Ernest Hemingway Middle-Class Masculinity
Ernest Hemingway: The Importance of Middle-Class Masculinity
Ernest Hemingway is a legendary writer who was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He was the second of Clarence and Grace Hemingway's six children. He was raised in a strict Protestant community that tried as hard as possible to be separate themselves from the big city of Chicago, though they were very close geographically. While growing up, the young Hemingway spent lots of his time hunting and fishing with his father, and learned about the ways of music with his mother. He attended school in the Oak Park Public School system and in high school, Hemingway played sports and wrote for the school newspaper.
Ernest Hemingway has received several awards for his work such as the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, the Prize for Fiction for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, and The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style (The Life and Work of Ernest Hemingway in Oak Park). He is acclaimed as being the most influential writer of our time, "the most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare" according to John O'Hara. Yet recently, his works have come under heavy fire for their blatant use of homophobia, androgyny, and misogyny. Rumors are spewed from critic to critic about his mysterious sexuality. Different sources claim different interpretations of his simple, yet complex stories. While others claim that to believe Hemingway purposefully used androgyny, misogyny, or homophobia is ludicrous, I believe the opposite. Hemingway's homophobia, which was shaped by his early life experiences and American society, is evident in many of his works such as "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" and The Sun Also Rises.
There may be two main reasons as to...
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