Absurdity and Nothingness in Hemingway’s Selected Novels: A Nihilistic Study

Abdul Aziz

English Literature Study

Supervised by: Dr Nijatullah Shah

Department of English Language & Literature

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 Introduction

Current thesis studies famous fiction-writer Ernest Hemingway from the parameters of Friedrich
Nietzsche, a German philosopher’s theory of nihilism. Ernest Hemingway has been studied mainly
from grace & dignity, mourning & trauma, macho & masculinity, love & war, blood & violence, and
feminism, alcoholism & sexism perspectives. Apart from a multiple other areas, there is a need to study
Hemingway more specifically and deeply from nihilistic parameters which is a gap still does exist. As
the works of Hemingway are prevalent with absurdity and nothingness, the representation of desertion
and disorder has been probed by the present study. The close analysis of his life, Hemingway seems
having nihilistic belief about life. The current study endeavors to probe, in particular, those quarters of
the writer’s belief in life analyzing his works as well as his protagonists. For this purpose, the present
study takes two novels For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

Objectives

The study aims to achieve the following objectives:

1. To explore the thematic representation of absurdity and nothingness in the selected works of
Ernest Hemingway.

2. To detect and analyze Hemingway's biographical connection with the select novels.

Research Questions
This study addresses the following questions:

1. What implies nothingness to Hemingway's characters in relation to life?

2. What represents Hemingway's nihilism about life?

3. Why does the pretended nihilistic vein of self juxtapose the ‘real’ self of the person in
Hemingway’s novels?

Delimitation

The current study limits its analysis to Hemingway’s two novels; For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) undertaking the nihilistic study of Hemingway. Although
Hemingway’s other works also seem to be nihilistic in nature, and other protagonists also represent
absurd attitude to life, the current study attempts to limit the study in the framework of the aspects
under consideration; nothingness and absurdity in the selected fiction from biographical perspective. In
a way, further expansion could also be done to the writer’s other works which was not possible for the
current study. The future researchers and studies may detect these aspects in other works of
Hemingway. However, the present study focuses on the record of Hemingway’s autobiographical
elements that are the representation of absurdity, desertion, chaos and disorder found in the selected
fiction of Hemingway.
Methodology

The study is qualitative in nature and qualitatively analyses absurdity and nothingness aspects in the
selected fiction of Ernest Hemingway. It attempts to seek their relation with Hemingway’s biographical
instances connected with these texts. The textual analysis of the selected fiction is the base of the
research. Nihilism theory of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has been applied to answer the research
questions. In relation to Hemingway’s approach to life, the nihilism theory conforms its validity
because the selected writings of Hemingway have prevalence of absurdity and nothingness aspects.
These also provide sufficient proof of his nihilistic belief of life.

Moreover, Hemingway’s other protagonists and writings have also been compared in order to seek
their connection with the writer’s biographical instances existent in his texts. For this purpose, all the
possible sources and resources like the internet, libraries, e-libraries and other useful requisite sources
have been used to find the answer to the research questions. The study is an attempt to explore
absurdity and nothingness elements prevalent in the selected fiction and applies nihilism theory.

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Analysis of For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is written in the background of the Civil War of Spain that broke out
among the Socialists and Communists representing the working classes (Loyalists) on one side, and the
Fascists led by General Franco representing landowners, the Church, and officers of the army on the
other.

Here has been conveyed the message by the author about the futility of war, and the futility of life itself.
Hemingway has tried to show war as a cruel and disillusioning element of life. Anselmo, while on duty,
is engrossed in such feelings:

"To me it is a sin to kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill [.....] No, I am

against all killing of men.” (Hemingway, 24)

And at another place, Anselmo feels the same disgust about the killing:

“But to shoot a man gives a feeling as though one had struck one’s own brother when you are
grown men.” (Hemingway, 235)

Pilar, a major female character of the novel who has seen the war and killing very closely and also tells
the accounts of the massacre done by the fascists in the town of Ayuntamiento, herself time and again
reiterates:

"Everything that happened in the Ayuntamiento was scabrous.” (Hemingway, 71)

Similarly, the accounts of massacre Pilar relates are embarrassing to the extent. The details of the
horror occurred in the house of Don Guillermo have been told in these lines:

“.....And I did not wish to think for that was the worst day of my life until one other day.”
(Hemingway, 72)

Representing the nihilistic belief, Pilar stresses the absence of God from their lives Who is needed to be
revived. In the modern sense, the ambiguities of the modern man:

“There probably still is God after all, although we have abolished Him.” (Hemingway, 49)

Anselmo here feels the need of cleansing of the social institutions in the form of civic penance. These
lines are the clear portrait of nihilism:

“......there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing
or else we will never have a true and human basis for living.” (Hemingway, 108)

Jordan thinking in retrospect, is also engrossed with the futility of life feelings:

“You went into it knowing what you were fighting for. You were fighting against exactly what you
were doing” (Hemingway, 90)

Similarly representing nothingness, Robert Jordan is of the view:

“I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years.”

(Hemingway, 92)

All the characters, in one way or the other, feel guilt of what they have done so far in the war:

“But should a man carry out impossible orders knowing what they lead to?” (Hemingway, 90)

In the representation of absurdity, Jordan thinks of a joke in Spanish: “Hay que tomar la muerte como
si fuera aspirina” which means: “You will have to take death as an aspirin.”(165)

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Analysis of The Old Man and the Sea

The close analysis reveals that Hemingway’s writings are replete with absurdity, nothingness and
nihilistic attitude towards life. All the retrospective portion in his writings is a clear proof of this claim.
The following lines show his curiosity and care for the old man:

“It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff Empty and he always went
down to carry either the coiled lines or the gaff[.....] it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”
(Hemingway, 02)

At one place, when they mime to eat rice, black beans and dried bananas, they conceal their poverty
and misery of their life from themselves and pretend as having a lot of food in store. They have
actually nothing to eat but they make themselves believe as if they do have everything. Their attempt to
conceal their poverty and miserliness and escaping from hard reality of their miserable poverty is the
representation of absurdity in the form of escaping from harsh reality.

Hemingway here reminds the reader of:

“There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this
fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.” (Hemingway, 4)

The old man, Santiago has been depicted as a miserable fellow who has none to support and assist him
in his tasks to do or to be a relation and source of satisfaction in his old age. The following lines further
make this feeling more intense, severe and painful regarding Santiago:

“If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your
mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.” (Hemingway, 3)

Santiago expresses similar feelings in the following lines:

“I wish I had the boy. But you haven’t got the boy, he thought. You have only yourself....”
(13-14)

And also the heart-piercing lines:

“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable.” (Hemingway, 17)

In the coming lines he feels himself repentant of his being a fisherman:

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman,” he thought. (Hemingway, 18)

Similarly, the hardships faced by him in his professional life may rightly be considered as the
absurdities of his life:

“I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes
everything wrong.” (Hemingway, 41)

Such an absurd condition also appears in For Whom the Bell Tolls where all the characters seem fed up
either with life or with the circumstances. Similar type of feelings are also of Anselmo:

“I wish that I were in my own house again and that this war were over.” (For Whom the
Bell Tolls, 107)

Here again Santiago is ashamed of his act of killing the fish:

"He could not talk to the fish anymore because the fish had been ruined too badly.”
(Hemingway, 43)

And then out of the feelings of shame and guilt, he is completely unable to look as well as talk with the
fish for the fish has been ruined by him very badly. He finds in him no moral courage to talk to the fish
now. In his bereaved mortified sensations, he is ashamed of his act like going too far to chase and kill
the fish. He says:

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 “Half fish,” he said. “Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. I am
sorry that I went out too far. I ruined us both.” (Hemingway, 43)

This situation is the representation of a highest instance of absurdity.

Under such circumstances, his possible choice was to stay at sea in order to manage to come out of the
stressful situation. To reach his value, the old man went - as expressed - “further than allowed”.
Hemingway reiterates himself:

The old man knew he was going far out. (Hemingway, 10)

And later Santiago:

“My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people.” (Hemingway, 18)

Further, he is repentant on going out of his limitations far away at the sea:

“I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he said. “Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.”
(Hemingway, 41)

When we see Santiago muttering: “I am not lucky anymore”, he feels his luck has deserted him once
again though actually he is at the apex of his career as he is successful in catching the biggest fish he
had ever seen or heard of. Here the question arises, why the old man feels himself highly unlucky
whilst he is at the height of his profession?

It was actually the tormented life of the writer himself that made him tired after a long struggle of life
which had been absurd and full of melancholy.

Then the last scene of the novel further attests the idea that in the end, the author had a melancholic
taste and it so seems that the melancholy of the beginning was still remained with him. His agonies
here seem to reach at the climax in spite of reaching the denouement:

“Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face.”
(Hemingway, 48)

Santiago’s sleeping position at the end of the novel shows his miserliness. He seems to be such an old
man whom race of life has made him exhausted and whose life has complete darkness.

Conclusion
The current study proves that the American novelist and short story-writer Ernest Hemingway proceeds
the philosophy of nothingness. His works under study; For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and
the Sea are prevalent with absurdity and nothingness elements. The pros and corns of the selected texts
of Hemingway reveal the representation of the writer’s nihilistic belief about life. The life of the author
itself had been absurd and full of desertion and all his characters are the representation of absurdity. As
Hemingway’s fiction is autobiographical, the biography of the author is also entirely the depiction of
his own life.

The study provides answers to the questions that the study raised, and clarifies the representation of
absurdity and nothingness instances found in Hemingway’s fiction. In order to substantiate the
argument, data analysis section has been assisted by the selected texts of Hemingway applying nihilism
theory of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Both the selected novels of Hemingway are the clear picturesque of nothingness, absurdity,
desertion, and chaos. Hemingway’s depiction of life in this way and his nihilistic belief about life have
been completely substantiated by the excerpts from the selected fiction of Ernest Hemingway.

Summary

The current study is the thematic representation of absurdity and nothingness in Hemingway’s
select fiction. The study reaches the conclusion that Hemingway’s writings and his biography have
close link with each other. The author’s own life had been absurd and his writings as well as characters

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all represent the aspects of absurdity and nothingness. Nothingness is the aspect Hemingway does
believe about life and his characters have also been portrayed having nothingness belief in their lives.
All the characters, especially the protagonists, have been depicted having their absurd livings and
desertion in their lives. Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Harry Morgan in To Have and Have
Not, Jake Barnes in Sun Also Rises, Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea and so on, all have deserted
lives.

References

Al-Shawa, Wisam K. "Impact of Women on Hemingway.” Research Journal of English Language and
Literature Vol.1.4 (2013): pag.109 Web. Nov. 2013

Camus, Albert (1942) "The Myth of Sisyphus”. Web.

Freud, Sygmond. Creative writers and day dreaming. London: The Hogarth Press.1959. Print.

Nagel, T. (1970). ‘The Absurd’, Journal of Philosophy, 68, 716-27; reprinted in Life and Meaning: A
Reader, (ed.) O. Hanfling, 49-59, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

Nelson, Cary (1994). Remembering Spain: Hemingway’s Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Nietzsche, Friederich. “The Gay Science,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann.
New York: Viking, 1954, 95.

Bibliography

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. Print.

Donaldson, Scott, ‘By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway,’ New York. Records what
Hemingway thought on important subjects (fame, politics, war, love, art, death) and constructs a
model of his mind and personality, 1977. Print.

Hanneman, Audre, ‘Ernest Hemingway: A Comprehensive Bibliography,’ Princeton, ‘Supplement’,

1967.

Meyers, Jeffrey, Ernest Hemingway’s Four Wives, ‘Married to Genius, ‘London, 174–89. Considers the
relationship between Hemingway’s marriages and novels, between his emotional and artistic
commitment, 1977. Print.