Lessons on Hemingway for the Classroom

Work designed for 3-4 students to facillitate a close and critical reading of Hemingway's story.  Part of the group work examines the uniformity of the world that Harold Krebbs left and returns to -- and how he can no longer fit in. This story provides a wonderful background for "Big Two-Hearted River." We usually begin In Our Time with this story, though it is not the first in the book -- but it fits in quite well after having just read All Quiet on the Western Front.  Most of the time - we will have a discussion rather than doing this group work - but if I can't be there this does, I think, a fine job.

This group work has students closely read Hemingway's "Cross-Country Snow" while examining his treatment of friendship as well as the notion that certain things (in life) are better left unsaid. As with many of the group works here on Hemingway, biographical material is brought into the discussion (but not at the expense of the text).  This coordinates well with the lessons related to his "Iceburg Theory" of writing.

Though there is music that accompanies this (not included here), this two-part slide show comprise two of the three days that I lecture (on Hemingway's life) all year.  Depending on how the time goes - I end at different spots each year, but usually Part 1 ends with Hemingway and his young wife Hadley arriving in Paris in the early 1920's. Warning: The presentation consists of many photos and it is a very large file.

This handout includes an excerpt about the writing of "Indian Camp" that may surprise students.As with most of these kinds of outside texts, I would only give it to students after they had read the actual text.  In some ways, this biographical material actually may give the students a more subtle reading of the story - the best biographical evidence shows that there was not an incident like this story's in the young Hemingway's life - and any relationship to his life (other than the very powerful end paragraph) is metaphorical.

This group work on Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" is one of my personal favorite group works.  One of the reasons is that at the end of the period, the students usually discover a "big truth" through their own cooperative investigation.  The other reason is that it requires all students in the group to contribute -- and in very different ways. The students divide their close analysis into different specialties -- some students look at the geography of the story, some at its context within In Our Time, some at its style, etc. 

A presentation with music and images that I created to illustrate some biographical aspects of Hemingway's story, "The End of Something," from In Our Time.  The video begins with  pictures of the old lumber mills found in the U.S. at the turn of the century -- then talks a bit about the end of Hemingway's marriage to his first wife, Hadley -- and ends with pictures of those same lumber mills in ruins.  Readers of the story should see and understand the connection.