The objective of this paper is to analyze and examine, through words, Ernest Hemingway’s style of writing. When it comes to analyzing a literature author’s writing style, the critic can pertain to a lot of things such as, but may not be limited to the choice of words, syntax and sentence structure, rhythm, point of view, emotion, rhetorical strategy, purpose, tone, and the use of figures of speech. Ernest Hemingway is one of the most remarkable American authors. In this paper, evidences from two of his most popular works namely the Hills like White Elephants and A Clean Well-Lighted Place were featured and used as sources of quotes serving as evidence of the author of this paper’s point about his style of writing.
Simplicity and directness are two of the distinguishable hallmarks of Ernest Hemingway’s writings. This can easily be seen and is almost obvious in his two works. Both of which, by the way, are short stories. It can be assumed that his being involved in the short story genre (as opposed to the novel-writing genre) can be another manifestation of these two hallmarks. Another direct evidence of this observation—one which can be noticed from his short stories, would be the sparseness of adjectives in his sentences. In one part of the Hills like White Elephants, he wrote “the girl stood up and walked to the end of the station; across on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro” . In one part of A Clean Well-Lighted Place, he wrote “the old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket, and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip” . It can be easily noticed that both short stories, her strategy was direct and simple.
In both of these works, he used plot and symbolism to make the audience aware that the theme of the story was not to be taken literally; that it was about doubt and ambiguity. His minimalist style when it comes to writing can be seen as a hindrance to his goal of making the audience realize that but so far he was able to pull it through. What makes him able to do it is his use of setting. This is really evident in the Hills like White Elephants and his use of the baby to symbolize a white elephant and the railroad tracks in the setting to symbolize the great divide between the main characters’ personalities; the track basically separated two plots of land that have an opposing level of fertility.
His use of symbolism may also be interpreted as the use of irony. Basically, he also uses elements from the setting to introduce irony. In the case of the railroad tracks again, the irony or rather the polarity between the characters’ personalities were almost perfectly portrayed, even without the use of too much adjectives.
Describing something and delivering a complex message, one that is complex enough to need further analysis to be perfectly understood by the readers can be hard even with the use of adjectives. In Hemingway’s case, however, he does it effortlessly using his hallmark literary style or signature of simplicity and directness.
This talent in manipulating words so effortlessly may have been developed as a result of his many years of experience as a journalist in a newspaper company. He also revealed that he does not just write whatever comes in his head, impulsively like other authors. Instead, he thinks about it first, reorganizes the thoughts in his head, and then proceeds with putting in paper. This is, at least theoretically, why Hemingway makes it appear so easy to create complex dialogues using the simplest of words. That in itself may be considered as an irony.
Works Cited
Hemingway, E. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." (1933): 01-05. Print.
—. "Hills Like White Elephants." St. Martin's (2003): 01-04. Print.
