The Diverse Writing Styles of Hemingway and Fitzgerald

In the early-to mid-1900s, two groundbreaking writers by the names of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald published multiple successful pieces featuring very different writing techniques and themes. While Hemingway’s writing featured extremely serious and dark moods, Fitzgerald’s focused more on the cheerful and celebratory experiences in life. First, I am going to discuss the miserably depressing and down-right sorrowful stories by Ernest Hemingway. The best way to describe his writing style is gloomy and humorless; most of his pieces contained very stern situations. And the best way to describe the author is…disturbed. Unlike Fitzgerald, Hemingway’s lifestyle was quite plain and sad. He never seemed to identify or enjoy the little things in life, hence why his stories were so dull. Fitzgerald, his fame-rising opponent, seemed to engage in fun-filled activities as often as possible. Now isn’t that the kind of life most people would embrace happily? Poor Hemingway… Hemingway expressed his blue feelings in many of his pieces, including “Indian Camp”. This particular short-story is about a young boy accompanying his father, the local physician, as he births a baby. When they arrive, the child’s uncle is already there, and offers his father a cigar, a usual tradition for the birth of new life. Inside the cabin, he aids his father, who performs multiple procedures on the wailing mother in labor. The child notices the woman’s husband on the top bunk, who has turned to face the wall. The spouse is later discovered to have slit his own throat, in an attempt to commit suicide. Through multiple uses of symbolism throughout the story, we later are able to identify that the uncle, who may or may not have raped her, is the true father of the newborn baby, a key reason her partner killed himself. He was tormented due to the fact he had to listen to his wife scream in agonizing pain, over something he could not have prevented. This story truly depicts Hemingway’s gut-wrenching emotions, which also lead up to the author taking his own life. These dark writing topics definitely resemble Hemingway’s real feelings and focus on serious life lessons, unlike Fitzgerald’s who couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Fitzgerald’s writing focused on love, youth, and celebrating every moment life has to offer, no matter what the consequences may be. Fitzgerald himself took part in many “extra-curricular” activities which involved evenings of parties and nightlife fraternizing. Doesn’t that sound fun? The author depicted those happy and cheerful emotions in many stories including, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, where a boring and unadorned girl changes her appearance and attitude towards eligible bachelors, with the help of her vindictive and seductive cousin, Marjorie. After eventually winning the heart of multiple wealthy men, Marjorie grows a rage of jealousy over Bernice’s growing popularity at the nightly soirees? Bernice is forced to bob her hair at the hand of an envious Marjorie and in return, dismembers her luscious golden braids. While teaching a somewhat comical lesson about being yourself and sympathetic to others, Fitzgerald manages to captivate the audience using amusing tones and vocabulary. As you can see, although these two authors both were able to gain fame and abundant success, there writing styles couldn’t have been more diverse. This also caused heated feuds and competitions between the two. Hemingway struggled to write decent, creative and good pieces that often took months to complete, while Fitzgerald on the other hand, would “party ‘til he dropped” and the extravagant, beautiful stories would just flow out of his brain, without any effort. But, all of the fighting doesn’t even matter; what matters is the readers personal preference. Some may enjoy the eerie moods of Hemingway, while others prefer the extravagant themes Fitzgerald’s stories have to offer; and to this day, their works are still being read. Their creative writings will live on forever, their immortal brilliance to dazzle scholars and pupils yet to be born.