|
His was a strict
and orthodox family. Sunday was not a day of enjoyment in the family, but a day
to be spent in church and in remembering God. No disobedience was tolerated in
the Hemingway household and any sort of misbehavior was remedied by a sound
thrashing from either of the parents. Each parent had a hand in molding their
children, with Ed Hemingway teaching them a love for nature, using weaponry and
fishing and their mother inculcating in them a love for the arts. It was little
wonder then that Earnest turned out such an exceptional person. On his twelfth
birthday, his father, who insisted that all his children learned to handle
weapons and tackle from an early age, presented him with a single barrel
shotgun. He had a happy and normal childhood, spending his summers at Bear Lake
and his winters in Chicago. Since he was a child, he liked to make up stories in
which he was invariably the hero. He grew up into a well-rounded young man who
loved to be scrupulous and courageous.
He did his
schooling at the Oak Park and River Forest Township High School. He was always
good at English but showed little inclination for other subjects. While in
school he started writing for the school newspaper. Later on his work was
considered as some of the most important work of the twentieth century. A lot of
his work draws inspiration from his real life experiences. He was an ambulance
driver in Italy in the First World War in 1914. Later he was transferred to the
Italian infantry where he was grievously wounded. He was a correspondent with a
Spanish newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. In World War II he was a
correspondent and then a reporter. After the war he settled down in Havana, Cuba
and moved to Ketchum, Idaho in 1958.
Hemington first
became famous when at the age of 25 he wrote his first book ‘The Sun Also
Rises’, where he wrote about American expatriates in Paris. In his book ‘For Whom
The Bell Tolls’ he wrote about the Spanish War. His other books include ‘In Our
Time', ‘Men Without Women’, ‘A Farewell To Arms’, ‘The Old Man And The
Sea’, ‘Death In The Afternoon’ and ‘Green Hills Of Africa’.
He lived a lavish
life and kept a number of homes in various countries, where he entertained a
great deal. He began drinking heavily and was in a perpetual state of
drunkenness. He had a close brush with death many times and escaped narrowly
only to finally commit suicide by shooting himself with a shotgun. Even today
his short stories and novels are enjoyed and read by many people and he has a
large following of admirers.
|
