The Life of Ernest Hemingway

All of these problems lead to his death by a self-inflicted pistol shot in 1928 just as Hemingway was beginning reap the material rewards of his advancing literary career. He looked back on his own youth, and in retrospect, he considered his childhood to have been unhappy, but viewed such early alienation as an essential artistic and personal resource, as an important part for the realization an individual "heroic code" to guide action. Back tracking to his adolescence, he attended and graduated from Oak Park High School where he was a good student, but not an outstanding athlete or student. His first published materials were articles and poems for his high school news paper. Writing for the school newspaper may have helped him get his first job at the Kansas City Star as a copywriter. But by this time the United States had entered the war. Hemingway tried to enlist in the United States Army but was rejected due to a vision problem. He then found a close alternative by volunteering to serve as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. He was assigned to the Italian front. Shortly after reaching the front line Ernest Hemingway was wounded in the legs from matron fire at Fossalta de Pivi on July 8, 1918- just a few days before his nineteenth birthday. Having seen very little action apart from his assault, Hemingway was eventually transferred to a hospital in Milan. There Hemingway meets a nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, and he proposed marriage. Eight years older than Hemingway, Agnes derailed his plans to return home with a war bride, jilting him to wed an Italian officer. Hemingway recovered from his injuries, the war came to an end, and he returned to the United States without a bride.
             As it turns out, Hemingway was the first American casualty of the Italian front, and when he got back to the Midwest, he was treated as a conquering hero variant of the all-American youth.