Hello readers, my name is Latta Baraiya and I'm a student of the department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is part of my thinking activity, assigned by Heenaba Zala ma'am. Today I'm going to discuss Hemingway's writing style in this blog.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style which he termed the iceberg theory had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations.
A great deal has been written about Hemingway's distinctive style. In fact, the two great stylists of twentieth century American literature are William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and the styles of the two writers are so vastly different that there can be no comparison. For example, their styles have become so famous and so individually unique that yearly contests award prizes to people who write the best parodies of their styles. The parodies of Hemingway's writing style are perhaps the more fun to read because of Hemingway's ultimate simplicity and because he so often used the same style and the same themes in much of his work.
Ernest Hemingway is one of the most widely read and well-known authors of the 20th century. His more famous works,
helped cement Hemingway's place among the best writers of his day.
One of the things that sets Hemingway's works apart is the way in which he writes. Ever since his writing career started in the 1920s, Hemingway has been known for his short, straightforward style that is both simplistic and unadorned. His writing style stood out among his peers who were writing at the time in a very flowery, complex way.
Hemingway's style is remarkably similar to the writing style of a journalist, and for good reason. His early background included journalistic training, a style of writing that relies heavily on presenting the facts in a crisp and clear way and allowing dialogue or conversations to shine through, and a stint at the newspaper, Kansas City Star. In short, Hemingway wrote the way people really talked or experienced things, rather than embellishing them for a more ornate style of prose. The author himself once said that a writer's style should be direct and personal with wording that is simple and vigorous.
Hemingway's writing style is sometimes referred to as the iceberg theory. The general idea of the iceberg theory is that a writer should focus on a minimalistic style without explicitly stating the underlying issues or themes. Essentially, the importance of a story lies beneath the surface and cannot be directly seen. This is like an iceberg in that you may notice a small portion of the ice above the water line, but cannot see the larger structure beneath.
Basically, a typical Hemingway novel or short story is written in simple, direct, unadorned prose. Possibly, the style developed because of his early journalistic training. The reality, however, is this: Before Hemingway began publishing his short stories and sketches, American writers affected British mannerisms. Adjectives piled on top of one another; adverbs tripped over each other. Colons clogged the flow of even short paragraphs, and the plethora of semicolons often caused readers to throw up their hands in exasperation. And then came Hemingway.
Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialogue, in story after story, novel after novel, readers and critics have remarked,
"This is the way that these characters would really talk."
Yet, a close examination of his dialogue reveals that this is rarely the way people really speak. The effect is accomplished, rather, by calculated emphasis and repetition that makes us remember what has been said.
◆Style in "Hills Like White Elephants" :-
Perhaps some of the best of Hemingway's much-celebrated use of dialogue occurs in "Hills Like White Elephants." When the story opens, two characters, a man and a woman, are sitting at a table. We finally learn that the girl's nickname is "Jig." Eventually we learn that they are in the cafe of a train station in Spain. But Hemingway tells us nothing about them or about their past or about their future. There is no description of them. We don't know their ages. We know virtually nothing about them. The only information that we have about them is what we learn from their dialogue, thus this story must be read very carefully.
This spare, carefully honed and polished writing style of Hemingway was by no means spontaneous. When he worked as a journalist, he learned to report facts crisply and succinctly. He was also an obsessive revisionist. It is reported that he wrote and rewrote all, or portions, of The Old Man and the Sea more than two hundred times before he was ready to release it for publication.
◆Style in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" :-
An excellent example of Hemingway's style is found in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." In this story, there is no maudlin sentimentality; the plot is simple, yet highly complex and difficult. Focusing on an old man and two waiters, Hemingway says as little as possible. He lets the characters speak, and, from them, we discover the inner loneliness of two of the men and the callous prejudices of the other. When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, his writing style was singled out as one of his foremost achievements. The committee recognized his
"forceful and style-making mastery of the art of modern narration."
◆Style in The "Old Man and The Sea" :-
History tells us that Hemingway wrote and revised his most famous novella hundreds of times before it was ready to be published. The day he finished writing, he called his publisher, telling him it was the best work he had ever done. Still, it followed Hemingway's general theory of writing in a number of ways:
First, it is simple. What could be simpler than a story about a fisherman attempting a great catch?
Simplicity is not in the story alone, but also in the way the novella is structured. Short, simple sentences help to make the work a very quick read. When short sentences are not used, Hemingway is fond of using 'and' to connect thoughts together.
For example:
''He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.''
This is the first sentence in Hemingway's book and shows immediately the simplicity with which he plans to tell this story. There is no fancy language or emotion conveyed, just simple facts.
Second, it is direct. Hemingway's style is effective because of the uncomplicated choice of wording he uses in writing his piece. In short, he uses very specific and direct word choice that contributes to his overall style of writing that is direct and unbothered.
Thus we can say that Hemingway took great pains with his work, he revised tirelessly. "A writer's style," he said,
"should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous."
Hemingway more than fulfilled his own requirements for good writing. His words are simple and vigorous, burnished and uniquely brilliant.
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