Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 — July 2, 1961) was born in Oak Park, Illinois.

Hemingway won many awards in his life. He was awarded the silver medal for bravery during the first world war; In 1953, he won the Pulitzer Prize for “the Old Man and the Sea.” This book won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. In 2001, Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and “a Farewell to Arms” were listed by The American Modern Library as one of “The 100 Best English-Language Novels of The 20th Century.”

Hemingway committed suicide with a shotgun at his home in Idaho on July 2, 1961. He was 62 years old.

Hemingway, who had been married four times in his life, was a representative of the “Lost Generation” writers in the United States. He showed his confusion and hesitation about life, the world, and society in his works. He has always been known as a tough man in the literary world. He is a spiritual monument of the American nation.

Hemingway’s usage of language has the characteristics of no redundancy, easy style, simple sentences, and plain words. He often constructs single sentences with basic words as the center, and seldom relies on adjectives and adverbs to express thoughts. In chapter 26 of “A Farewell to Arms,” a conversation about the war between Henry and the vicar is concise and perspicuous. The absence of flashy modifiers gives the reader a strong sense of people’s aversion to war. In the novel “The Killer”, many succinct phrases are used, and the plot is developed in the form of colloquial dialogue. Hemingway avoids unnecessary explanations and complicated background twists which allow the readers to directly interact with the characters and be immersed in the plotline.

-Coreen C. 

The works of Ernest Hemingway are available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. They can also be downloaded from Overdrive.