Essay Database

Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words; they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. Take the following passage: We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were …

…resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. The rhythm, the repetition, have us reeling with Henry. Thus, Hemingway's prose is in fact an instrument finely tuned to reflect his characters and their world. As we read A Farewell to Arms, we must try to underezd the thoughts and feelings Hemingway seeks to inspire in us by the way he uses language.