by R. M. Ziegler

Created on: April 17, 2008

On the morning of July 21st, 1899, Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in a Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. The life he would live is as fascinating as any of the stories he has created. Perhaps the reason is Hemingway was his characters, and often the line between fact and fiction was blurred.

Ernest Hemingway began writing at an early age. His papers were often read aloud in class as writing examples his classmates should strive for. His short stories were published in the school literary magazine, and he wrote regular pieces for the school newspaper which he edited as well. But writing had not been his first love. At fifteen, the would-be writer and Nobel prize winner aspired to a life of adventure. He had learned to hunt and fish at an early age-past times that would also become important in his later life and fiction. Around the age of sixteen his aspirations leaned toward writing. His early stories about adventure, hunting, and boxing, shaped the fiction for which he would be famous for later.

In 1917 the fall after Hemingway graduated Oak Park High School, World War I was raging. He tried to enlist in the army but was rejected because of bad vision. From there he went to Kansas City to live with his Uncle Tyler, and he became a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star covering accidents, mob strikes, and drug raids. The Star's style manual instructed, "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English not forgetting to strive for smoothness." These stylistic rules shaped his fiction. Later he said, "Those were the best rules I learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them."

Seven months later Hemingway left the paper to become an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Europe. Only a few weeks later, while distributing chocolate to Italian soldiers, he was seriously wounded, first by shell fragments, then by machine gun fire as he carried another soldier to safety. He became a decorated war hero. The months he spent recuperating in the hospital became the basis of what he called his favorite and best novel, A Farewell to Arms. While there nineteen-year-old Hemingway fell in love with a twenty-seven year old nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. She rejected his marriage proposals, saying he was too young and immature for her. A few months after he returned home to Oak Park, she wrote him to announce her engagement to an Italian officer.

A heartbroken Hemingway channeled his disappointment into his writing. He decided then that writing

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