Summary+Pages+Alex

Summary of the first Article (from page 349 to 403) NICE JOB WITH THE START. SUCH A LONG ARTICLE WOULD BE HARD TO SUMMARIZE IN THE BEGINNING. NEED MORE DETAILS WITH THE SECOND PART (SOMETHING SURPRISING). ALSO, MAYBE SOME OF YOUR OWN ANALYSIS BASED ON THIS. 8/10 FOR THIS FIRST ATTEMPT. __Summary 2: 10/10 -- We'll be discussing modernism in class. It IS really interesting how so many different fields interconnect. Summary 3:10/10__

Before discussing Ernest Hemingway’s literary career that spans over five decades, it is necessary to mention the impact of his life on his works. Hemingway grew up in upper Michigan, in rural areas. He was mostly influenced by his mother Grace Hemingway. While growing up, Ernest and his sister Marcelline had to wear dresses until age four or five because according to Grace, she wanted Ernest and Marcelline to be like twins, even though Marcelline was 18 months ahead of Ernest. Also, even after kindergarten, Ernest and Marcelline wore overalls with long, girl hairstyle. This definitely influenced Ernest’s viewpoint towards sex, causing confusion and anxiety in his mind throughout his life. After this, Hemingway wrote articles for a local magazine until he went off to World War I to serve as a hospital volunteer. Yet, he never fought directly, and only after few months, he was injured from bomb explosion, which left him crippled for a while. Nevertheless, Hemingway was influenced by these experiences, which he drew upon to create his stories. Many people know Hemingway to be a misogynist, who often drew female characters as flat, passive, and in negative ways. However, Hemingway, in reality, had complex reason behind his acting, due to his problem with defining his sexual identity during his childhood. This problem is explicitly addressed in Hemingway’s novel __The Garden of Eden__, where the main character contemplates about sex change. Agree/Disagree I agree with the critic’s notion that his mother influenced Hemingway because when one experiences something unusual or negative as a youngster, it hardly goes away forever. However, I disagree on the criticism that Hemingway was a liar about World War I because he still saw firsthand the experience of soldiers in World War I.

Work Cited Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. //Seven Decades of Criticism Seven Decades of Criticism//. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998. //Questia//. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.

2nd Summary p.23-31 In order to understand what Hemingway's work contains, modernism should be discussed. Modernism is the movement that prevailed from 1914 to 1939, between two World Wars. During this period, many works were produced that contained unusual ideas and themes, definitely different from the Victorian and Edwardian Period that preceded it. In some ways, modernism is the result of many new, radical ideas that were proposed during 19th and early 20th century. Charles Darwin proposed a biological theory that humans, rather than being the center of divinely created universe, were nothing more than a variation of monkeys. Karl Marx, economist, proposed that humans were controlled by economic forces, which influenced even their beliefs and actions. Finally, Sigmund Freud, famous Austrian psychologist, said that humans couldn't even control their own emotions fully, with subconscious thoughts and mind behind consciousness. If these theories didn't undermine the previous claims to humanity, World War I definitely destroyed it. During World War I, pursuing honor, glory, and fame that were associated with past wars (traditional heroism), young people gladly took up arms to fight in European front. Yet, what they found was the muddy trenches filled with mice, diseases, and poison gases that often killed them in a brutal way by melting their lungs slowly. After the war, young people blamed older people for holding onto defunct glories and notions of the past. Modernist writers responded to such anxiety(from watching past notions being destroyed ruthlessly) by not espousing traditional heroism, where the protagonist solves the conflict and meets definite (happy or tragic) ending with neat resolution. Modernists openly discussed the theme of homosexuality, abortion, and prostitution–unthinkable things to discuss back then. Also, they employed many unusual literary techniques such as stream-of-consciousness, unrhymed verses, and fragmentation. As a result, the modernist movement, in a way, was tied to the widespread social phenomenon.

Surprising I knew about Freud, Darwin, and a little bit about Marx, before reading this article. Yet, this article connected three seemingly dissimilar areas of academics (biology, psychology, economics) and used all three to explain modernism (literary movement), which was really effective because modernism could be drawn and analyzed from view of different areas of academics. Also, I used to hold this view that modernism was mainly about the employment of unusual literary techniques (for example, stream-of-consciousness), but this article taught me that the main focus was the description of destroyed humanity (or loss of innocence?), which is seen in many works. And, I believe that the key trait of modernism is the ambiguous resolution main characters experience. In __A Farewell to Arms__, Frederick Henry's wife dies without glory. And in __Ulysses__, there's no real resolution since Stephen's struggle to be accepted into Irish literary movement is not resolved and Bloom's another struggle to overcome Rudy(his son)'s death is not resolved either.

Agree/Disagree I completely agree with this article about influence of many new scientific theories about humanity and two World Wars on literature. Also, although it may sound reasonable that modernism only caused writers to form sort of an isolated circle with no external influence due to its experimental works, it's not valid because modernism, if we trace its roots, is firmly based on the desires of younger generation to break off from older generation, which is reflected on many ideas that were present during this time, such as radical theories about the nature of atoms being wavelike, jazz music that employed non-conventional techniques, and the so-called the Roaring 20s.

Tyler, Lisa. //Student companion to Ernest Hemingway//. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 2001. Print.

3rd Summary: The strength of Hemingway's writing would be his characteristic short style, where he refrains from decorating the sentence with too much adjectives or nouns. This was a major breakthrough in the American literature because before World War I and Hemingway's generation, almost all of American fictions were written in sweetly sentimental Victorian prose, where characters seem to be more concerned with how they talk, rather than what they talk. By contrast, Hemingway's style was the declarative sentences, one-syllable words, and an emphasis on the concrete details. This must have come from Hemingway's experience as the reporter during his early age because as a reporter to the press, it is necessary to be short and concise, always focusing on what to deliver, not on how to deliver stories with fluency. In many interviews, Hemingway explained why he chose to adopt this style–according to Hemingway, he always wanted to tell the truth. Considering the ugly social events that were going during the early 20th century (wars, industrial revolution's progress and imperialism), Hemingway probably wanted to write to tell the ugly truth behind glorious propagandas that dominated the society during this time. Also, Hemingway practiced the omission, where he always wrote like "the tip of the iceberg", hiding the deeper meaning underneath the water. As a result, many early critics were confused by Hemingway's style, and called his works as being childish and immature. Surprising: What I found the most surprising about this article is that Hemingway's characteristic masculinity was not only influenced by his family, but also by the surrounding environment. As stated in the 1st article, Hemingway's mother was the player behind Ernest Hemingway's sometimes overly-driven masculine identity. Yet, Hemingway was most likely influenced by his career as the reporter at a newspaper company because it helped him to develop his own prose later on. Also, I was surprised by the fact that Hemingway's style, now conceived as one of the greatest styles of writing, was actually condemned as childish by some critics. This was so because Hemingway's writing (minimalism as it became known later) often made critics think him as the dime-novel writer. Agree/Disagree: This article does not take any stance, but rather explains how Hemingway's writing is influenced by his life. I agree with this article's approach, and I think I should write about the close connection between his life (as World War I participant, expatriate in Paris, and Reporter of the newspaper company) and his works.