Literary Achievements of Ernest Hemingway - Essay Example

In other words, the life and art of Hemingway are interwoven in numerous ways, and his biography contributes heavily to the understanding of his works. Thus, his major works such as The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are useful in establishing that a great deal of his fiction was influenced by his life and that his art, in turn, transformed his life to a considerable extent.

The interrelation between the life and art of Hemingway is reflected in his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926). Here, one finds a young American narrating the story, and he is the only character in the work who maintains the standards of conduct. As Edmund Wilson establishes, the character fails to attract the love of a woman due to his incapacity to dominate and direct the lady. The author tenses up the membrane of his style to communicate the pulsations of these trepidations. Wilson is of all praise for the artistic style of the writer who invests the arid sunlight and the green summer landscapes with a vindictive quality that has never been found in literature before. In the novel, one finds the romantic spirit of the writer at its best and his literary style reflects the link to his life experience. “This Hemingway of the middle twenties ... expressed the romantic disillusion and set the favorite pose for the period. It was the moment of gallantry in heartbreak, grim and nonchalant banter, and heroic dissipation” (Wilson). Therefore, it is indubitable that the writer skillfully commingled his life with his art which ultimately won him an international reputation.

There have been ever so many illustrations of the life-aspects in the writings of Hemingway and the critics have often been in praise of the ability of the writer to reflect his life in his art astutely. Every character in his novels reflects one or the other characteristic of the novelist’s life. The proficiency of the writer as an outdoor sportsman, his career spell as a war correspondent, and his fervor for bullfighting and boxing, etc are noticeable in some of his characters. “In his lifetime, Hemingway's fame rested nearly as much on his personality as it did on his art” (Beginnings). And, once he became part of history, his fiction and art revealed the character and personality of the writer through the various characters.

The most satisfying confirmation of the relation between the art and life of Hemingway can be comprehended from the attitude of the writer towards his writing and art. To him, art was the means to express the life and he ever strove to recapture the feelings of his life through his art. He never realized art as a means to bring order out of natural chaos and to offer human life a meaning that otherwise is lacking. “For Hemingway”, as Zuckert purports, “writing remained a means of expression. Rather than stress the means of expression, Hemingway sought to communicate experience as directly and purely as possible” (Zuckert, 178-9). Thus, Hemingway reflected life in his art as natural as it could be and this won him great renown.

To conclude, therefore, the art and life of Hemingway are intermingled and his fiction reflects his life which, in turn, has been transformed by his art. The novels of the writer illustrate this great function of his art. In short, the most important reason behind the international recognition of the novelist is his skill in cleverly intermingling his life and art.