Hemingway and his parents: The relationship in fiction and real life
Ernest Hemingway was born in Illinois 1899 and died in 1961. He was an American novelist, short story writer and a journalist. At the foundation of Ernest Hemingway’s philosophy of art is his assertion that “a writer’s job is to tell the truth.” He intimated that his own novels could be called biographical novels rather than pure fictional novels because they emerged out of “live experience.” If Hemingway’s stories are essentially “autobiographical,” then his views of, and attitudes toward, his parents should emerge from his fiction Some basic assertion s that can be made about Ernest’s fictional attitudes …show more content…
The mother is unaware that her son (Harold Krebs), who has recently returned from overseas, has been profoundly changed by his wartime experiences. She still treats him like a very young child, still expects him to cater to her desires and expectations of what should be. A number of details bear this out: she babies him by offering him breakfast in bed, nags him about mussing the paper before his father has read it. The mother further alienates Krebs when she forces her sodden religiosity on him and makes it a matter of filial piety for him to accede to her expectations. Her sentimental motherliness nauseates him because it forces him to lie to her to avoid hurting her further. Richard Hovey an American poet commented on “Soldiers Home” “the son’s feelings toward his mother are marked by heart chilling alienation and marrow deep resentment. Neither of his parents has any notion of what he has been through in Europe or what is wrong with him. His weak father is unimportant, out of the …show more content…
He recalls the time the family moved from his maternal grandfather’s house, where he was born, to a new house “designed and built by mother.” He recalls seeing a tin box containing the mother’s and father’s wedding cake hanging from a rafter and in the attic the jars of snakes and other zoological items which his father had collected as a boy. The snakes were preserved in alcohol, which had sunk in the jars so that the exposed backs of the snakes had turned white. The jars were not to be moved to the new house and were burned along with other things in the backyard. Nick says, “I could not remember who burned the things even.” This act of the mother becomes significant when similar incident happens after the family has lived awhile in the new house. The mother cleans out the basement while the father is away on a hunting trip; she burns “everything that should not have been there.” This includes the father’s collection of Indian’s artifacts: stones axes, skinning knives, tools, pieces of poetry and arrowheads. When the father returns, she greets him pleasantly: “I’ve been cleaning the basement, dear.”The father, saying nothing, has Nick Help him retrieve the damaged artifacts from the ashes. “Now I lay me” shows the extent to which the family has come under matriarchal domination. The fires show that the mother is a destroyer; she also
Ernest Hemingway was born in Illinois 1899 and died in 1961. He was an American novelist, short story writer and a journalist. At the foundation of Ernest Hemingway’s philosophy of art is his assertion that “a writer’s job is to tell the truth.” He intimated that his own novels could be called biographical novels rather than pure fictional novels because they emerged out of “live experience.” If Hemingway’s stories are essentially “autobiographical,” then his views of, and attitudes toward, his parents should emerge from his fiction Some basic assertion s that can be made about Ernest’s fictional attitudes …show more content…
The mother is unaware that her son (Harold Krebs), who has recently returned from overseas, has been profoundly changed by his wartime experiences. She still treats him like a very young child, still expects him to cater to her desires and expectations of what should be. A number of details bear this out: she babies him by offering him breakfast in bed, nags him about mussing the paper before his father has read it. The mother further alienates Krebs when she forces her sodden religiosity on him and makes it a matter of filial piety for him to accede to her expectations. Her sentimental motherliness nauseates him because it forces him to lie to her to avoid hurting her further. Richard Hovey an American poet commented on “Soldiers Home” “the son’s feelings toward his mother are marked by heart chilling alienation and marrow deep resentment. Neither of his parents has any notion of what he has been through in Europe or what is wrong with him. His weak father is unimportant, out of the …show more content…
He recalls the time the family moved from his maternal grandfather’s house, where he was born, to a new house “designed and built by mother.” He recalls seeing a tin box containing the mother’s and father’s wedding cake hanging from a rafter and in the attic the jars of snakes and other zoological items which his father had collected as a boy. The snakes were preserved in alcohol, which had sunk in the jars so that the exposed backs of the snakes had turned white. The jars were not to be moved to the new house and were burned along with other things in the backyard. Nick says, “I could not remember who burned the things even.” This act of the mother becomes significant when similar incident happens after the family has lived awhile in the new house. The mother cleans out the basement while the father is away on a hunting trip; she burns “everything that should not have been there.” This includes the father’s collection of Indian’s artifacts: stones axes, skinning knives, tools, pieces of poetry and arrowheads. When the father returns, she greets him pleasantly: “I’ve been cleaning the basement, dear.”The father, saying nothing, has Nick Help him retrieve the damaged artifacts from the ashes. “Now I lay me” shows the extent to which the family has come under matriarchal domination. The fires show that the mother is a destroyer; she also