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Ernest Hemingway: A Biography and Annotated
Bibliography for “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Ernest Hemingway: A Biography and Annotated Bibliography for
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Ernest Miller Hemingway was a man who loved what he did, and that was writing. Not only that, he lived what he wrote, although many of the stories embellish the truth. In fact “it’s difficult not to confuse him with the heroes of his books” who lived and loved hard, exactly like Hemingway did (Sussman 21). This attitude was present all through his many experiences from growing up, going through war, living abroad, and writing through it all.
Author Ernest Hemingway entered the world on July 21, 1899 as the second child of Dr. Clarence Hemingway and his wife Grace. Born in the small town of Oak Park, Illinois, his birth seemed trivial to the rest of the world. Yet, there would come the day when he would be known as one of the most important writers in America, an icon in his own right (Harmon 91). Before that came to pass, however, he was just a small boy attending grade school with his “twin” Marcelline in Oak Park. His sister Marcelline was not actually his twin but their mother raised the two that way, for reasons unknown. Besides that confusing situation, young Hemingway and his siblings grew up in a fairly average home. As a high school student he participated in sports and wrote constantly for the school paper. His family spent their time during the summer hunting and fishing in Michigan, where they had a cottage. He seemed to be growing up like any other average boy, “yet there were signs of the determinedly self-defined man that he would become.”(Koster 16). One defining moment came when he took a boxing class and as a result got banged up. He did not quit, but came back for more. It was this “determination to face fear and pain”(Koster 16) that allowed Hemingway to find a silhouette for his many heroic characters.
