Yay for Hemingway!

Hemingway uses a specific style in A Moveable Feast. The story is written in first person, which shows us his perspective and how he felt towards the different characters. It helps us understand how each of the writers made an impact on his life.  He uses many specific details to describe the streets and the different places he visited. He also recalls on what café he went to and what he specifically ate in each place as well.

His use of time can confuse the reader. He goes from talking about the next day to talking about years in advance. However, his use of seasons to describe the time adds more symbolism to the book and compares the seasons to the stages of a person’s life. He talks about spring being the children and that, “…there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen” (Hemingway 52). Fall would be used to describe the end of someone’s life and how, “part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold…” (Hemingway 52). Something good always happens that will lead from fall to spring, and from a bad time in life to a happier time.

We read this book so we could discuss the elements of style used, and not just the plot of the book. He describes how he feels towards each of the writers he mentions and throughout the book, we get to see how his writing evolves with the help of these people. He places an emphasis on food, saying how he has to be full and content in order for him to write better and cannot write when he has an empty stomach. So, he prefers to write in a café so he can eat while writing. He describes in detail what food he eats and how it tasted, providing some sensory details for the reader to imagine the food item as well. This book would be an autobiography because Hemingway recalls on the event of his life and how his writing progressed overtime, thanks to his different writer friends.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest, and Sea Hemingway. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. New York, NY: Scribner, 2009. Print.