Hemingway vs Fromm

1751 Words8 Pages
The First World War affected many of those who endured it. Some Americans subscribed to any ideas put forth by their leaders and lived a conservative life. Others wrote. Erich Fromm’s essay “The Individual in the Chains of Illusion” argues that war erupted because of an overemphasis of nationalism over humanism and that the individual became lost. Hemingway’s “In Our Time” relates stories of the individual before, during and after war – and how this individual becomes affected. Many thematic links exist between Hemingway’s stories contained in “In Our Time” and Fromm’s essay “Chains of Illusion”. While Erich Fromm lays the philosophical foundation for his argument, Hemingway’s stories transport life into Fromm’s philosophies. Fromm would have found the themes of Hemingway’s stories enlightening and not unlike many of the ideals he set forth. While Fromm discusses the philosophy of his argument, Hemingway puts into practice this dynamic in action through his stories. One of the thematic links that exist between Hemingway’s “In Our Time” – specifically “Big Two-Hearted River: Parts I and II” - and Fromm’s “Chains of Illusion” is the theme of transformation. In Fromm’s essay he discusses at length the transformation of the individual who lived before the First World War and the effects of this transformation. Fromm speaks of living in the pre-war era, an era that provided peace, innocence and security – concepts that were disrupted by the war. Fromm said, “Anyone who was like myself, at least fourteen years of age when the First World War broke out still experienced part of the solid, secure world of the 19th century” (328:1). This same theme can be easily identified in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River: Parts I and II” in which the story’s protagonist Nick Adams finds this security in nature - only to become disrupted by the loss of an especially
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