Comparing Fitzgerald And Hemingway

What are the chances that two authors born around 400 miles apart from one another, in the same time period, happen to go to Paris to write at the same time? F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, two of the most respected authors in literature, both became expatriates who fled to Paris after World War I in the 1920s. Although both authors had the same historical context in their works, their general writing style was quite different. Fitzgerald used a more flowy sentence structure, full of captivating descriptions, while Hemingway had short, concise sentences which made his writing much more powerful. Fitzgerald, the author of “Babylon Revisited”, set in Paris in the 1930s, leads us through the story of a man, Charlie Wales, who wants …show more content…
Although they are still somewhat unique in “Babylon Revisited” and “A Clean Well Lighted Place”, both short stories follow a minimalistic structure. “Babylon Revisited” only has one scene in the entire story, when >>>. In addition, Fitzgerald uses a more minimalistic prose, with straightforward, short sentences, seen in the last sentences of the short story, “He wasn't young any more, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone” (Fitzgerald). Compared to Fitzgerald’s writing in short story “Winter Dreams” and his novel The Great Gatsby, this is quite peculiar and unlike Fitzgerald. On the other hand, Hemingway sticks to his normal style of writing in “A Clean Well Lighted Place”. His use of unnamed characters, a non-omniscient POV, and short, non-descriptive sentences cause “A Clean Well Lighted Place” to be extremely minimalistic. Between the three characters, they can only be referred to as the young waiter, older waiter, and the old, suicidal men. Additionally, Hemingway created a different point of view, one which can not even be described as omniscient because the narrator does not tell all, in fact little is told about anything. Moreover, there is only a small amount of description in “A Clean Well Lighted Place”; the most descriptive sentence seems to be “It was late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light" (Hemingway). All in all, “Babylon Revisited” and “A Clean Well Lighted Place” are written in a very minimal style, a structure common for Hemingway, but odd for