Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1899. During WW1, he spent time as an ambulance driver for the Italian army but sustained injuries that forced him to take leave. He had a total of 4 wives and 3 kids. He passed away on July 2, 1961 by shotgun blast to the head in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prize in 1954.
In the latter works of Ernest Hemingway a consistent theme of alcoholism appear in his writing. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway created characters in this novel that relate to his heavy drinking habits and apparently Hemingway’s depression and suicidal thoughts may have been caused by CTE, a disease that is caused by too many blows to the head. Recently “ according to an American forensic psychiatrist” Hemingway suffered from bipolar disorder and depression.
It was visibly seen that Hemingway’s writing had changed and this may come from him experiencing 9 concussions throughout a period of several years. Some of these occurred from a shell dropping near him in WW2, an accident, a boating accident along with various other strange occurrences. Hemingway did have the best medicine and doctors available at the time but he was falsely diagnosed.
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He did go through with multiple sets of electroconvulsive therapy. During Hemingway’s age CTE was not vastly known about or even thought of. Although Hemingway showed symptoms of CTE, his brain was not available to study due to the shotgun blast that pretty much destroyed any chance of examination. The literary era that Hemingway was apart of and help made popular was the Lost Generation, this era came upon post-WW1.
Some of the other authors who were apart of this were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hart Crane and others. Hemingway used many of his life experiences into his own novels, the author would bring a new way of writing novels with his characters given such deep thought and speech. Hemingway’s biggest inspiration came from his own life, he was influenced to write “The Sun Also Rises”, by his trip to Spain. It is known that most of the characters he created were based on real life people.
When reading the novel “The Sun Also Rises”, I felt as if I had known this characters much longer than I did, along with feeling their emotion when they spoke. The way Hemingway wrote influenced many writers, one of the bigger ones being J.D. Salinger. Hemingway was a very heavy drinker and was known to not known for not knowing to stop. While he very casually drank, he never wrote under the influence of alcohol.
The characters he created in his novels often drank the same as he would. Hemingway’s favorite drink was the dry martini, which is seen as a timeless drink. The great author would often be seen finishing a whole bottle of rum during the way while also pouring himself martinis. Much like the characters created for The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway was a heavy drinker, who was known to drink anything and drink all day. When Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho it left so many thinking why and what happened that caused him to do such a thing.
He was called the writer of the century and admired by so many due to his works. He was a Nobel and Pulitzer prize award winner, so many nice homes and good people around him yet he chose to take his own life one day. While no one truly knew why he did it, it was speculated that it was due to mental health issues that he had been struggling with over time. During his life he suffered malaria, skin cancer, high blood pressure, this man certainly faced many tough situations in his life that took both a mental and physical toll on his body.
It almost seemed as he cheated death many times before, whether it be in WW2, two separate plane crashes and many odd accidents. He was always in pain and that also might be a cause for his heavy drinking habits that he struggled with. Hemingway also suffered from hemochromatosis, which is when the body has too much iron and leads to pain in the joints and organs. This disease is usually hereditary so it may have been passed down to him from his mother or father.
Hemingway’s father, sister, brother, grandfather and granddaughter also committed suicide. He became paranoid in his later years that the FBI was watching him due to things that he did in his past. The great author could no longer write efficiently, which pained him due to his lifelong passion not being able to do anymore. Hemingway became such a threat to his own life, he had to always be monitored by someone, while coming from a hospital and entering his house he rushed to get a gun but was stopped a friend who had to restrain him from doing anything drastic.
While boarding a plane he attempted to kill himself by walking into a propeller. While on the plane he tried to jump twice but was unsuccessful. After only a day upon returning from the hospital, Hemingway killed himself from shotgun blast to the head. He was visibly sick before deciding upon suicide so it was what he clearly wanted. The neighbors in the area that witnessed the tragedy said that he wore his emperor like gown. His wife stated that it was all an accident that happened while routinely just trying to clean his gun.
In the later months, Mary who was Hemingway’s life during his last years admitted that it was suicide instead of an accident. Hemingway was not just an author, he was very adventurous along with a giant personality whom everyone gravitated toward. It was in Paris that he began to have his name known. He married his first wife Hadley along with his son being born who was named John. Hemingway then became intrigued by the sport of bullfighting, seeing it as an art of killing. He traveled to Spain during their civil war where he would become a writer for the North American Newspaper Alliance.
This was where he would meet his newest love interest, Martha Gelhorn. He enjoyed his time and even made a movie. It was in 1928, when Hemingway had received the sad news that his father had killed himself. This was the first event in his life that began to take a mental toll on him. The author truly went through a string of very odd and strange accident that could have easily taken his life. It seemed as if he had cheated death so many times and now fate wanted to get even with him.
After surviving a plane crash, he was left with a fractured skull, grave overall concussion that caused temporary vision loss and deafness is his left ear along with various other injuries. He would act like a type of superhuman man whenever a situation went wrong. This man was truly crazy and it seemed as if he did not care whether or not he died. Hemingway had sustained so many injuries and diseases during his lifetime, it’s crazy to think that he survived to the age of 62 with all of the accidents that he endured over the course of his life.
The constant theme that consistently appeared in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, that I had noticed besides heavy alcoholism was hatred and betrayal. In the novel, the character Brett continues to have relations with multiple amounts of men. The character Cohn betrays his friends by choosing to follow Brett instead of staying with his friends. The last theme I noticed, while it may have been a lesser one, was music. It would constantly be mentioned whenever the novel’s characters decided to go out. The music would set the tone for the scene by giving us the feeling of being there.
Whenever the character Jake would head out to a restaurant or a club, music would be playing in the background. “Inside it was crowded, smoky, and noisy. The music hit you as you went in. Brett and I danced, It was so crowded we could barely move…” (page. 69). The characters would heavily drink throughout the novel while in a time of stress or just looking for fun. Often a character would heavily drink and cause problems among the group.
“I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.” (3.25) Whether it be Jake or someone else, whenever one of the novel’s characters drank it led to trouble. Drinking would always lead to something destructive instead of creative. When Robert Cohn, who learned how to box when he was younger, gets drunk and finds his love interest Brett in bed with a bullfighter named Romero, he beats him up so bad that Brett had to take care of him. This leaves Robert in a state of shame.
In Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Space” the theme of struggling with despair can be heavily related to the way Hemingway felt as he began to get older. Much like the old man in the story, Hemingway’s only way of battling with his inner problems was trying to drink them away. This character who was never given a name, seemed like a form of foreshadowing in way that seem frightening.
Hemingway was only 34 when this work was published but upon reading this it almost seems as he would know how much his life would take a downward spiral in the later years. Just like the old man in the story, Hemingway had money, failed marriages along with failed attempts of suicide. Creating this character almost looked as if Hemingway had seen a sneak peek of his future, making this character that struggled with despair along wit trying to drink away pain.
Although the great and profound author was praised by so many, he struggled with so much. Whether it be his constant drinking, strange accidents, failed marriages, depression or even symptoms of CTE, he always wanted to write magnificent works that stuck with the reader. When that ability was taken away due to his age and various injuries, he lost his greatest gift and passion that kept him going. His depression greatened in the last months before his suicide, the physical and mental toll on his body could be seen easily. Hemingway was clearly sick and this is what led to cause him to take his own life.
References
- Biography.com – Ernest Hemingway
- The New York Times – Ernest Hemingway
- Nobel Prize – Ernest Hemingway
- Pulitzer Prize – Ernest Hemingway
- Psychiatry Online – Bipolar Disorder
- Mayo Clinic – Concussion
- NCBI – Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)
- UCSD.edu – The Life and Writing of Ernest Hemingway: Closely Watched Trains in Havana
