The life of Ernest Hemingway

The life of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois. Clarence and Grace Hemingway raised their son in this conservative suburb of Chicago, but the family also spent a great deal of time in northern Michigan, where they had a cabin. It was there that the future sportsman learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors.In high school, Hemingway worked on his school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula, writing primarily about sports.
In 1918, Hemingway went overseas to serve in World War I as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army. For his service, he was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery, but soon sustained injuries that landed him in a hospital in Milan. Some literary critics believe that it was this near death experience that obsessed Hemingway with a continual fear of death and a need to test his courage that lasted the rest of his life. Hemingway is a realist and a naturalist .He adheres to fidelity to life.He believed that a novelist should depict “the actual”. He pictures his own experiences based on real observation and realizations . He enters into contemporary problems caused by the first world war .
Hemingway uses symbols in his novels ,in the old man and the sea ,the symbolism has a far deeper significance than in the early novels .The book is a representation of life as struggle against unconquerable forces of nature ,in which a kind of victory is possible .Santiago’s massage is that while a man may grow old and lose his luck ,he can still dare stick to the rules ,keep on striving even in the teeth of opposition and thus make his failure a thing to be proud of ,a kind of victory.
Hemingway’s Awards
Silver Medal of Military Valor, Italian Armed Forces (c. WWI) Bronze Star, United States Armed Forces (1947) Pulitzer Prize, The Old Man and the Sea (1953) American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit (1954) Nobel Prize for Literature (1954) Top Reporter of the Last Hundred Years, Kansas City Star (1999)