The brutality of the Hemingway world of fiction has given rise to the view that he is a sort of “caveman” of literature. But this is an incorrect view. Hemingway’s has the sensitive modern man’s interest in the problem of the meaning and values of human life. It has been said, for instance, that his heroes are “brutal and reckless by day but wistful as little boys when alone at night with the women they love.” There are curious spots of sensitiveness in and kindness. He gives us the impression of being a hypersensitive man who has been terribly hurt by life, and who dwells upon horrible things partly to experiences in World War I, and he has been no war, Hemingway would in all probability still have not taken a bright view of human existence. The collection of short stories, In Our Time, contains evidence that he encountered horror and terror even in his boyhood, at least on the hunting and fishing trips he made with his father in Michigan, and that he never afterwards quite got them off his mind. Perhaps he was also deeply moved by his father’s suicide. He was determined not to throw the veil over any dark aspect of life; he did not wish to resort to evasion. He never wanted to write about everyday life. Instead, he wanted to concern himself with the ultimate crises of human expericence, to surprise the human soul naked, as it confronted an ultimate challenge. In this sense, namely in his pre-occupation with the problems of conduct, he is a profoundly “moral” writer. Unfortunately, he fails to formulate any moral values beyond his statement that anything that makes you “feel good afterward” is moral. And this does not get us very far.
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