Ernest Hemingway: 1950 - Death

            
             Ernest Hemingway was a famous American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. His writings have been recognized not just in the United States, but also all over the world. Hemingway's loves were bullfighting, wars, hunting, and fishing; which explains the subject matter of his books. These story lines continued in his later books, such as Across the River and into the Trees, a novel he wrote in the late 1940's, that was published in, 1950. The Old Man and the Sea, which was published in, 1952, this was the novel that got him his Pulitzer Prize. He was also a man who drank too much, and cheated on any woman he was involved with, most of the women in his writings are based on women that had been in his life. .
             Toward the end of World War II, Hemingway participated in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, the invasion of Normandy. He spent a month with the 22nd infantry regiment as they pushed toward and crossed over into Germany. This was the basis for Across the River and into the Trees. It tells the bittersweet story of Richard Cantwell, a former brigadier general who has been demoted to colonel after a disastrous battle, which had been blamed on him. The aging Cantwell, with his heart problem that threatened to kill him at any moment, falls in love with the young Italian countess Renata, who is based on a woman that Earnest had been involved with, Adriana Ivancich. Richard and Renata carry out a love affair and through their conversations and monologues the readers learn the source of Cantwell's bitterness, an inept military that fails to appreciate his talents, which in fact, sends him orders that are impossible to fulfill. In effect, guaranteeing his failure and disgrace. The critics shook their head at Across the River and into the Trees, and said, "Hemingway was done." Nevertheless, his response was to work harder in an effort to show that he was far from done (Burgess, 100).