Otázka: Ernest Hemingway
Jazyk: Angličtina
Přidal(a): KT
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most famous and influential American writers of the 1900s. He was also journalist and war-correspondent for different papers. He produced a lot of novels and short stories reflecting important events in the society. He belonged to the group of writers called themselves The Lost Generation.
Ernest Hemingway was born on 21st July in 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago. He was the second child of six children. His mother was very strict but he enjoyed a good relationship with his father who was a doctor and taught him to hunt and fish along the shores and in the forests surrounding Lake Michigan.The passion remained with him for the rest of his life. Hunting and fishing taught him courage and these two activities together with bullfighting and war became the main topics of his books.
After graduating Hemingway took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper. When he turned 18 he tried to enlist in the army to be able to go to Europe and fight in WWI but he was refused because of his injury of eye. So he volunteered to work as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. On Italian front he was wounded in his legs and taken to hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with his nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway proposed to her but she turned him down and he returned to the USA alone. That all inspired his great novel A Farewell To Arms.
Hemingway´s works
- The Old Man and the Sea
- A Moveable Feast
- The Fifth Column à the only drama dealing with the Civil War in Spain
- Green Hills of Africa
- The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)
- Death in the Afternoonà it is set in Italy in the First World War.
- A Farewell to Arms à the book deals with the suffering of the main character who having been injured in the war cannot fulfil his love relationship.
- From Whom the Bell Tolls
The Old Man and The Sea
- The most famous of Hemingway´s novels. He got the Nobel Prize for it.
- It is about human strength.
– Novel about people who have to face hardship or challenges with bravery
The story of the novel The Old Man and the Sea is located in a small village near Havana. The main character is an old fisherman named Santiago and his only friend a young boy named Manolin. Santiago had a bad luck and was starving, because he hadn´t caught a fish for a long time. That was why the parents of Manolin prohibited him to work with that old poor man and they ordered him to join a more successful fishing boat. However, the boy kept in touch with Santiago meeting him and helping him in secrecy. Nevertheless, Santiago had to set out alone to go fishing. He felt that he would have a good luck that day. Reaching the open sea far out in the Gulf Stream he caught a fish. It was a giant marlin. At that moment an extraordinary battle ofthe old man with an enormous fish started. Three and a half day was the ship of the oldman drawn by the huge fish. Finally, the fish was so tired so the old man killed it witha harpoon. He could not believe he had managed to catch a nearly five metres long fish.He returned back to his port. As he was sailing, a group of sharks was getting near andnear to his boat. The sharks started to eat the fish. Although the old man fought against them untilhe was completely exhausted, only a skeleton was left. When he came backto ashore, the giant skeleton was the only evidence of his great catch.The story shows a never ending struggle of a man with a marlin. It reveals an inside forever of a man, his courage, his effort to achieve his aim in spite of any troubles. Sothe conclusion is: „A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”
It shows not only a battle of a man with the natural world represented by the marlin, sharks, thesea, but also a battle with himself. The story gives us a proof that a man is able to face verydifficult situations in his life and is able to accomplish a lot of things if he really wants to.
Questions:
- What is The Lost Generation?
- What his father taught?
- What is human strength?
- Where is located The Old Man and the Sea?
- When E.Heminway won the Nobel´s prize?
- What are the main themes in his works?
