Who is Ernest Hemingway?
Emma Prewitt
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
-Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway lived through anthrax, malaria, pneumonia, skin cancer, hepatitis, diabetes, two plane crashes (on consecutive days), a ruptured kidney, a ruptured spleen, a ruptured liver, a crushed vertebra, a fractured skull, and more.
Ernest's sister, brother, father, grandfather, and granddaughter all committed suicide, at some point in time, after Ernest did.
Ernest Hemingway's mother wanted a girl, so when Hemingway was 4, his mother dressed him in a dress and called him "Ernestine."
In Key West, Florida, there is an annual Ernest Hemingway Lookalike Contest. Men and women both compete.
Hemingway's son, Patrick, worked as a big-game hunter and ran a safari business in Tanzania.
Ernest's father, Clarence, wanted his son to go to college. Ernest did not even ponder the thought.
Hemingway's first job was at the Kansas City Star, working for $15 a week.
In 1918, Hemingway was unable to pass the military physical because of poor eyesight, but that didn’t stop him from serving. He enlisted as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross.
Hemingway once said that he can’t think of any better way to spend money than on champagne.
- Hemingway felt it “would be very dangerous” for someone to not attend multiple fights a year.
- According to Hemingway, his eyelids were particularly thin, causing him to always wake at daybreak.
- The ending of A Farewell to Arms, one of his novels, was rewritten 39 times.
- As a young student Ernest Hemingway participated in many sports arenas including track and field, football, boxing and water polo.
In his junior year in school, he took a journalism class which would prove he was very useful, as well as excellent at using English.
Hemingway started going into depression with the deaths of some of his close friends.
Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Europe while serving on the Italian Front. He received the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery because he assisted Italian soldiers to safety even after being injured himself.
Hemingway fell in love with a nurse Agnes von Kurowsky and proposed. She broke off the engagement after he returned to the U.S.
In 1951 he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. This book won him the Pulitzer Prize.
Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in 1961 at the age of 61, in Ketchum, Idaho.
In his lifetime, Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.