What makes Hemingway a fatalist?
Many of Hemingway’s novels and short stories are preoccupied with violence and death. To some, this would indicate Hemingway’s fatalistic tendencies as a writer. For others, it might signify his attempts at realism. Hemingway, in my opinion, is both a realist and a fatalist, and each of these positions are equally important to his art. Let’s take A Farewell to Arms as an example. Part of the subject matter here pertains to war. In a war, people are killed. That is the unfortunate reality of war and Hemingway portrays this reality with brilliant clarity. When Hemingway kills off Catherine Barkley at the end of the novel, in this instance, he is probably being more fatalistic than realistic. Women do die in childbirth, but I would imagine this was a less common occurrence when the labor took place under the supervision of a doctor in a hospital, as is the case with Catherine’s labor. Hemingway believed that all stories end in death and that true storytellers would not keep this fact from
