Ученый XXI века • ISSN 2410-3586 • 2022 • № 10 (91)

THE LITERARY STYLE OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY

G. Toshova1, N. Aminova2
The article studies the distinctive features of literary style of Ernest Hemingway
and analyzes a significant impact of the writer’s eventful life on his writing style. Some
peculiarities of his fiction are discussed on the base of the writer’s most outstanding
short stories and novels in the paper as well. Ernest Hemingway’s invention in the mod-
ern American literature “the iceberg theory” is discussed including some thoughts of
the literary critic Jackson Benson.

Key words: style, Western literature, masculine style, fiction, the iceberg theory,
chronological order, First World War, artistic interpretation, ideological, minimalist.

Ernest Hemingway, the great American writer of the 20th century, plays an
incomparable role with his remarkable contribution to the Western literature. Among
many great American writers, Hemingway is known for his objective and concise prose
style. Like all of Hemingway's novels, published during his lifetime, “The Old Man and
the Sea” generally reflects his unique writing style. Hemingway's style is related to his
experience as a journalist. The influence of his style is important in world literature.
Although it has been almost forty years since Hemingway's death, the writer still
attracts the attention of readers. The public is still interested in the personal life of the
writer. As before, thousands of artists are still imitating Hemingway. Among these
imitators, there are serious and moderate ones. Many famous literary critics of the USA
still feel the influence of Hemingway's work. Hemingway emphasized the importance
of writing the truth in fiction so much that, as a result, literary criticism led to the
recognition of writing the truth as the main principle of the writer. But he was
interested not only in the interpretation of specific events, but also in the writer's task
of conveying the "original emotion" of actions. In the book "Death after a Dream" he
recalls his struggle with the artisans of the early 1920s: "At that time, when I was trying
to write, I realized something. The biggest challenge is actually expressing what the real
things are, what actually happened, that caused that emotion you felt."
Throughout his life, the writer has experimented with the elements of reality and
has emphasized this many times in his interviews. In the introduction to "Men at War"
he expressed his final conclusion about the truth of the writer:
"A writer's job is to tell the truth. His devotion to the truth should be so strong
that his creations based on his experience should not represent possible probabilities,
but should reflect believable events.
His strong desire to express the truth was undoubtedly the result of the
restrictions imposed after the First World War.
Because of his themes and styles, Hemingway has always been known as a writer
who exhibited a "masculine" style. His time in the army, as well as his dissatisfaction
with the institutions and modern conventions of his time, are believed to have
prompted him to take frequent breaks. Thus he began to create more digestible
literature. By creating simpler and more concise texts, he achieved deep penetration
into the heart of the reader. Simple and short artistic interpretation was an important
aspect of Hemingway's unique writing style, which started writing stories.
As a writer, he decided to focus on popular topics that could be relevant to
readers' lives. In his work, we can observe the interpretation of themes such as love,
loss, nature, and war as the main ideological and artistic principle. His works reflect a
part of the writer's life. Every stage of his life, which was full of changes before and after
the First World War, was rewritten in his stories. His positive and negative
relationships with each of his relatives are embodied in the characters of his stories.

1
Toshova Gulhayo – master student, SamSIFL.
2
Aminova Nargiza – senior teacher, SamSIFL.

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It was no accident that Ernest Hemingway became famous as one of the most
influential writers of the 20th century. He devoted his whole life to his profession,
developed his skills over the years without expecting anything in return.
Hemingway was recognized as a very open and clear, purposeful writer.
Although he was born in America, he was an artist whose talent penetrated the fields of
the whole world. Hemingway was known for creating novels that followed a
chronological order, which some literary critics considered boring and characteristic of
American writers. The writer made general conclusions only in a few stories, but
chronology was very important to his work.
The iceberg theory (sometimes known as the "drop-in theory") is actually a
writing style created by Ernest Hemingway and is associated with the author's youth as
a journalist. When he worked as a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus mainly on
urgent events with short text or commentary in newspaper reports. Even when he
became a short story writer, he maintained this minimalist style and focused on
external visual elements. Hemingway believed that the deep meaning of the story
should not be visible on the surface, but should shine indirectly.
Critics such as Jackson Benson say that the iceberg theory, along with the unique
clarity of Hemingway's writing style, served to distance the characters he created from
himself, to make him unrecognizable.
He was a master of forcing the reader to read between the lines, whether he
wanted to or not. In "Death in a Dream" he noted:
"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is saying, he can leave out some
things he already knows, and the reader can feel those things as strongly as if the writer
had written the truth. The value of the iceberg method is due to the fact that one eighth
of it is located on water. A writer who leaves something down without explaining or
expressing it because he doesn't know, only loses the value of his work."
Hemingway encouraged the reader to observe through the iceberg method. He
hid the real truth, the original meaning in the core of his simple and fluent and short
texts. He tried to convey the hidden truth to the reader through simple expressions and
realistic artistic images.
Hemingway became the most famous serious writer of the 20th century.
Although in the early stages of his career, his books were rarely praised by critics or
scholars, they continued to sell year after year.
The life and character of the writer known as Father Hemingway (Papa
Hemingway) is better known than his writings. Hemingway's life was full of bullfights,
hunting and fishing, facing war and death, serving in the Italian Army in World War I,
reporting on the Spanish Civil War, and covering the Nazis in the Caribbean during
World War II. he was full of dangers and adventures, such as chasing his boats.
His style is simple and evocative, every word written as if carved in stone. Yet his
prose is most delicately and beautifully expressed, and often has the power to transport
the reader fully into the place and condition of his characters. Art that hides art. Many
have tried to copy his seemingly simple style, but because of their failures, they have
realized how difficult it is to create the illusion of simplicity.
He became known as the author of short stories, which at first seemed strange
and unexpected to readers, but which today are considered completely natural. His first
collection of short stories, "In Our Time" (1925), published while working as an
international correspondent in Paris, became one of the most popular collections of that
time. His stories in the collection "In Our Time" are now recognized as completely
changing the style of American short story writers.
During his life, Hemingway traveled a lot, travel was the essence of his life, and it
can be felt from the events reflected in all his works. The author acutely experiences
every moment of his life and reflects it on paper, in his novels. In each of his works, we
find him, Ernest Hemingway: a desperate and adventurous traveler, a skilled hunter, a
bullfighter, a freedom fighter, a writer or a lover of life. All of Hemingway's characters,
like the writer himself, want to live a full life and devote themselves to it. He loved life
and loved people, meeting strangers.
Hemingway saw boxers and matadors (bullfighters), professional hunters and
fishermen, views of Paris and Madrid at night, hunting bulls in Pamplona, hunting lions
and leopards of the majestic Kilimanjaro, and hunting ocean predators, not from other

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people's mouths, but for himself. -relying on what he has forgiven, portrays it naturally
and truthfully. He almost always personally witnessed what he described during his life.
Hemingway's characteristic ways of pointing and keeping silent are colorful. In
his style, we can observe a hidden warning about the possibility of the appearance of a
new character, reminders about the further development of events that disturb the
silence, and even simple arithmetical problems that the author offers the reader to solve
together with the hero.

References:

1. Hemingway E. In Our Time. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1925. - 156
2. Hemingway E. Selected Stories. M., 1971. - 398 с.
3. Грибанова Б. Хемингуэй в воспоминаниях современников. М., 1994. - 542 с.
4. Добин Е.С. Искусство детали: сюжет и действительность. Л.,1981. - 432 с.
5. Засурский Я.Н. Американская литература ХХ века. М., 1984. - 440 с.
6. Засурский Я.H. Хемингуэй и журналистика // Хемингуэй Э. Репортажи. M., 1969.
- C.72-74.

© G. Toshova, N. Aminova, 2022.

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