"Paris Is Always A Good Idea."

The life of Ernest Hemingway portrayed in A Moveable Feast is something of a snapshot of a happier time in his life. In Paris, he had his beautiful wife, met beautiful people, ate and drank beautifully and wrote beautifully. However, despite the time being “happier”, Hemingway was still a man plagued by his depression. His story is narrated, some times more than others, as if he is simply a bystander in his own life. Events occur around him, and some to him, but he does not seem to react to them. An example of the disconnect between Ernest and the world, thus allowing the reader to feel the disconnect as well, occurs when Hemingway has a jar of opium thrown at him. Ernest recalls, “Monsieur Dunning…took the jar and…threw it at me. It struck me on the chest or shoulder and rolled down the stairs” (Hemingway 111). Following being hit with a jar and profane names, Ernest simply asks “you are sure you don’t need it?” (Hemingway 111). Ernest had been hit by multiple objects but he calmly walks out the door and moves on with his life. It is almost as if he just does not care enough to bother. He seems to act that way in regards to many events occurring in his life. 

A further example of Hemingway’s somberness manifests when Hadley leaves. Ernest spends all of some five lines about how the woman he loved left him. In those five lines, he does not seem angry or even upset at her. He continues to loathe himself, saying Hadley was with a better man than he could ever be. He seems very matter of fact about the whole situation. Hadley is gone. Life goes on. Ernest exudes the presence of a sad, lost, and confused puppy as he attempts to navigate through his life.

An aide to the depiction of Ernest as confused is the more haphazard organization of the book. The plot of the story does not follow any linear progression but jumps around from event to event, almost as if the memories would cross Hemingway’s mind in the future as he wrote and he simply jotted them down as they came along. He jumps around to big events in his life, but he does not go into them in detail. His affair with Pauline, Hadley leaving, or even the outcomes of the Bel Espirit. Future Hemingway does not seem to be all that devoted to his story. He is just telling whatever he feels like at the moment and then moving on. 

  Despite seeming uninterested in his own telling of his own story, Hemingway writes detailed descriptions of the characters he meets. He used intense figurative language to describe average scenes. Ernest describes the Closerie de Lilas as being “warm inside in the winter and in the spring and fall it was very fine outside with the tables under the shade of trees on the statue where Marshal Neys was, and the square, rectangular tables under the big awnings along the boulevard” (Hemingway 73). Perhaps Hemingway’s only reason for being so detailed is his background as a writer, but it seems more likely that he uses details to distract from having to think about the more difficult things such as the issues he hides details from. 

I believe we read this book in order to be exposed to writing in which the style of the novel deeply affects the meaning and audience. Hemingway’s decisions to write in a disorganized, disconnected fashion allows the reader to better understand the way Ernest feels about the world. At face value it seems to be a story of drunk artists, but at a deeper level the reader sees the complexities of life through the stylistic choices Hemingway makes.










Works Cited:

 Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964. Print.