We have been discussing the foundational Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, mostly written at his Finca Vigia, Cuba, and his Key West, Florida homes, between about 1920 and 1940. I also briefly summarized the nine stories that I considered most representative of his writing style and themes in his short stories and later novels in my Part II Post on “Understanding White Elephants.” These stories can all be found in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway–Finca Vigia Edition.
In this current posting, I am offering twelve keys to help readers reach a more complete understanding and appreciation of Hemingway’s writing. In future postings, I will elaborate on how the nine short stories highlight one or more of the codes, themes and writing styles. These are my 12 Key Codes to Hemingway’s Writing Style and Themes:
- His writing is simple, understated, and very compact. This is likely due to his earlier training and experience as a journalist. See “The End of Something” and most stories.
- The style is influenced by Impressionist painters like Paul Cezanne, who minimized main themes and offered a maximum focus on the small details of the background items. Look for over the top, in-depth descriptions of camping, fishing, and making coffee details in “The Big Two-Hearted River” Stories.
- Living deliberately in nature, as exemplified by Henry David Thoreau in Walden Pond. Hemingway and his alter-ego character, Nick Adams, were wounded in World War I and returned to the natural settings and activities of their youth for physical and emotional healing.
- The Iceberg Theory. Perhaps approach was tied to the popularity of Freud and psychoanalysis during Hemingway’s early writing. His characters deepest feelings, emotions and deepest thoughts lie deep beneath the dialogue and the revealed storyline. For that reason, the plots of the characters are not resolved or left up to the reader to determine. See “Hills Like White Elephants” for the best example of this style. This was also a characteristic of Post-Modernism Writing, which Hemingway was a pioneer.
- The duality of Life and Death as two sides of the same coin, or revealed at the same time in the upper and lower bunk. See “Indian Camp.”
- Defining the role of the Masculine Male as the one who is most macho, as seen in his fishing and hunting short stories, The Sun Also Rises, and The Old Man in the Sea.
- Heroism and accepting the challenges of life with Grace Under Pressure. A vivid example of a male who did not meet his standards of masculinity until it was too late is seen in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
- The Nick Adams stories provide Rite of Passage Markers for his character’s maturity from a boy of twelve to young man making a decision about his future, to the father of a twelve-year-old boy. It is interesting to track the changes that take place in Nick’s thoughts and attitudes between the first and last of these stories.
- “Soldier’s Home” best highlights changes and issues taking place in society in the early 1920’s as American soldiers returned home from World War.
- These stories reveal Hemingway’s family’s attitudes of racism toward the Native American Indians they lived near. See”Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.”
- Hemingway and his characters had a distant and strained relationship with his mother and a love-hate relationship with the father. These tensions can be seen in “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “Soldier’s Home,” and “Fathers and Sons.” These and other stories also show deep conflicts, communications issues and lack of compassion in Hemingway’s characters toward each other. See The Sun Also Rises for an in-depth example.
- Hemingway had deep understanding and communication issues with most of the women in his life and in his fictional writing. Female characters are often typecast and stereotyped in 1920’s sexist roles in several of his stories, especially,” Hills Like White Elephants.” Although, ever so often, he surprises us with strong, independent thinking female characters like Marjorie in “The End of Something,” Margaret in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” and Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms.
Despite the shortcomings of Ernest Hemingway’s personality and the flaws of his characters, his writing styles and themes were new and highly innovative in his lifetime. His works are still very timely and he is still among an élite group of the best American writers. If you make some attempt to understand his writing style and themes and stick with his works from the Short Stories until The Old Man and The Sea, I believe that you well rewarded.
In some of the subsequent posts, I will attempt to break-down several of the short stories by noting how Hemingway’s writing styles and themes function within them. I would love for you to keep the conversation going by having you leave a comment in the dialogue box below or in any Litchatte.com posting.
by 
