Ernest Hemingway - (1899-1961)
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Advanced English III
Emmett High School, Emmett, ID
Read another essay on Hemingway by Illinois students
Darcy Mowrer and Justin Jaczinski and Misti Kosmicki and Carissa Gunderson.There once lived a man much like the stereotypical "man's man" of our society. He was a rough, tough, and buff guy who loved anything physically challenging. As "manly" as he was, he still held the characteristics of a gentle artist and creative mastermind. He is labeled as one of the most influential writers of all time. Who was this man that was so creative, yet so rugged? Where did he live and what made him such a greatly acclaimed writer? The man is Ernest Hemingway and he lived and wrote much of his life's story in Idaho.
I. Biography
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, at 8:00 a.m., on July 21, 1899. In his early life, he was a reporter, a lover, a boxer, a bullfighter, and a war hero (Wilson). In 1939, he was living on a ranch in Wyoming with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, and their two sons. While married to Pauline, he was having a love affair with Martha Gelhorn. He left Pauline, and he and Martha went to Idaho. Hemingway loved the sports and woods of Ketchum and Sun Valley, and the terrain of Idaho reminded him of terrain he knew and loved from areas around the world (Hemingway).
Hemingway was drawn to Sun Valley not only by the terrain and sporting access, but also by a skilled publicist named Steve Hannigan who was seeking to glamorize and populate Sun Valley with stars in an attempt to turn it into Idaho's own Hollywood. When Hemingway first came to Idaho, the first people he met were Gene Van Gulder and Lloyd Arnold. They showed him the country of southern Idaho and some of the great hunting to be found there. The three of them, along with Taylor Williams, became close hunting buddies. They could often be found doing their favorite activity, hunting birds in the fields. Soon, Martha Gelhorn was adopted into their tight group. Hemingway would use the mornings as his time to work. He would write until about 11:30, and then go hunting with his friends (Hemingway).
Hemingway was a man's man, an athlete, and always the life of the party though never wild. He was a sportsman who loved fun and challenges (Curtis). He was an avid hunter, shooter, boxer, and bullfighter. He drank a lot, although his friends never saw him drunk (Hemingway).
Hemingway liked Idaho mainly because of the hunting to be found here. He detested and resented strong government control and regulations. He enjoyed the lack of hunting laws in Idaho and the lack of fishing laws in Cuba. Hemingway liked the small-town atmosphere and the fact that almost everyone knew everyone. One problem with this, though, was that as he grew in fame, his reclusive nature grew as well. Therefore, Idaho and Cuba were his favorite hideouts from the world. He liked the native Idahoan Sun Valley resort employees and felt that many of them were of a better class of people than many of the tourists there (Hemingway).
Although Hemingway was a very active man, his health rapidly began to deteriorate in his later years. This decline started when he divorced Martha. Hemingway and Martha were both correspondents for magazines during WWII. In the spring of 1944, Hemingway went back to England, where he was injured in a car wreck as a result of alcohol intoxication. He suffered a severe head wound and had to have 50 stitches in his head. When Martha went to the hospital, she minimized his injuries. This was the beginning of the end of their marriage (Wilson). The last straw in the marriage broke when Hemingway went to the magazine Martha was working for and offered to take the same position as Martha, running her out of a job. Of course, the company would rather have a famous writer as their correspondent over Martha. He eventually got court-martialed for carrying a firearm, but was freed from the charges when someone pulled strings for him because of his fame (Hemingway). Although Hemingway fell in love with Mary Welsh and married her in March of 1946, he was never the same (Bellevance).
After the 40's, Hemingway left Idaho for a span of about ten years. These years were called the "Cuban Years," although he was in Cuba very little. He traveled much of Europe with his wife Mary (Hemingway ).
In the fall of 1958, Hemingway went back to Idaho to rejoin his friends, family, and hunting (Hemingway). He and Mary lived in Heiss House in Ketchum (Bellevance). There was no publicity there to drive him crazy, just good friends and hunting (Hemingway).
During the late 50's and early 60's, Hemingway the gambler, drinker, and hunter was doing great: Hemingway the writer was not ( Hemingway). He was involved in two plane crashes in two days and read his own obituary from one of them. He suffered liver, kidney, and spleen ruptures, a fractured skull, two cracked discs in his back, a paralyzed sphincter muscle due to a compressed vertebrae on his iliac nerve, severe burns to the head, arms, and face, and vision and hearing impairments (Wilson). After this, his mental and physical health started to deteriorate rapidly. He suffered from paranoia and depression, liver and kidney problems due to his drinking, and high blood pressure (Hemingway).
In the winter of 1959, Hemingway and his friends celebrated Taylor Williams's seventy-second birthday. At the party, Hemingway gave a toast to Williams and the twentieth anniversary of their friendship. Two weeks from that day, Taylor Williams died of a sudden illness. Hemingway was a pallbearer at his funeral. He was buried next to Gene Van Gulder, who had died in a shooting accident some years before (Hemingway).
Around 1959-1960, Hemingway's rapid deterioration became noticeable to friends Lloyd and Tilly Arnold. Hemingway went back to Cuba in the summer of 1960. It was to be his last visit. That fall, he went back to Ketchum. On November 30, 1969, he checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He saw a psychiatrist for his depression and paranoia. They treated it with the then popular method of electroshock therapy. It seemed to be helping, but it caused horrible memory loss. Without his memory, Hemingway couldn't continue to write well. He saw a specialist for his high blood pressure and liver and kidney problems due to his intense drinking. When he went back to Ketchum, Lloyd noticed major changes in Hemingway. He was thin, reclusive and unusually quiet (Hemingway).
In March of 1961, he seemed to be doing better. Lloyd ran into him and his doctor on Rudd Mountain one weekend. He seemed tired and sad, but enjoyed watching the skiers slalom down the mountainside. This was the best they would see Hemingway for a long time. His condition worsened through that spring (Hemingway).
On April 21, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the Bay of Pigs had taken place. The U.S. and Cuba were officially at war (Hemingway). Hemingway couldn't return to his Finca Vigia , or "Lookout Farm" (Wilson). It was also on this day he first attempted suicide (Hemingway), just like his father had in December of 1928 (Wilson).
On April 25, 1961, he went to Rochester and checked back into the Mayo Clinic. He was severely depressed because he couldn't write any more, due to his extensive memory loss, as he wrote most of his novels and short stories based on his own exciting life experiences (Wilson). He felt that since he couldn't do the one thing he was put on this planet to do, there was no reason for him to be here anymore (Hemingway).
In the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway loaded a double-barreled shotgun and took his life (Hemingway ). He was buried in Ketchum Cemetery on July 6, 1961 (Bellevance). The funeral was limited to family and close friends. His casket was carried by five of his close hunting friends and his former boxing coach. His body is there today alongside his wife Mary, Gene Van Gulder, Taylor Williams, and Lloyd Arnold (Hemingway).
Some of Hemingway's greatest works were written while he was in Idaho. In the fall of 1939, Hemingway finished For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was written in Suite 206, also dubbed the "Glamour House" and had a temporary bar and bookshelf installed just for him, at the Sun Valley Lodge (Wilson). Many acclaim the book as his best work. Now that he is gone, it is a sort of shrine for Hemingway fans. During the "Cuban Years," Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea. He hadn't written anything prior to that for fifteen years. It put him back on top of the writing game and won him a Nobel Prize (Hemingway). Some of his other most famous works not written in Idaho include The Sun Also Rises, written in 1926, A Farewell To Arms , written in 1929, The Snows of Kilamanjaro, and his memoirs, heavily edited and published in 1964 after his death (Wilson).
Many believe it was Hemingway's unique writing style that made him famous. Hemingway himself described it as the "iceberg method" (Wilson). About 1/8 of an iceberg is actually visible above water while 7/8 is below water. On the surface, his writing seems simple, but 7/8 of the story is under the simple surface.
Hemingway loved and protected two places in his life; Idaho and his hometown of Oak Park (Hemingway). He never wrote about them (Hemingway ), but kept them a secret treasure for himself and the four generations of Hemingways who have lived there after him (Wilson). Whether because he loved these two places so much he didn't want them to change because of publicity, or because he was a selfish man and wanted them for himself, no one will ever know. Hemingway could have let his fame take him anywhere, but he chose Idaho.
II. Works Cited
Bellevance, Marsha. Hemingway in Sun Valley. 27 April 2001.
Curtis, Mark. "A Moveable Feast: Travel and Adventure in Ketchum, Idaho. 27 April 2001.
http://www.usplanb.com/hemingway.cfm
Hemingway in the Autumn. Dir. David Butterfield. Narr. Carolyn Holly. Silver Creek Outfitters. 1993.
Wilson, M. Biography: The Hemingway Resource Center. 23 October 2000.
This essay was submitted by a student of Joanne Davis, an English teacher at Emmett High School in Idaho.