A Farewell to Arms: Style
Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic.
These are all good words; they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a
newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object
sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of
lefts and rights coming at us without pause. Take the following passage:
We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to
realize they were cooked would win the war. We had another drink. Was I on
somebody's staff? No. He was. It was all balls.
The style gains power because it is so full of sensory detail.
There was an inn in the trees at the Bains de l'Allaiz where the woodcutters
stopped to drink, and we sat inside warmed by the stove and drank hot red wine
with spices and lemon in it. They called it gluhwein and it was a good thing to
warm you and to celebrate with. The inn was dark and smoky inside and afterward
when......
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Approximate Word Count: 553
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |