Owen and Hemingway, Complementary Views from afar

During our classes we have learnt about two authors whose literature is built around wars, in particular, the First World War, Ernest Hemingway and Wilfred Owen. The former, a veteran American, is mostly recognized for his novels and short stories –despite the fact that he has written several poems-. Whilst the latter, an English lieutenant, became famous for his crude poems, written during the war itself.

"Luz stayed on night duty for three months. They were glad to let her. When they operated on him she prepared him for the operating table... He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back to Pordenone to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there... the major of the battalion made love to Luz... (Luz) finally wrote to the States that theirs had been only a boy and girl affair... Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it." 

A Very Short Story, Ernest Hemingway

Nevertheless, there has not yet been an instance to compare and contrast their texts in terms of purpose, context of production, the focus of the texts themselves, or the effect they had over the society of their time.

Both of these writers had a great deal of importance in demystifying and exposing the ugly truth about war based on their own ugly experiences (biographical style).

On the one hand, Owen's aim was twofold; First of all, to show death the way only a soldier could, to provide every subtlety about the new, terrible ways of dying that arose alongside a set of new slaughtering machinery such as the chemical weapons. Second, to raise people's awareness about the false heroism proposed by the government's war propaganda. 

"But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime… Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning." Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen

On the other hand, Hemingway, instead of writing about war itself, he seemed a lot more interested in showing how people coped with de desolation left by the war (in both: during and post war), often using in-city contexts in which people faced varied types of troubles while death was in the air. In his literature, he made use of subtlenesses in terms of lexical choice to provide with key information that allow us to understand the characters' background and personality.

All in all, these two authors, both fully commited to the truth in spite of living in opposite sides of the globe, have made one single cohesive and holistic brand-new view of war; a truthful and crude view that attempts to hide no more the pain and dust and smoke and ashes left behind by relentless evolution of the First World War and to undisguise the lack of support many people gave their governments.

Sadly, in our current world we are once again in the need of a lightbringer, a trustworthy storyteller who can guide us in the darkness put upon us by the media and the rotten governments. 

What do you believe would be the impact of the appearance of such writer? What deep-buried secrets are being kept from us all? 

 

References

Sherry, V. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drawings by Artem Cheboha; Lost and Forgotten, Ghosts of War, and The Old Man and the Sea respectively.