Ernest Hemingway
...to Arms' and 'The Old Man and the Sea' - and discuss whether or not these works are autobiographical.
Ernest Hemingway Forty years after killing himself with a shotgun, he remains one of the most famous American writers. Many of his works are regarded as classics of American literature and some have been made into motion pictures. According to CNN.com, "He took Americans around the world with his new style of fiction, and he took fiction to new levels of pop culture status. More than a writer, he was a war hero, the war correspondent, the expatriate, the lion hunter, the marlin fisherman, the womanizer, the drinker, the overbearing ego, the tragic figure."
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Born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899, Hemingway was educated at Oak Park High School. After graduating from high school in 1917, he became a reporter for the 'Kansas City Star' but he left his job within a few months to serve as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Red Cross in Italy during World War 1. He was wounded in both legs by mortar and machine-gun fire, and while recuperating in a hospital in Milan, fell in love with a nurse.
Agnes von Kurowsky, an American born 26-year-old, was eight years older than Hemingway and had a reputation for being a flirt. Hemingway, a friend to her at first, eventually fell under her spell, and she too seems to have had feelings for Hemingway.
VIDEO CLIP - PHOTOS OF HEMINGWAY AND KUROWSKY
Hemingway returned to the States a war hero, but he was not able to keep Agnes' affections. She ended the affair with a letter that read in part, "I can't get away from the fact you're just a boy a kid
" She also told him she had fallen in love with another man and was going to marry him. Hemingway was heartbroken but moved on. The experience eventually led to Hemingway's classic novel, 'A Farewell to Arms'. published in 1929, over ten...
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