In what way is “The Hemingway World” present in Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not?
Please address the readings and learning modules as part of your post. Avoid, phrases such as: “good post,” “I think,” “to me,” “in my opinion,” and “I agree.” Simply present your argument with supporting material from the course.
In your peer response, offer an a parallel example to that of your peers.
“The Hemingway World”
How does one fine meaning in a world where all traditional values and institutions have been destabilized? For Ernest Hemingway, a member of the “Lost Generation” who experienced the horrors and alienation of World War I, the search for meaning occurs in a world marked by violence, brutality, pain and alienation. In this world meaning is no longer found in traditional institutions like romantic love, marriage, family, religion, and patriotism—Victorian morality, propriety and idealism is found absurd. Alienation rooted in industrialization asserted as cold and uncaring, dislocates and dissolutions humanity to the point of nihilism. No longer autonomous, individual existence is determined by Freud’s psyche and Marx’s means of production. Isolated, alone, and disaffected, all avenues of communication between human beings—between men and women, government and citizens, industry and labor—are rendered useless. In this world Hemingway finds meaning in nature, the individual, and a passion for life. In To Have and Have Not we find a world marked by unexpected violence, a loss of faith, and the failure of traditional institutions ameliorated by the humanization of a lost man who creates meaning in a job well done while living up to his own values.
