The Trademarks of a Typical Hemingway and His Style

The Trademarks of a Typical Hemingway and His Style

Ernest Hemingway is one of the greatest stylists of twentieth-century American Literature. His writing style is simple, vigorous, burnished and brilliant. His novels are written to be simple, direct, and with a plain prose. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place truly shows this style. A Farewell to Arms also exhibits the simple, yet complex and tricky plot Hemingway uses in his novels and short stories. Together, these two works of Ernest Hemingway show the characteristics that a classic Hemingway work contains.

There is no ‘maudlin sentimentality’ in A Clean Well-Lighted Place. It is easy to say that the book is about two waiters and an old man in a bar, but when you begin to look into the story is becomes much more than the obvious simple plot. It becomes about a way to escape the nothingness of the night and of life that some experience. Also shown in A Clean Well-Lighted Place is how Hemingway “eliminates the authorial viewpoint and haves the text reproduce the actual experience as closely as possible” (Encarta 2). There are no statements the author uses to tell you what is going on or how to think but rather you create your own views because you know exactly what is happening and how it is happening. Hemingway lets his characters speak for themselves and from them the reader discovers the thoughts, desires and even prejudices that his characters have. This is his “forceful and style-making mastery of the art of modern narration” (Цsterling).

A Farewell to Arms is one of the greatest novels by Hemingway; not the “best written” in a “college composition” way, but in an artistic and literary sense (Dos Passos 89). Hemingway’s style is not to use the proper grammar but rather to do the best to get the point across using expression, imagery and rhetoric. Almost like poetry Hemingway attempts to makes every word maximize impact and efficiency for it is the way the words are placed that will give the reader the effect Hemingway wants (Merrill). Hemingway is a master of dialogue as well. Some feel that the way Hemmingway writes the dialogue is way character talk in real life but when the reader or critic examines the dialogue, he or she will find that people do not talk like this at all. He does this effect through emphasis and repetition that imprints into our minds what is being said instead of how it is being said. This is one of the greatest aspects of the Hemingway writing style. Another unique Hemingway trademark his brief endings which answer some questions and seeming ends the tale but also opens up many more questions and leads to other tales. Such as in the ending of A Farewell To Arms; Catherine dies and he goes home but there are the tales of what he does next, why he did what he did and what happened to the other characters.