Critical Themes in the Writings of Hemingway: Life & Death, Fishing, War, Sex, Bullfighting, and the Mediterranean Region Hemingway brought a tremendous deal of what is middle class Americanism into literature, without very many people recognizing what he has done. He had nothing short of a writers mind; a mind like a vacuum cleaner that swept his life experiences clean, picking up any little thing, technique, or possible subject that might be of use (Astro 3). From the beginning, Hemingway had made a careful and conscientious formula for the art of the novel (Hoffman 142).This preconceived formula contained certain themes that recur with great frequency and power throughout Hemingways writings. Such themes include an obsessive fascination with life and death, an interest in fishing, war, bullfighting, a strange perception of sex and an unusual fixation on the Mediterranean region. In Hemingways writings, the symbols are implicit; they follow the laws of reality to such a degree that in themselves they form a whole story (Wilson 2).Hemingways heros battles consist of conquering dread, a dread which is connected with earlier experiences, and which appears as a fear of life or death. These two elements, life and death, seem to take two opposite forms, but in reality they are the same. Life ends with death, because death is a constituent part of life, therefore life includes death (Scott 24). If you follow the main lines through Hemingways writings, you will very easily discover that everything deals with a sick, mortally wounded mans fight to overcome the dread arising from his meeting with life (Young 21).In Hemingways world, death begins in childhood, as described with unsurpassed mastery in the short story Indian Camp. This story tells of young boy, Nick, who is present while his father, the doctor, performs a cesarean section on an Indian woman, without anesthesia, equipped with only a jackknife and fishing leaders to sew the ...
