Hemingway Pop Quiz

Choose the correct letter

(A, B, C, or D)

$ 100

Since the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway liked to be called…

A: Kiddo B: Papa

C: Granpa D: Bro‘

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Hemingway Look-alike Contest

$ 200

In the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway quotes his mentor Gertrude Stein saying: »You are all …«

A: a beaten generation

B: a lost generation

C: a generation x D: fruitcakes

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)Modernist/realist Novelist

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)Modernist poet

Gertrude Stein

(1874-1946)Modernist writer, coined the term “Lost Generation”

LOST GENERATION

Loss of values (as a result of the disillusionment after WW I)

Sense of feeling lost (loss of orientation)

Generation of authors writing after World War I (Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound)

The Great Gatsby, 1925

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning ---”

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Plot in a nutshell:In the summer of 1922, the narrator Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran, returns to New York City and rents a house on Long Island - next to the mansion of a mysterious parvenu named Jay Gatsby who has made a fortune through illegal activities during the Prohibition Era and is still in love with Daisy, the wife of his archrival Tom Buchanan. Believed to be the murderer of Tom’s mistress, Gatsby is finally shot in his villa; only few people attend the funeral.

Ending:

Main themes?The American Dream(Gatsby is a ‘self-made man’ who makes it from rags to riches)

Illusions(Gatsby’s world is a world of lies and surfaces)

What could the “green light” stand for?

Greenback (U.S. dollar) the world of money

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

MODERNISM

“Make it new” (E. Pound)

‘Modern’ world view (personality, individuality, self-empowerment)

Literary movement (ca. 1900 – 1940s)

Experimental ways of representation (non-linear storytelling, play with perspectives)

“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” (G. Stein)

Alienation from established values

Hemingway – threshold between realism/naturalism and modernism

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

$ 300

A collection of short stories by Hemingway from 1927 is called…

A: Men without Women

B: Women without Men

C: Men and Women

D: Man or Woman?

Men without Women (1927)

Collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway

$ 500

In a 1958 interview, Hemingway told a reporter: »I always try to write on the principle of the…«

A: iceberg B: earthquake

C: tsunami D: volcano

“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg ... It is the part that doesn't show.”

Ernest Hemingway, 1958

The Iceberg Principle

For sale:

Ernest Hemingway‘s “Best Piece of Prose Fiction”:

Baby shoes,

never worn.

Flush fiction (short short fiction)

For sale:

Hemingway is a modernist since he …

Baby shoes,never

worn.

- plays with our expectations

- challenges the reader in his/her imagination

Hemingway is a naturalist since he …

- restricts his writing to the most necessary aspects

- emphasizes loss of control instead of agency (characters are ‘driven’)

Hemingway’s ‘Naturalism’

- Tradition of Stephen Crane (Maggie, “The Open Boat,” The Red Badge of Courage)

- Harsh, ‘cruel’ realism, portrayal of ‘real life’ without embellishment (journalistic style)

- Hemingway was a reporter for The Kansas City Star and later for various magazines during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

Main techniques & themes:

- Understatement (focus on ‘facts,’ not on direct emotions)

- Determinism (in contrast to the notion of free will)

- Detachment from the depicted events (nameless characters)

“The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building.”

“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway

(from Men without Women, 1927)

Plot in a nutshell:

The story takes place on a hot and dry day near a train station in the Ebro River Valley in Spain. A man (‘The American’) and his female companion (whom he calls ‘Jig’) have a long conversation apparently circling around the woman’s pregnancy and a scheduled abortion.

Beginning:

Main Themes

Characters are designed as archetypes (“the American” / “the girl”)

Notion of being “driven” (the man tells the girl, “I’ve known lots of people that have done it”) – underlying theme of abortion

Indifference and lack of free will (The girl says, “I don’t care about me”)

Style

Short sentences / concise dialogue (many aspects remain hidden in the narrative gaps / “iceberg technique”)

Focus on the unusual details of an incident ( journalistic mode of narration)

sense of distance

notion of universality

$ 1,000

Hemingway was born on the outskirts of…

A: New Orleans B: Los Angeles

C: New York D: Chicago

$ 2,000

During World War I, Hemingway served as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in…

A: France B: Austria

C: Germany D: Italy

A Farewell to Arms (1929)(Semi-autobiographical novel about an

American serving in the Italian Army)

$ 4,000

Hemingway never…

A: actively fought in war B: drank a lot

C: went on a hunting trip

D: smoked heavily

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) (Romantic novel about the Spanish Civil War)

Hemingway was a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and actively fought against the Fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco.

Participation in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

Robert Jordan, a young American, fights in the Spanish Civil War for the “International Brigades.” He joins a group of Republican guerilla fighters in the Sierra de Guadarrama (a mountain range between Madrid and Segovia), where he meets the cowardish Pablo, his tough wife Pilar, and the beautiful María who was raped by the fascists and with whom Robert falls in love. When he becomes wounded, in his attempt to blow up a bridge, Robert tells his friends to continue their escape, while he, already dying, lies in an ambush waiting for their pursuers.

Plot in a nutshell:

For Whom the Bell Tolls(dir. Sam Wood, 1943,

based on the 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDeLqYypw8

$ 8,000

In 1931, he moved to…

A: Sydney, Australia

B: Nuremberg, Germany

C: Key West, Florida

D: Johannesburg, South

Africa

Key West, Florida

$ 16,000

»All modern literature«, Hemingway once said, »comes from one book, …«

A: Jack London‘s The Sea-Wolf B: James Fenimore Cooper‘s

The Prairie

C: Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s The Scarlet Letter

D: Mark Twain‘s Huckleberry Finn

$ 32,000

Hemingway‘s autobiography of his years in France is named…

A: Diner B: La Grand Bouffe

C: Dolce Vita D: A Moveable Feast

Art Circle (Gertrude Stein taking care of Hemingway‘s son)

Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris, 2010)

Paris in the 1920s (Hemingway fictionalized his years in Paris in his novel The Sun Also Rises, 1926)

$ 64,000

At the end of the movie Se7en, Morgan Freeman quotes the lines »world, fine, place« from Hemingway‘s novel …

A: The Sun Also Rises B: For Whom the Bell Tolls

C: A Farewell to Arms D: The Old Man and the Sea

$ 125,000

Next to a photograph of 2-year old Ernest Hemingway, his mother wrote …

A: »spring child« B: »summer girl«

C: »autumn boy« D: »winter kid«

$ 250,000

Which name did Hemingway give to his boat?

A: Anselmo B: Primitivo

C: Maria D: Pilar

$ 500,000

With which author did Hemingway break up friendship in 1937, despite all warnings?

A: Scott Fitzgerald B: William Faulkner

C: John Dos Passos D: Ezra Pound

$ 1,000,000

Who committed suicide with an old Civil War pistol?

A: Hemingway‘s father B: Hemingway‘s hero Robert Jordan

C: Hemingway‘s second wife Pauline Pfeiffer

D: Hemingway himself

Death as Constant Presence in Hemingway’s Life and

Writings

“It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.”

“The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway

(Cosmopolitan magazine, Sept. 1936)

Plot in a nutshell:

Francis Macomber and his estranged wife Margot are on a big-game safari in the African plain, together with their guide Robert Wilson, who has a one-night stand with Macomber’s wife. Tortured by his own cowardice in the face of a wounded lion (from which he ran away), Macomber decides to play it ‘tough’ next time during a buffalo hunt, but is shot by his own wife while standing in front of the wounded animal.

Beginning:

tense atmosphere shadow of Macomber’s ‘emasculation’

“The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway

(Cosmopolitan magazine, Sept. 1936)

Main themes?

Masculinity vs. Femininity(Francis oscillates between ‘cowardice’ and ‘courage’)

Gender

Power struggle between men and women(as Francis becomes more courageous, Margot gets more

nervous)

Race

‘Sameness’ vs. ‘otherness’(all main characters are white

setting of Africa as terra incognita)

Class

Upper class vs. lower class(Francis and his wife are rich, the African laborers are poor)

Important works by Hemingway

In Our Time (1925) (first collection of short stories which established the “Hemingway style”)

Death in the Afternoon (1932) (non-fictional work about Spanish bullfighting)

The Old Man and the Sea (1952) (nobel-prize winning novel)

The Sun Also Rises (1926) (novel about American expatriates living in Paris)

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)by Ernest Hemingway

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Man cannot win the battle against nature, but has to keep his dignity (“grace under pressure”)

Other ‘Modernist’ Writers

• John Dos Passos (1896-1970) especially Manhattan Transfer (1925) (on the desperation of immigrants in New York)

• William Faulkner (1897-1962)especially The Sound and the Fury (1929)

and Light in August (1932) (on the abysses of American society in the South)

Typical features: - Harsh portrayal of social reality (no embellishment, claim to authenticity) - Characters are controlled by external forces or fate (determinism) - Many different perspectives (even that of a mentally handicapped person)