I. Ernest Hemingway

1. life

2. point of view (influenced by experience in war)

(1) He felt that WWI had broken America’s culture and traditions, and separated from its roots. He wrote about men and women who were isolated from tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous, trying to find their own way.

(2) He condemned war as purposeless slaughter, but the attitude changed when he took part in Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was a cause worth fighting for.

(3) He wrote about courage and cowardice in battlefield. He defined courage as “an instinctive movement towards or away from the centre of violence with self-preservation and self-respect, the mixed motive”. He also talked about the courage with which to face tragedies of life that can never be remedied.

(4) Hemingway is essentially a negative writer. It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. He holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.

3. works

(1) In Our Time

(2) Men Without Women

(3) Winner Take Nothing

(4) The Torrents of Spring

(5) The Sun Also Rises

(6) A Farewell to Arms

(7) Death in the Afternoon

(8) To Have and Have Not

(9) Green Hills of Africa

(10) The Fifth Column

(11) For Whom the Bell Tolls

(12) Across the River and into the Trees

(13) The Old Man and the Sea

4. themes – “grace under pressure”

(1) war and influence of war on people, with scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting which demand stamina and courage, and with the question “how to live with pain”, “how human being live gracefully under pressure”.

(2) “code hero”

The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.

5. style

(1) simple and natural

(2) direct, clear and fresh

(3) lean and economical

(4) simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words

(5) simple sentences

(6) Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things

(7) Symbolism

I. Sinclair Lewis – “the worst important writer in American literature”

1. life

2. works

(1) Main Street

(2) Babbitt

(3) Arrowsmith

(4) Dodsworth

(5) Elmer Gantry

3. point of view – satirical critic of American middle class

(1) Lewis showed the villagers to be narrow-minded, greedy, pretentious and corrupt.

(2) He attacked middle class for its indifference to art and culture, and its assumption that economic success made it superior.

4. style

(1) photographic, verisimilitude

(2) colloquialism

(3) characterization: he often created a type of character rather than an individual

(4) old fashioned in theme

(5) lack in psychological exploration