Earnest Hemmingway, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow



Earnest Hemmingway, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

The New York Times wrote in 1926 of Hemingway's first novel: "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of The Sun Also Rises. It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame" (1983) pg. 44). The Sun Also Rises is written in the spare, tightly written prose, for which Hemingway is famous; a style that has influenced countless crime and pulp fiction novels. In 1954, when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."(Thomas 2001)

Henry Louis Gates believes Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to [his] experience of world war"(1983) pg. 44). After World War I, he and other modernists "lost faith in the central institutions of Western civilization," Roy (1998) by reacting against the "elaborate style" of 19th century writers; and by creating a style "in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least very little—is stated explicitly." (Ernest Hemingway 1973)

Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language how to multiply intensities, and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth." Hugh (2001) Hemingway referred to his style as the iceberg theory: in his writing the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out-of-sight. Writing in "The Art of the Short Story," Philip (1964) he explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit." Zoe (2007)

Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" Philip (1964) scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission." (Thomas 2001) Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "The Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else).

The simplicity of the prose is deceptive. Zoe Trodd believes Hemingway crafted skeletal sentences in ...