The Styles of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald - Essay Example

Compare the Styles of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald are all American Cather gained recognition for her stories of frontier life on the Great Plains. Such novels were O Pioneers, The Song of the Lark and My Antonia (Cather 1). Fitzgerald was famously known for his paradigm writings. He was markedly considered as one of the greatest American authors of the XX century. Hemingway, on the other hand, was also a journalist. His economical, as well as understated style, had a strong influence in the XX century creative writing. Hemingway published most of his writings between the 1920s and 1950s. He also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 (Hemingway 3). Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald all have writing styles that are similar, but others differ from their counterparts in one way or another. This paper will compare the similarities as well as the differences between the short stories of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Similarities between the Styles of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald Critics think that the three novels, Paul’s Case, the Hills like White Elephants, and Babylon Revisited, are all magnificent pieces of writing. Furthermore, they state no amount of analysis that could convey the excellence of the three novels during their times. The novels were truly gripping tales told from a hard athletic point of view that put the literature of those days to shame. This is because only a few selected novels could march up to the standards of these three novels. Paul’s Case, the Hills like White Elephants, and Babylon Revisited were all written in spare, tight writing style that influenced countless fiction novels. The books also made their respective authors more famous than before. The three books used contemporary writing styles plus they included masteries of the art of narratives. The three authors’ styles were fundamentally shaped. This was due to their past life experience. Hemingway was mostly thought to have acquired his writing styles from his previous war experience. In his book, The Hills like White Elephants, he uses a lot of dialogue, action as well as suspense to create the joy in reading it (Hemingway 4). These three traits are also dominant in Paul’s Case as well as Babylon Revisited, and they also encompass a lot of fiction and imagery. Researchers believe that the three authors discovered how to acquire the most from the least because of their life experience. The novels, because of their respective authors’ life experiences, were in prune language. The three authors knew how to multiply intensities in their respective novels, and also told nothing but the truth in a manner that permitted people to relate with their reasoning. The three authors used autobiographical facts in their books as framing devices about life in general and not only about their lives. For instance, Hemingway uses his war experience and draws them out using what if scenes in his novel, The Hills like White Elephants. He uses the “what if” query to ask what if he was taken back to the war front. Thus, he writes in the form of a rhetorical question. The writing styles of the three novels are also deceptive to the reader. This is a unique style that the three authors chose to incorporate in their books. For instance, Hemingway and Cather both crafted skeletal sentences so as to make sure that the sentences had a clear understanding. Even though Fitzgerald used wordy sentences in his novel, some of his sentences were short and straight to the point which made the three books similar (Fitzgerald 3). The three authors also offer a multifocal photographic reality in their novels. Their sentence structure lacked subordinating conjunctions and this created the static of the sentences. The three authors’ style of imagery sets a pile of illusion in their respective novels. The sentences in the three books build on each other, but it is less vivid in Fitzgerald’s book, Babylon Revisited, than in the other two books. The three authors also use cinematic techniques to cut their scenes rapidly so as to progress to the next scenario. This is, however, mostly dominant with Hemingway in his novel The Hills like White Elephants. Critics think that this style of writing permitted the person who reads to fill in the spaces left in the story. This totally put the author in control of the reader. It must also be noted that the three authors, mostly Hemingway, used the word ‘and’ instead of commas. This application of polysyndeton was to covey immediacy in the three writings. Given the reason that writings are short stories, the books only incorporate one theme (Hemingway 3). Differences between the Styles of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald The writing styles of Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald are uniquely different. The relevance of the titles were that Paul’s Case referred to the way Paul’s educator and his father refer to Paul regarding his lack of interest in learning. Babylon Revisited refers to a true experience that Fitzgerald and his family had during U.S crash of 1929. They compared these experiences to the wars that took place during the times of Babylon. The Hills like White Elephants, on the other hand, refers to high obstacles that people must climb so as to get through their problems in life. This title shows that the girl who was pregnant had a tough obstacle in her life. This is because being pregnant at a young age is an enormous challenge so the girl would have to choose between aborting the baby or face the huddles of bringing the baby up. Hemingway uses short and crisp sentences in his book, The Hills like White Elephants. He writes with a feeling of mystery in his voice and the short sentences help his points to come out appropriately. Cather and Fitzgerald, on the other hand, write wordy and long sentences that are extremely different from Hemingway’s and the sentences are vivid. Cather, although, in her novel Paul’s Case uses wordy as well as short sentences to convey her messages. She also uses flashbacks to write the novel (Cather 4). Cather, unlike the other two authors, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, is descriptive but still curt at some part of her novel. This makes her writing style to be more superior to the other two authors, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Hemingway and Fitzgerald, unlike Cather, use a lot of adjectives as well as figurative language in their writings clearly to describe scenarios. Their descriptions are extremely poetic owing to the comparisons they formulate as well as the way they break up the descriptions using punctuation marks. Even though Fitzgerald uses a lot of adjectives and punctuation marks, he also applies free writing styles in his book, Babylon Revisited. One of the major differences among Cather, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, is that Hemingway applies a lot of dialogue in his book, The Hills like White Elephants, unlike Fitzgerald in Babylon Revisited and Cather in Paul’s Case. Majority of The Hills like White Elephants is dialogue, and there are not many scenes that are told by a narrator. Most of Paul’s Case and Babylon Revisited are told by the narrator although some parts are dialogues. This makes the two books similar in that field, unlike The Hills like White Elephants. The three books are, however, similar in that they all do not make the meaning of a sentence seem so obvious. When a person reads the three books, he, or she will be left wondering what the point was when the author mentioned that statement and what was its relevance. The stories of both, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, are told by the main character who is also the narrator. Cather, however, uses the third person’s point of view to write her novel, Paul’s Case, and she uses thoughts of the main character instead of just narrating the story from the outside (Cather 5). Cather, in comparison to Hemingway and Fitzgerald, also uses a controversial style of writing. In Paul’s Case, Cather writes in the same way as people would talk in their daily lives. This makes the reader see what Cather was thinking in her writing. Even though Cather uses some fancy language, the book still comes out as a way people would talk in their normal lives. Hemingway and Fitzgerald make their work figurative, but Cather, on the other hand, makes her work natural and it also sounds like someone was writing out what was taking place around his or her life. Hemingway writes in a way which describes matters almost like he was going through the matters. He starts his novel The Hills like White Elephants by describing the setting (Hemingway 6). He also goes in detail into the scenario as well as the different aspects of the characters in the novel. This makes the person who reads feel as if he or she is in the story. His novel, The Hills like White Elephants, gives the reader an excellent and vivid imagery of the scene he is talking about, but it, however, sometime goes on and on until it loses its interest. Hemingway still manages to leave the reader in suspense, and critics think that it is the best part of his writing. Conclusion It is clear that these three writings are similar and different in a number of ways. Any student who wants to revise these three novels should take these findings into consideration. Although these similarities and differences seem to be general, it is these small matters that create to significant differences in the novels. Works Cited Cather, Willa. Paul’s Case. Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2005. Print. Fitzgerald, Scott. Babylon Revisited: And Other Stories. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print. Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition. New York: Scribner, 1998. Print. Read More