The Sun Also Rises

“It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.” – Ernest Hemingway

Born on July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway was a larger-than-life figure. Raised in a Chicago suburb, Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star for six months before joining the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I and was seriously wounded by shrapnel in 1918.

After the war, Hemingway moved to Paris where he worked as reporter for the Toronto Star. It was there that he penned his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which was published in 1926 to rave reviews.

The New York Times wrote that, "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of The Sun Also Rises. It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame."

In 1928, Hemingway returned to the U.S. and settled in Key West, FL where he wrote his second novel, A Farewell to Arms followed by Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, and To Have and Have Not. By 1937, Hemingway was covering the Spanish Civil War as a reporter, which served as the backdrop for his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, written in Havana, Cuba.

During World War II, Hemingway worked as a journalist and was present in Normandy on D-Day and at the liberation of Paris. In 1952, he published The Old Man and The Sea, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

Injuries from two African plane crashes in 1954 left Hemingway in pain and ill health for the remainder of his life. He spent his last years battling severe depression, hemochromatosis, and possible dementia compounded by nine concussions and a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Multiple trips to the Mayo Clinic where he received multiple electroshock therapy treatments failed to improve Hemingway’s mental condition, leading him to take his own life on July 2, 1961. Sadly, Hemingway’s father, brother, and sister also died from suicide.

There is no question that Ernest Hemingway was a literary genius whose spare, tight prose "changed the nature of American writing" according to James Nagel, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia and a Resident Scholar at Dartmouth College. Tragically, the one thing that Hemingway’s talent couldn’t do was cure his depression or save his soul.

Fame is fleeting, but eternity is forever. Trust Jesus today… and if you battle depression, please seek help before it’s too late. God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life.

“…whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.” John 6:37 (ESV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President