The Anti-Fascism Of Ernest Hemingway

ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Mackenzie Doebler (Creator)
Institution
Appalachian State University (ASU )
Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/
Advisor
Carl Eby

Abstract: Despite complicated political views, Ernest Hemingway remained a staunch opponent to fascism throughout his life. Writing as a newspaperman, lifestyle writer, naturalist, and frequently a novelist, the Hemingway oeuvre is robust and teeming with political thought. This thesis dives deep into Hemingway’s political thinking during the interwar period. From the end of World War I to the defeat of Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, the paper tracks Hemingway’s antifascism through letters, novels, short stories, public appearances, essays, and journalism. Hemingway was fascinated with proletarian masses and aspired to advocate for their needs in his writing. His leftist inclinations can be found throughout his work in varying degrees of obviousness that fluctuate with pressures both outside and within. The same can be said for his serious criticisms of war. Once present on the Italian Front in 1918, Hemingway became hugely critical of war. These consistent motivations, advocacy for proletarian concerns and antiwar sentiment, were driven by his disdain for fascism and the despots he’d criticize from the early twenties on. Tracking the matrix of these motivations through Hemingway’s interwar work produces a complicated but politically impassioned interpretation of Ernest Hemingway.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Doebler, M. (2023). The Anti-Fascism Of Ernest Hemingway. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.
Language: English
Date: 2023
Keywords
Hemingway, Anti-Fascism, Modernism, Politics

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