to delve deeply into the style of the language to understand fully what is being communicated.
Many of the themes apparent in the works of Ernest Hemingway can be related to events and attitudes in his own life. Hemingway grew up in Michigan, in a family that placed an emphasis on outdoor activities. As a boy, Ernest was strong and strong-willed, with physical capabilities that would hold him in good stead until the latter days of his life (Hardy and Cull 10-11). Ernest became a reporter rather than going to college as his father wanted, and he became interested in the war raging in Europe (World War I) and decided to go there to see it for himself. All this was part of his attitude toward masculinity in men, something he prized highly (Hardy and Cull 14-15). The war is a theme in In Our Time, and many feel that the character of Nick Adams, seen in several of the stories in this volume, is a reflection of Hemingway himself as a young man. Nick Adams is a young man who travels a good deal, and some psychoanalytical critics see significance in this in the character and in Hemingway himself. They note that Hemingway also established a lifestyle of escapism and ran whenever problems or people started to move in on him. He took a number of avenues to avoid having to stand and fight--Michigan, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, writing, safaris, Key West, and his marriages and divorces--yet this was somehow different from the masculine and always ready to fight image that he projected in his works and in his attitudes. He also had a concern with age, and as a younger man he would add a couple of years to his age when referring to himself (Hardy and Cull 41).
Edmund Wilson notes that In Our Time was an odd but original book:
It had the appearance of a miscellany of stories and fragments, but actually the parts hung together and produced a definite effect. There were two distinct series of pieces which alte...