Ernest Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War

Ernest Hemingway was sent by the American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) as a correspondent of the civil war that was taking  place in Spain between the nationalists and the republicans , which he supported and helped them to fight against the fascism. He made four trips during 1936 and 1939, where he met writers, photographers, correspondents and revolutionaries.  Therefore, this country was quite important for  him since he was able to experiment everything though his own eyes  and he could write about the real things that people felt during the war, such as in the case of one of his most famous books: For Whom the Bells Tolls . What is more interesting, is that he was inspired and participated in the production of a movie with others intellectual norteamericans: The Spanish Earth. 

To begin with, what I found really impressive about Hemingway is that he took the decision and went to Spain knowing all the terrible and dangerous things that were happening there, in order to show and tell the world what was the real situation there , because he believes that under the control of fascisms there are not going to be good writers although brilliant novelist, poets, critics  and so on  are still excellent  under any political order .

On the other hand , I agreed with Hemingway when he said that  good artists are the ones that  have  the ability to transfer something to the readers, maybe as if you were the main character. Is  that what we want when we read a book? Right?  Besides, he wrote about attractive topics that were authentic, for instance he didn’t create a war he lived it  hence he wrote it.  Therefore, people… even us can feel indentify when we read one of his books , because we know that all that situation happened and many people suffered and how we say it in Spanish : nos ponemos en su lugar  and feel it.

To continue with, I made some associations with the kind of persons that Hemingway believes that exist. As we covered in classes, for him there are two types, one´s are the tourist and the others are the aficionados. In that era , society  did not need tourist people who cannot distinguish real things or even  to know what  to do , they needed active people who were able to change their reality , because they were not living a game , in fact, real people was dying and they necessitated to stop that , that others take over other´s life , such as the regimen of Franco did.  On the other hand, If we think about, I would say that Ernest was an aficionado, due to the fact he goes beyond in his life, he decided to take over the situation and travel to a place where something was wrong. What do you think? Do you agree?

Finally ,I would like to say that literature has an important role in our society since makes us change our way of see things creating or showing us new perspectives or ideas  that maybe we haven’t pay attention, for instance, in the case of  modernism  the common man was a theme for writers. What´s more writers have been in a direct relation with their compromise on  real things .  For that reason, Ernest Hemingway has been so popular in our societies. 

The failing soldier by Robert Capa is one of the most famous photos of the Spain Civil War. --à this is a clear example of the news way of communicate things and reproducing reality  that modernism brought to us.

PS: There is a movie ,which shows the situation when Ernest Hemingway went  to  Spain and met  Martha Gelhorn . Maybe you would like to watch it in order to understand a little bit more . J!

 Classmates : Would you like to be a correspondent as Hemingway?