Ernest Hemingway and the Short Story

By Zennure Köseman

Ernest Hemingway pioneered the short story genre by prioritizing economy of prose. He also wrote the shortest short story: his famous six-word “For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn!” The whole story embodies these words, which are semantically meaningful. Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s “single-effect” theory, each story drives the reader to concentrate on a substantial controlling idea that directs the story from beginning to end. 

A writer of the “Lost Generation,” Hemingway went to Europe during World War I to master writing. He also served at the front. He used his experiences then, before, and after to craft a highly original approach to the short story, involving thematic issues around marriage, war, friendship, bullfighting, love, nature, and enemies. He also explored themes of alienation, isolation, existential philosophy, meaninglessness, nihilism, and aimlessness. Hemingway’s wide perspective invites an intense subjectivity, uniting with readers who become an active part of the interpretation. Zennure Köseman’s new book offers a deft exploration of this craft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academica Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781680537116

Book preview

Ernest Hemingway as A Frontier of the Short-Short Story Genre

Chapter 1.

Introduction

This book highlights Ernest Hemingway’s short-short stories that focus on the alienation thematic basis causing the creation of various interpretations while reading. Hemingay is interested in Edgar Allen Poe’s single-effect theory to have a unity in literary texts. To begin with the analysis of the short-short, it is important that there are similar characteristics between a short and a short-short story:¹ There is a particular point of view, plot organization, characterization, time, setting and the conclusion. Similar to the short-story [that] combines in a new way narrative interest, brevity, unity of emotional impression, and characteristic plot (Notestein, 2014, p. 3), short-short stories obtain much more brevity in limited wording so that readers should have a density of reading to acquire a comprehensive analysis. The restrictions of the short-story form necessarily affect the range of its possible subject-matter (Notestein, 2014, 5). This emphasizes that as much as the wording is limited, then, meanings in words and lines are impressive in short-short stories. It is clear that short stories differentiate from the short-short stories, because they are not explicit, instead they are implicit so that new wordings are reserved in it as they become meaningful solely through a comprehensive densed reading.

The present study intends to approach Ernest Hemingway as the pioneer of the short-short story genre through having a literary descriptive analytical method in American Literature. It is necessary to indicate that Edgar Allen Poe is influential in his single-effect of alienation in the thematic basis. Focusing on a specific controlling thematic basis or words, the readers will be much more interested to read the stories. As the focus of this book is short-short stories, it is previously significant to underline the pre-existence of short stories that pave the way for the beginning of short-short stories. Before concerning them, this book condences with vignettes that are even shorter than short-short stories.

Modern Period is the literary field of misery, emptiness and destruction for individuals. It is a personal estimation that the public is substantilly traumatized from the psychological central sense of alienation that emerges other various thematic issues. Meaninglessness, nothinglessness, normlessness, anxiety, fear, distrust, and disconfidence are some of them. Thus, the significance of various philosophical evaluations concurrently are in existence while defining Hemingway’s period under The Lost Generation because of these themes.

It is premost concern that the Modern Period writers in American Literature construct a private group of unity under coining themselves as The Lost Generation due to being traumatized because of World War I. There are critics condencing to study the reasons defining those authors under the concept of the lost. Under each literary output, the subtantial connecting link is the thematic basis of alienation and the existentialist outlook in social living. Such an innovative consideration necessitates the analysis of alienation or isolation thematic perspectives and the Lost Generation concept as well as the existentialist philosophical assessments. After these perspectives, it is notewothy to analyze Hemingway’s original short-short stories in addition to some other short stories and search about the secondary sources regarding Hemingway. They are written in the Roaring Twenties in which individuals go for war fronts and, therefore, lose their lives in most cases or else become alienated and isolated due to losing any of their akins at that time.

Ernest Hemingway has precisely his novels and short stories in the world. Yet, when his short-shorts are the concern to deal with, a pile of extensive secondary sources can be analyzed when compared with his novels and short fiction. There has not, yet, been a previous study intending to explore most of his short-short stories at the same time: Hence, to be more precise, this book intends to illuminate on Hemingway’s short-short story genre that revolves around the thematic basis of alienation.

The reason to focus on Ernest Hemingway is that he can be accepted as a frontier in American short-short story genre. He is efficient in his short and short-short fiction as well as his vignettes written before each of the short and short-short story in Nick Adams Stories which is also reflected in Ernest Hemingway: Collected Short Stories. His famous short short For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn! written for a contest in six words is noteworthy to remember, because this limited wording wins the contest and creates an extensive field for interpretation in literary world. Moreover, Hemingway has two other short-shorts, Crossing the Mississippi and Wedding Day that are not included in this book for not having a complete plot structure.

In the modern and contemporary periods, Hemingway’s short-shorts are the point of interest in the work life that is full of duties to be performed. Reading in one sitting is necessary for them. Yet, these short-shorts are difficult to comprehend as repetitive readings are required for the literary output of interpretations. As much as they are repetitively perused for consideration, innovative conclusions wait at each reading session. This emphasizes that the short-short fiction is valuable since they are mystic due to having not a clear conclusion most of the time: Therefore, they are the open-ended literary texts. Hence, new epiphanies occur at the end when readers create new sudden conlusions for stories themselves. Repetitive reading leads to the creation of new epiphanies in readers’ minds. Reserved treasure of repetitive reading and analytical reading drives for better comprehension and interpretation while reading. In this case, a wide treasure exists in stories’ limited wording.

¹ Instead of using short-short story perpetually, this research concurrently will apply short-shorts, and short-short fiction as well.

Chapter 2.

American Literature and the Evolution of the Short-Short Story

In almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.

Edgar Allen Poe

Since storytelling is inherent in human nature, short and short-short stories have existed throughout history. Short fiction and its longer relative the novella or novellette longer than short stories are different forms of art to express how people consider their world views and their experiences. Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Getrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway inclined to write in new shorter forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first examples of the short story can be illustrated through Irving, Hawthrone, Poe, and Melville in American literature in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Plotting in a longer extent, these stories handle an inner structure in which the writer does not extensively inform reading public about the setting, the characterization, the plot and themes so that they have to estimate implicit meaningfulness throughout limited explanations (Erden, 2010, pp. 27-29). These comprehensive estimations become dominant especially in the short-shorts that have a treasure of various hidden interpretations and meanings in their limited wordings. Within a poetic presentation, writers of these short-shorts express their feelings and thoughts related to their world views. Any omission of that poetic wording causes a decline in meaningfulness.

The comprehensiveness in short shorts can be evaluated throughout repetitive reading of limited wordings. Their written textual context in 1500 (Korkmaz and Deveci, 2011, 14), 300-500 words (Wright, 1998, 16; Erden, 2002, 315) hint the deep semantics in them. They enforce readers to focus on the single-effect of the story and necesitate multi reading to reach complete point.

Chapter 3.

Autobiographical Untitled Vignettes Settled Before Each Main Short-Short Story

Ernest Hemingway can be accepted as the frontier of the short-short story genre that includes vignettes in it. To begin with the short-short story theoretical analysis, it is presicely requisite to refer to the vignette which is defined as a small ornamental design in a book that constitutes the beginning and the end of a chapter as well as the short sketch and the short composition. Moreover, they form the short parts of the long literary works (Cuddon, 1999, p. 971). Vignettes have particularly descriptive nature which illuminate significant information. They provide the past events or circumstances necessary for a novel, a story or a play. What is distinct about them is that they are descriptive so that they inform reading public about the specific cases (Vignette: Online). Vignettes are quiet significant means to have expansion in the analytical perspectives:

Vignette is Hemingway’s natural mode that is a literary sketch that somehow seems to be the beginning or end of something longer. It is complete in itself. Hemingway’s style encloses what ought to be unenclosed, so that the genre remains subtle yet trades its charm for punch. But a novel of three hundred and forty pages. (Bloom, 2005, p. 4)

Vignettes have been the subjects for social science reseach that has different topics of education, psychology, literature and social work to enhance qualitative interviews (Kandemir and Budd, 2018, p. 1). This indicates that through vignettes, new studies become proper for the investigations and, thus, descriptive explanations in researches spring. This emphasizes that there is the complex research questions to be solved through the help of vignettes (p. 2). They can be defined as fictional scenarios, simulation of real events, real stories that narrate what the writer experienced and have the freedom to reflect it in writing. This means that they inform readers in various parts of literary texts (3). This implies that there is reality behind the short explanations of vignettes:

[They] often form part of an exploration of aspects of social life that are taken for granted and not consciously unpacked. It could therefore be argued that, in such cases, and without a suitable vignette (or alternative strategy), researchers and participants could find it even more difficult to approach certain topics. This is part of the set of judgment calls that researchers have to make in assembling their research design, and several