it, and to control the way a reader perceives it “The house was alive with soft quick steps and running voices.” “Little faint winds were playing chase.” “Running” and “playing chase” are usually used to describe people but by assigning human quality to the steps and the winds, the writer calls for our admiration for the beaty and liveliness of the scene described Denotation and Connotation: Denotation is the exact meaning specified by a word Connotation is the meaning implied by a word in additio to its literal or primary meaning These following words have different connotations: - woman and old maid - Woman and old lady Overstatement: an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally but made for a special effect I’m dead tired I’m bored to death Her eyes are brighter than the vey sun Understatement: the expression of an affirmative by the negative of its contrary I shan’t be sorry (I shall be very glad) She’s not a bad-looking girl Pun: the humorous use of a word or combination of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound so as to emphasize the different meanings Is life worth living? – yes, it depends on the liver She told the child to try not to be so trying Paradox: an apparently self contradictory statement that may in reality express a possible truth It is also intended to cause surprise ar arrest attention Still waters run deep More haste less speed Haste makes waste Antithesis: a striking contrast of ideas marked by the choice and arrangment of words in the same sentence to secure emphasis Give me liberty or give me death Speech is silvery but silence is gold Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear I conjunction for a startling effect Loving hate; serious vanity, etc 10 Euphemism: the use of pleasant, mild or indirect phrases in place of more accurate or direct ones Pass away for die Pass water for urinate Powder room for toilet 11 Climax: the arrangment of ideas in the order of more or less importance In action how like angel, in apprehesion how like a God To gossip is a fault, to libel is a crime, to slander a sin 12 Synecdoche: the use of a part to stand for awhole, the whole for a part, an individual name for a whole class, the material for a thing made of He has many mouths to feed She was a girl of 20 summers 13 Metonymy: the use of a name of an object for that of another with which it is closely associated or of which it is a part The White house for the American President The bench fo rteh judges The crown fro the King SOUND DEVICES: Techniques for bringing out the sounds of words A/ Anomatopoeia: the use of words that mimic sounds, like ‘buzz’ or ‘hiss’ Tuk – Tuk – Tuk clucked cook like an agitated hen B/ Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of closely linked words or syllables There was a haze on the horizon; - Look before you leap C/ Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound Lying beside me; he looked into the sky and began to smile APPENDIX 9: BACKGROUND INFORMATION Hemingway's Iceberg: Modes of Omission in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” “A Day's Wait,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” By Stina Hultin Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg Hemingway By implementing literary layers and integrating the influences of such writers as Ezra Pound, T.S Eliot, and F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway employs a unique stylistic tool to his fiction that brought a fresh perspective to American Literature in the early 20th Century Hemingway wrote, “ If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows” (Craft 12) This theory encompasses the types of omission practiced by his literary mentors and contemporaries, yet Hemingway shaped himself as the master of the iceberg In his short stories, Hemingway demonstrates different modes of omission as tools of stylistic strength: for example in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” he uses dialogue as the medium through which omission is revealed In “A Day's Wait” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Hemingway manipulates theme and the environment of the story especially in the former, the landscape reflects the characters' emotional and psychological states The issue of dialogue is of particular import since Hemingway forever changed the way in which short stories “spoke.” Modern writers know that “showing versus telling” is preferable in terms of description and character development, yet Ernest Hemingway is the first master of this deceptively simplistic creative tool In terms of the craft of omission, the thing let out may be the author's personal experience that he “has written down but [chooses] to omit before publication…[the omission] continues to lie beneath it, determining its shape”(Craft 89) Hemingway believed that you could use the simple circumstances surrounding the actual writing process as instructive; close friends, the lighting in the room, the smells coming through the window these all influence the shape of the story and the control of the iceberg Ezra Pound and Hemingway became friends in Paris in the 1920's, though Hemingway asserted he was never a part of the “American expatriates,” but just a writer living cheaply in Paris As a critic, Pound deftly influenced Hemingway's writing in terms of economy of language and his insistence on objectivity One of Pound's famous mandates, “Go in fear of abstractions!” seems to have tattooed itself upon Hemingway's prose T.S Eliot, another contemporary writer and friend, also influenced Hemingway he was an avid supporter of the tactile, “No ideas but in things,” but even more so, his literary tendencies were a part of the foundation for Hemingway's iceberg theory Eliot wrote, “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding 'an objective correlative', in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked”(Craft 90) Hemingway took this to heart, and employed it most successfully in dialogue, thematic omission, and omission of identity In his 1927 collection, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, Hemingway plays with many different modes of omission to illustrate that when things are left out, nothing remains nothing is something, and it is the core, the concentration, of Hemingway “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” concerns dialogue much like that of the popular “The Killers,” another story in this collection There are three characters in “ACWLP” two waiters and an old man in a late-night café The conversation between the waiters is static and patterned a predictable ABAB form consisting of multiple questions and answers: “'Last week he tried to commit suicide,'” one waiter said 'Why?' 'He was in despair.' 'What about?' 'Nothing.' 'How you know it was nothing?' 'He has plenty of money'”(SS 29) An intentional ambiguity, it is difficult to distinguish between the two characters until closer to the end of the piece; this creates an effect of blank identity Hemingway once remarked that he had “left everything out” of “ACWLP,” (Craft 91) God is missing from The Lord's Prayer, the Virgin is missing from the “Hail Mary,” and life seems to be absent in the eyes of the old man in the café The last scene reveals that the older waiter is realizing a connection between himself and the old man, who had been the subject of criticism in the waiters' dialogue The older waiter contemplates his own life, decides that he, too, likes a “clean, well-lighted place,” and feels reluctant to close up because each night there “may be someone who needs the café” (SS 32) It is ambiguous as to whether or not these thoughts are coming from the waiter or the old man who continues to drink The waiter's inner dialogue goes on to illustrate the point of Hemingway's omission: “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada…” and “Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee”(SS 32-33) The “holy” subjects of the rhetoric have been removed, just as identity has been removed from the story on the whole Identity is absent in the old man as well as in the two interchangeable waiters This story, as in so many of Hemingway's works, involves an abundance of “nothing”-for instance, Hemingway doesn't assign names to anything such as characters, towns, bars, soldiers, etc It is an empty feeling, one that transfers onto the reader and highlights the emptiness within the older waiter's heart in the last lines, “Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room He would lie in bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia Many must have it”(SS 33) Hemingway employs his iceberg theory by twisting the focus of the narrative he tells the old man, yet, through omission and dialogue, he shows the old waiter “A Day's Wait” is another of Hemingway's short stories that illustrates his craft of omission, but in a much different way than “ACWLP.” The story utilizes T.S Eliot's idea of an “objective correlative” in this case, it is the landscape surrounding the brief narrative that becomes the set of necessary objects The story, told in first person from the perspective of Schatz's father, uses words to paint the feeling of the omission By this I mean that the particular details of the landscape reflect the emotional turmoil of the characters, and in doing so acts as yet another type of omission this is the showing versus the telling Hemingway writes, “It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as if all the bare trees, the bushes, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been varnished with ice”(SS 35) “Bright,” “cold,” and “varnished with ice” these words connote a strangeness within their juxtaposition The words reflect the state of mind and the despair of Schatz, the nine-year-old boy who believes his fever will kill him The prose is hard, sharp-edged, and controlled this pertains to his emotional reconciliation and to his relationship with his father It becomes clear that the winter morning reflects the emotional distance between the father and son Hemingway writes in such a way that this never has to be explicitly said in the story; the bright coldness is simply felt and, therefore, understood Like “ACWLP,” Hemingway uses an abundance of sparse dialogue we only see segments of the conversation, and almost never we see the thought process behind it all In the end of the story, Hemingway writes, “But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly The hold over himself relaxed too, finally, and the next day it was very slack and he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance”(SS 36) The thing omitted here is the complexity of thought and reason is Schatz really sick? Is he responding to some other emotional stimulation? These questions are unanswerable and, ultimately, irrelevant to the narrative The story ends abruptly, just as Schatz's disillusion ends; we are left feeling raw and cold, as if it were “difficult to stand or walk on the glassy surface”(SS 35) of Hemingway's emotional landscape “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the title piece to Hemingway's 1927 collection of short stories, implements a much more complex mode of omission that of the psychological, spiritual, and things pertaining to identity The main character, Harry, confronts death while death itself is an omitted being, and is naturally an intangible thing for someone to deal with Hemingway lets his character not only see it, but he smells it in his gangrenous leg, and hears it through the hyena in the night At one point, it (death) crawls right up on Harry's bed and sits on his chest Each time the speaker sees his wife's face, he is reminded of, or visited by, death, “And just then it occurred to him that he was going to die It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it 'What is it, Harry?' 'Nothing,' he said”(SS 14-15) Even considering all the senses employed here, “it” is not there gracefully omitted Harry's mind, as well, is slowly deteriorating carefully being omitted right before our eyes Hemingway's implementation of italics is key to “The Snows…” because it is used in times of introspection, when the character, a writer, thinks of all the stories he always meant to write, and never did Hemingway writes of absent stories that the character is trying to materialize with memory this is significant because it's as if Harry is “hunting” through his life, just as Hemingway places he and Helen on an actual hunting safari in Africa For the majority of the story, Harry's wife remains unnamed she is the huntress The speaker sees her as the cause of his trading in his life she is hunting him; she, that accepts his lies as love, “kills” him, “…and as he looked and saw her well known pleasant smile, he felt death come again This time there was no rush”(SS 18) Hemingway's italicized scenes in “Snows” are also like his own compositions, his swan song Contradictory to Hemingway as the “man” versus “the artist,” Hemingway once said, “I don't like to leave anything…I don't like to leave things behind”(Craft 9) This is immediately challenged in the narrative of “Snows” when Helen says after an argument, “If you have to go away…is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind?”(SS 8) This could be Hemingway commenting on his own tendency or obsession to save everything, (newspaper clippings, old manuscripts, paper napkins with title ideas), and yet he ended his own life by suicide however, he didn't destroy his life because he saved it all Tied back in with the story, the italicized sections possess an element of transcendence; they bring Harry to a mental state in preparation for death These sections also represent omission, the “rest that he had never written”(SS 10) The stories are, at once, there physically on the page yet absent because they are in the speaker's head and not written in the form of the story by the speaker It is worth noting a set of particular italics in the very beginning of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” because it represents an instant in which Hemingway could have easily omitted information, but found this to be compelling and important to the narrative In italics he writes, “Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai,' the House of God Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude”(SS 3) This introduction establishes the setting and also alludes to a theme of mortality and spirituality, yet this is the only mention of the mountain until the last few paragraphs of the story The last scene of the story is beautiful Harry dies and goes up to the snows of Kilimanjaro, “…ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro And then he knew that there was where he was going”(SS 27) This scene, however, is not really there for it is entirely in his head omitted from reality, because he is now dead Prior to this, death was elusive “He lay still and death was not there It must have gone around another street It went in pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements”(SS 22) The climax of the story elevates death to an all-encompassing position: Harry is in a plane, being transported omitted from the world Ernest Hemingway possessed a strong dignity of movement in his prose, made possible by his implementation of the “iceberg theory.” By tactfully and gracefully revising, rewriting, and drafting, Hemingway became the master of omission His modes of omission manifested themselves in different ways, such as through theme, dialogue, and landscape-yet the voids, the “nothing” itself, can be found woven through all of Hemingway's works Contradiction can be found when reviewing Hemingway as the “man” vs “the artist,” because he “wrote well and enduringly of garbage and literature”(Craft 92) In the longest sentence that Hemingway ever wrote, he tackles the idea behind his iceberg theory the reality is that we are surrounded by tips of icebergs and it is neither possible nor right to try to get away from what is inevitably a part of us, a part of the history This sentence from Green Hills of Africa is reminiscent of the dense prose in William Carlos Williams' In the American Grain, and it effectively “saves everything, throws nothing away”(Craft 92): “That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you something which people not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, not tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer distinguished cat; all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast is as clear and as blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn lightbulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing the stream”(qtd in Craft 93) In this stream is Hemingway's iceberg, and his wholly unique craft of omission Works Cited Beegel, Susan F Hemingway's Craft of Omission: Four Manuscript Examples Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988 Hemingway, Ernest The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927 Biography of Ernest Miller Hemingway http://bn.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=7912220&is_search=Y&author_last=hemingw ay&author_first=ernest http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/about_ernest_hemingway.html Born on July 21, 1899 in suburban Oak Park, IL to Dr Clarence and Grace Hemingway, Ernest was the second of six children to be raise in the quiet suburban town by his physician father and devout, musical mother Indeed, Hemingway's childhood pursuits fostered the interests which would blossom into literary material Although Grace hoped her son would be influenced by her musical interests, young Hemingway preferred accompanying his father on hunting and fishing trips; this love of outdoor adventure would later be reflected in many of Hemingway's stories, particularly those featuring protagonist Nick Adams Hemingway's aptitude for physical challenge remained with him through high school, where he both played football and boxed Because of permanent eye damage contracted from numerous boxing matches, Hemingway was repeatedly rejected from service in World War I Boxing provided more material for Hemingway's stories, as well as a habit of likening his literary feats to boxing victories Hemingway also edited his high school newspaper and reported for the Kansas City Star, after adding a year to his age, after graduating from high school in 1917 After this short stint, Hemingway finally was able to participate in World War One, as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross He was wounded on July 8, 1918 on the Italian front near Fossalta di Piave; during his convalescence in Milan he had an affair with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky Hemingway was given two decorations by the Italian government, and joined the Italian infantry Fighting on the Italian front inspired the plot of A Farewell to Arms in 1929 Indeed, war itself is a major theme in Hemingway's works Hemingway would witness first hand the cruelty and stoicism required of soldiers he portrayed in his writing when covering the Greco-Turkish War in 1920 for the Toronto Star In 1937 he was a war correspondent in Spain; the events of the Spanish Civil War inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls Upon returning briefly to the United States after the World War, Hemingway, as well as working for the Toronto Star, lived for a short time in Chicago There, he met Sherwood Andersen and married Hadley Richardson in 1921 On Andersen's advice, the couple moved to Paris, where he served as foreign correspondent for the Star As Hemingway covered events on all of Europe, the young reporter interviewed important leaders such as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Mussolini The Hemingways lived in Paris from 1921-1926; this time of stylistic development for Hemingway reaches its zenith in 1923 with the publication of Three Stories and Ten Poems by Robert McAlmon in Paris and the birth of his son John This time in Paris inspired the novel A Moveable Feast, published posthumously in 1964 In Paris, Hemingway used Sherwood Anderson's letter of introduction to meet Gertrude Stein and enter the world of ex-patriot authors and artists who inhabited her intellectual circle The famous description of this "lost generation" was born of an employee's remark to Hemingway, and became immortalized as the epigraph on his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises This "lost generation" both characterized the postwar generation and the literary movement it produced In the 1920's, writers such as Anderson, F Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein decried the false ideals of patriotism that led young people to war, only to the benefit of materialistic elders These writer's tenets that the only truth was reality, and thus life could be nothing but hardship, strongly influenced Hemingway The late 1920's were a time of much publication for Hemingway In 1926, The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises were published by Charles Scribner's Sons In 1927 Hemingway published a short story collection, Men Without Women So too, in that year he divorced Hadley Richardson and married Pauline Pfieffer, a write for Vogue In 1928 they moved to Key West, where sons Patrick and Gregory were born, in 1929 and 1932 1928 was a year of both success and sorrow for Hemingway; in this year, A Farewell to Arms was published and his father committed suicide Clarence Hemingway had been suffering from hypertension and diabetes This painful experience is reflected in the pondering of Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls In addition to personal experiences with war and death, Hemingway's extensive travel in pursuit of hunting and other sports provided ample material for his novels Bullfighting inspired Death in the Afternoon, published in 1932 In 1934, Hemingway went on safari in Africa, which gave him new themes and scenes on which to base The Snows of Kilamanjaro and The Green Hills of Africa, published in 1935 As before mentioned, he traveled to Spain as a war correspondent in 1937, the same year as To Have and Have Not After his divorce from Pauline in 1940, Hemingway married Martha Gelhorn, a writer; the couple toured China before settling in Cuba at Finca Vigia, or look-out farm For Whom the Bell Tolls was published this year During World War Two Hemingway volunteered his fishing boat and served with the U.S Navy as a submarine spotter in the Caribbean In 1944, he traveled through Europe with the Allies as a war correspondent and participated in the liberation of Paris Hemingway divorced again in 1945, and married Mary Welsh, a correspondent for Time magazine, in 1946 They lived in Venice before returning to Cuba In 1950 Across the River and Into the Trees was published; it was not received with the usual critical acclaim In 1952, however, Hemingway proved the comment "Papa is finished" wrong, as The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature In 1960, the now aged Hemingway moved to Ketchum, Idaho, where he was hospitalized for uncontrolled high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes, and depression On July 2, 1961, he died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds and was buried in Ketchum "Papa" was both a legendary celebrity and a sensitive writer, and his influence, as well as unseen writings, survived his passing In 1964 A Moveable Feast was published; in1969, The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War; in1970, Islands in the Stream published; in 1972, The Nick Adams Stories; in1985, The Dangerous Summer; and in 1986 The Garden of Eden were published Hemingway's own life and character are indeed as fascinating as any in his stories On one level, Papa was a legendary adventurer who enjoyed his flamboyant lifestyle and celebrity status But deep inside lived a disciplined author who worked tirelessly in pursuit of literary perfection His success in both living and writing is reflected in the fact that Hemingway is a hero to both intellectuals and rebels alike; the passions of the man are only equaled by that of his writing