A Mans Timeline: In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway - Essay Example

? A Man’s Timeline: In Our Time Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) is a world renowned who received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He started writing in a newspaper at the early age of seventeen. Aside from being a writer, he has vast experience in sports and physical activities, and has actively participated in the army. His experiences often reflect on his written works. He writes in straight forward prose in a tone simpler than other contemporaries of his time. One of his works “In Our Time” written in 1924 tells about one of his favorite hobbies as acquired from his father, which is fishing. This is but a small example of how this work reflects that of his life experiences. Different themes are highlighted in the text primarily concerning with politics, war and violence. Family relationships also play a crucial role in the text. Major themes in the text will be discussed in relation to how Hemingway interests in the concept of time. The beginnings of the lead character Nick Adams discuss about the concept of youth in the text. Everyone experiences youth in the essence of innocence on how a person faces the world. Nick used to believe that he will live forever as a kid in the “Indian Camp”. But as he his experience molded him in “The Battler”, he gets tricked by an adult and gets angered about it, and then he swore to never let it happen again. But as we all know, even as we grow a pinch of our youth comes to visit us once in a while. As displayed in the “Three- Day Blow”, Nick and Bill play round as they shared a drink of alcohol. They do this while talking about tragedies in their life, but they cannot really land on a concrete understanding of these. In the process of growing as an individual in the novel, he gets to build a more cynical attitude towards life, displayed in his notion of how skiing would mean nothing productive to him in the future. Aside from skiing, Nick is also very fond of fishing. Aside from the aforementioned personal endearment of Hemingway in this activity, fishing also represents a deeper meaning in the text. It is a metaphor of problems of society. In the “Cross- Country Snow” and in “Out of Season” escape is reflected in the characters. George escapes his dilemma on education by agreeing that there is a need to go skiing with a friend as if it would be the very source of his happiness. Peduzzi escaped from an argument with his wife while going fishing and drinking. Nick was present in both these men’s own metaphors with fishing and skiing, but his moment on wanting to fish alone in “Big Two Hearted River” gives readers a note on his feeling of isolation from society. The three characters try to go out of their harsh realities as adults, through these activities. The most evident struggles in the text are that involving characters and their relationships. One of which is that about their fathers, and how they would handle fatherhood. There is beauty in the symbolism of Nick’s father teaching him how to handle childbirth in the “Indian Camp”. In this early part of the text, the father and son relationship was established in the process of discourse between the then innocent Nick and his distanced father. In the discourse there was an apparent confusion in Nick’s part, since his preoccupied father displayed difficulty in communicating a topic as sensitive as death to a young hopeful boy. Aside from the responsibility of a father in educating his son, a different sense of fatherhood was discussed in the vignette in Chapter 8. Luis addressed a strong statement to the narrator who was persuading him to prepare for his bullfight; “You’re not my father.” This act tells the narrator to stop telling Luis what to do since he has no any form of authority over him, like what a father has over his son. The text not only describes the importance of fatherhood but also other relationships. Nick’s relationship with Marjorie is in major conflict in the text. In “The End of Something”, their relationship suddenly ends. Before this happens, many difficulties arose giving the reader’s a hint of its impending failure. In “Three- Day Blow”, George tells Nick that marriage threatens a man’s independence in their discussion about relationships. Many of his stories deal with unhappy couples and the difficulties they face. Hemingway’s portrayal of relationships in this text tells about his difficulty to communicating it. He often overlooks details about problems in relationships and settles to an indirect approach. The aforementioned themes on youth, fishing and skiing, fatherhood and problems in relationships are all tinted with concepts of loss and death. These are the unifying concepts evident in the text. As mentioned, Nick developed a sense of being cynic towards things, believing that nothing lasts forever. This belief did not stop him from still be hopeful that moment when he thought that there’s a possibility that Marjorie would still get back together with him in the “Three- Day Blow”. There are many other small losses in the text that manifest bigger ones, leading to death. At the beginning of “The Quai at Smyrna” death played a prominent role as the English naval officer tells how mothers would not give up their dead babies in the midst of war. Suicide was then performed by the father of the new born baby in “The Indian Camp”, while suffering the screams of his laboring wife. There is such sorrow and horror in the existence of death in any text, but in Hemingway’s in our time, there is an alternate light that comes with this darkness. There is triumph for the matador in every dead bull in bullfighting vignettes. The death of a matador means a chance for a replacement for another matador, which means chance for an emergence of another victor. The text, being written under the light of the First World War, Hemingway has this indirect association of his text with war. Paths of death, suicide and execution in war display loss in life and forms of human emotions like suffering that makes human existence most sensed in his life. All themes discussed in Hemingway’s text lead to the concept of time as the factor that holds all aspects of life in one main string. The existence of these themes can be applicable in minimal or extreme parts of a human’s existence, but with an uncertainty about the future. In the instance where Nick and George discuss the possibility of skiing again in "Cross-Country Snow", their hesitation to promise recognizes the indistinctness of the future. In reflection, the text tells us how fate troubles youths, and how men learn to deal with it as part of growth and development. One of the major issues concerning Hemingway’s In Our Time, is its genre as a written work. Some categorize it is a collection of short stories, or old manuscripts compiled in one publication. Others argue that the text is a novel just written in a unique manner. There has not been a definite classification but it is nevertheless, known to be a critical acclaim that established Ernest Hemingway in literature. The Merriam- Webster dictionary defines a short story as a brief fictional prose narrative which usually presents a single significant episode or scene involving a limited number of characters. It is important to note the short story’s characteristics of having concise narration with limited characters and concentration in the creation of mood rather than story telling. On the other hand, Merriam- Webster defines the novel as a fictional prose narrative of considerable length that deals with human experience through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. In Our Time embodies characteristics of short stories that cause it to be categorized as a compilation of short stories. At first reading, the text seems to have different stories in every chapter. If the text is a compilation there would be different titles for every chapter or story, in maybe not a necessary unified theme. If we examine each chapter in the text, there could be a possibility to be confused as to whether that certain part is a different story from the whole text. But then again, Hemingway’s unique attack in delivering the text justifies some parts of the text that seem to be out of cohesion with others. The sole reason is rampant existence of symbolism in the text. Symbolism is just one of the important and typical elements of a conventional novel, together with having the plot, character, setting, narrative method and point of view, scope, and myth. These too, are evident in In Our Time, wherein unlike the short story that focuses on creating the mood, there is a real story line and plot in the text. The characters do not take part in all chapters in the text but the recurring character of Nick Adams give the reader a hint of the cohesive structure that there is in the text. There is an existence of a narrator on certain parts of the text too. There are different point of views used in the deliverance of the story, but it can be seen as the author’s style so as to establish the concept of the chaos brought about by the after war setting of the novel. Hemingway is one of the most famous writers in the world. His works are as interesting as his life stories. In Our Time is a novel written in a unique tone and with a clear message of delivering further knowledge about lives of men after the First World War. The intrigue that comes with the classification of the classic work, In Our Time, reflects the inspiration Hemingway serves to intellectuals and rebels. His tireless works continue to raise field of studies in literature. Work Cited Hemingway, Ernest. “In Our Time (1924)". Three Mountains Press. Print. Read More