Sisyphean Virtue: Existentialism as a Critical Lens for Reading A Farewell to Arms JACOB LONGINI
THE scholarship of 20th century
Sun Also Rises.” The article applies the thematic
literature, there have been many efforts to
lens of “the death of love in World War I” (Spilka
classify
Hemingway’s
127) to Hemingway’s work. This “death of love”
within the philosophy of existentialism. This
refers to the destruction of many systems
temptation arises out of the natural inclination
of meaning caused by the war. People, and
to bring together fiction produced in the period
especially writers, had trouble valuing the same
with the philosophy that arose from it. In the 1948
things that they once did after being faced with
introduction to A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
the atrocities of the conflict. There was a void
tells the reader that the novel was “begun in
left in the place of these systems, and a need to
the first winter months of 1928” and “the final
find a new meaning was born. Existentialism was
rewriting was finished in Paris in the spring of
popularized and expanded upon in this era, and
1929” (vii). He wrote the book in a little over a
Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms (among
year, all in the period after World War I described
other books) during this ideological shift, so
by Gertrude Stein as the “lost generation.” Mark
scholars have long been interested in bringing
Spilka discusses the context of Hemingway’s
the philosophy to his work. The question is, what
writing in his article “The Death of Love in The
is the right way to do this?
WITHIN
fictional
works
like
JAC O B LO N G I N I is from Phoenix, Arizona, where he attended school until moving to LA to earn a BA in English and a minor in Philosophy from LMU. Falling in love with English and the LMU community, he decided to stick around to pursue a MA in English Literature from Loyola Marymount. He is interested in bringing his background in Philosophy to his studies in Literature, engaging with contemporary critical theory. His contribution to this issue uses 20th Century Existentialism to dissect classic works of fiction, which he wrote for Dr. K.J. Peters’ Authors and Movements course on Hemingway.
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