Research Report: Hemingway's Struggles

By Shaane Syed, Storyboard Project

1. Abstract

“Hemingway and the Beasts” is an essay by Jens Bjorneboe, a Norwegian writer whose writing period began in 1955 and continued until his death in 1976.  This particular piece was written in 1955 and is centered not around Hemingway’s short story, “Indian Camp,” but on Hemingway’s psyche and his observations of the deeper symbols and meanings in life, death, and the pain one must go through in both.  In his essay, Bjorneboe explores numerous struggles Hemingway endures, as revealed in some of his non-fiction books such as in Green Hills of Africa.  He concludes by noting the importance of subtle symbols in The Old Man and the Sea, then relating the significance back to Hemingway’s thoughts and inner-workings.

2. Description

In “Hemingway and the Beasts,” Bjorneboe explores the notion that the combination of Ernest Hemingway’s works constructs a full, or nearly-complete, autobiography.  He finds direct, relevant quotations from Hemingway’s novels and short stories as his evidence, utilizing them as proof of the author’s own realities.  For example, he uses “Indian Camp” to show “how it feels to be human,” when young Nick experiences death for the first time when he sees that a young Indian man had committed suicide.  Bjorneboe also notes that after the boy witnesses death, he asks essential questions (which are falsely answered by his father) such as, “Does it hurt to die?” Bjorneboe uses the questions as an excuse to connect Nick Adams directly to Hemingway and his writing, stating that all of his work revolves around three subjects and themes: death, life, and pain.  By asking if it hurts to die, those three subjects are addressed.  According to the Norwegian writer, admitting that death exists means admitting life does as well, since the two come as a pair: one cannot be without the other.

In the very first portion of his essay, Bjorneboe stresses that the hero of all Hemingway’s narratives is “wounded.”  Already, he implies that pain is a major theme to Hemingway’s work; he even goes as far as to state that “It bids fair to become [Hemingway’s] only theme.”  He, however, continues his argument by adding that although cruelty and violence play key roles in those stories, Hemingway ultimately moves on to admit his main purpose in writing is to discover what one does to survive, and what one must go through to achieve survival.  Bjorneboe claims that dying slowly—living a long life—“is Hemingway’s worst complaint about life” itself.  The reality of life is weighted upon the timeliness of death, and according to Bjorneboe, Hemingway finds prolonged death to be the cruelest part of life.

As the essay continues, Bjorneboe lays his focus upon Hemingway’s connection to his work, noting both fiction and non-fiction.  He addresses the cowardice Hemingway saw in his father’s suicide, and he explores the author’s use of symbolism.  Bjorneboe concludes on a spiritual note, commenting upon Hemingway’s desire to find “peace and soul” in writing, and that “consciously and unconsciously Hemingway trusts that reality itself is built up of symbols which possess sustaining power,” and how he may have used fishing and the wilderness as his gateway to religious symbolism.  Though Hemingway (with his characters) hunts both game and fish in his stories, Bjorneboe shows that he clearly identifies predator and the prey, the hunter and the hunted, the man and the animal; but, “He feels himself one with them both.”