Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Sign in to follow this  
Kid Airbag

An Essay on American Literature

Recommended Posts

I had a paper due today in English class on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I hadn't turned in anything at all in that class yet this quarter, so I figured I may as well salvage my grade as much as possible. However, I had boycotted reading so much as a single page of the novel, but followed along in class enough to know essentially what happened in the book and how horrible of a book it was and how much I hated Hemingway. I put up with The Old Man and the Sea in 10th grade, but this shit was too much.

Ten minutes into third period, three periods before it was due, I sat down to type my essay, planning on completely winging it. I was supposed to write about how dumb the character of Catherine Barkley was, which I sort of started out doing. But then it evolved. It evolved so much, I now have the greatest English essay ever written on my hands.

This is what I managed to accomplish in thirty minutes in the back of Baldock's room. It's even more impressive when you consider I stopped every ten minutes or so to argue with Baldock's freshman English class about Randy Moss.

Enjoy.

-------


Catherine Sucks at Life

Ernest Hemingway's [strike]groundbreaking novel[/strike] bore-fest A Farewell to Arms depicts the story of an American ambulance driver, Lieutenant Henry, stuck for some reason in the middle of Italy during World War I, who "falls in love" with a British nurse named Catherine who also happens to be in stationed in Italy, and their bizarre on-again, off-again relationship. F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of Hemingway's contemporaries and another novelist famous for mind-numbingly pointless books (although The Great Gatsby is still better than anything Hemingway could have ever dreamed of writing), called Catherine's character the "weak link" in A Farewell to Arms, which I suppose is better than having that obnoxious British woman call her that. Although I hate to pick sides in this situation, since choosing between Hemingway and Fitzgerald is like asking whether you would rather eat fried feces or grilled feces, I do have to agree with Mr. Fitzgerald on this matter. Fitzgerald should be an expert on weak female characters, after all, with his portrayals in The Great Gatsby of Daisy Buchanan, Jordan the female golfer, and Tom's mistress who gets hit by a car.

The back of the Scribner hardcover version of A Farewell to Arms that we were given to read gushes, "A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, of serene beauty admist a world of chaos, A Farewell to Arms represents a new romanticism for Hemingway. Richer in language, more subtle in expression, and emotionally astute...published when Hemingway was just thirty, it confirmed his stature as the greatest single influence on the American short story and novel."

Upon reading that, I was not sure whether a good reaction would be to laugh or to cry or to sue the company and whoever was responsible for churning up such drivel for false advertising. I hope whoever wrote that is able to sleep at night, knowing they had contributed to the downfall of modern civilization in such a egregious manner and that what they had written could not be further from the truth. Hemingway was a very shallow person (he had four wives, for God's sake). His stories are all very shallow with very shallow plots and very shallow characters. People can pretend to read deeply into Hemingway's works as if there were some hidden meaning involved, but the preceding sentence is still the absolute truth. For example, Hemingway's most acclaimed novel is The Old Man and the Sea, which I probably could have written in third grade or so. The book is about a guy trying to catch a big fish, catching a big fish, and having sharks eat the big fish after he catches it and returning home with nothing. That is it. Oh, there may be some imaginary Jesus imagery in there somewhere, but then again there is some sort of Jesus symbolism in every book ever written.

The same holds true in A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway tries to trick the unsuspecting masses by including a woman or two in the book and fooling the public into thinking there is a whole deep love story involved, but he fails to disguise the fact that his female characters may as well be made out of cardboard. Come to think of it, I think some of Henry's conversations with Catherine would have been far more scintillating had they taken place with an actual cardboard cut-out. Here is a typical exchange between Catherine and Lieutenant Henry (I would cite a specific example but I figure you could just open up the book to a random page and chances are you would find something similar enough):

"Oh Lieutenant Henry, I love you!"
"I love you, too, Catherine."
"But do you really love me?"
"I just said I loved you."
"I don't think you mean it."
"You're right, I don't really love you. But do you love me?"
"Of course I do!"
"Let's get married then, even though I don't really love you."
"Lieutenant Henry, we can't get married. I just don't think I'm in love with you right now."
"Alright. But I still love you, Catherine."

Copy and paste the above a couple of hundred times, and intersperse with scenes of Henry sitting around eating cheese and drinking wine, plus occasional parts where he gets shot at (sometimes by the guys who are supposed to be on his team). Throw in a few wacky Italians, and voila! You have 331 pages of uninhibited spew. If Hemingway really wanted to write such a dull book, he could have at least tried to make himself look intelligent by using big words and composing 150-word sentences, like Charles Dickens.

For some incomprehensible reason, Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the greatest American writers of all time even though his books are generally not worth the paper they are printed on (and I doubt his life was worth the trees that have been killed to print his books). But hey, if he was sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, he must have managed to do something right.

Share this post


Link to post

Heh, I did eye the Hell it link somewhat, but we can leave that to your teacher if he or she's paying attention while reading it.

Share this post


Link to post

ROFL, great essay. I had to read a short story by Hemmingway in English 101 about some American who knocks up a chick in Spain and tries to convince her to have an abortion or something. Probably autobiographical. Very dull. Steinbeck totaly owns Hemmingway.

Share this post


Link to post
Danarchy said:

ROFL, great essay. I had to read a short story by Hemmingway in English 101 about some American who knocks up a chick in Spain and tries to convince her to have an abortion or something. Probably autobiographical. Very dull. Steinbeck totaly owns Hemmingway.


Agreed.

Share this post


Link to post
Kid Airbag said:

I stopped every ten minutes or so to argue with Baldock's freshman English class about Randy Moss.

Afraid he'll moon you? heh

Share this post


Link to post

Heh, I never did read any Hemingway. In that era I'm more acustomed to Steinbeck and Lovecraft. Heinlein, Vonegut, Bradbury, Bach and Orwell are good as well, if a little later in the 20th century.

Share this post


Link to post

Hemingway's most acclaimed novel is The Old Man and the Sea, which I probably could have written in third grade or so. The book is about a guy trying to catch a big fish, catching a big fish, and having sharks eat the big fish after he catches it and returning home with nothing. That is it.

I read The Old Man and the Sea for school once and agree with the above statement. Even now years later I still can't figure out what's so great about the book.
Oh well, perhaps we're all just to stupid to understand greatness.

Share this post


Link to post

If you perform a certain transformation on the text and then select the letters at prime number positions, it reveals the meaning of life.

Share this post


Link to post
Fredrik said:

If you perform a certain transformation on the text and then select the letters at prime number positions, it reveals the meaning of life.

the first word is 'penis.'

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  
×