The subject matter with which Hemingway develops his viewpoint is that of pain, violence, violent death, or the imminence of death. In the 20^th century with its almost continuous warfare, concentration camps, executions, and assassinations no themes are more relevant. In explaining his interest in the bullfight Hemingway says in Death in the Afternoon: “I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death one of the subjects that a man may write. Violent death is not only prevalent, but preferable to natural death. At the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, wounded and waiting for the Fascists who will kill him thinks: “Dying is only bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much it humiliates you. That is where you have all the luck, see? You don’t have any of that.?/font>

            The galaxy of Hemingway heroes who face violent death includes soldiers, professional and amateur, bullfighters, big game hunters, deep-sea fishermen, boxers, and gangsters. Men of action, they are intelligent but not intellectual. Wrapped in codes and rituals which help sustain them, they are often afraid but overcome their fear. That is the paramount precept of the code, which, as Philip Young puts it, “in a life of tension and pain makes a man a man and distinguishes him from the people who follow random impulses, let down their hair, and are generally messy, perhaps cowardly, without inviolable rules for how to live holding tight. The rules, as Andre Mauris pointed out, are not conventional. They are those agreed upon by the group whether it be soldiers, boxers, or gangsters. As Hemingway said, “there is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply the standards that differ.?/font>

            The honor demands loyalty to one’s friends as well as loyalty to one’s ideals, not the deals of false romanticism, the flaw in Robert Cohn which Jake Barnes despises, but ideals which embrace a realistic, even cynical appraisal of “how things are. During the disastrous retreat from Caporetto in A Farewell to Arms Frederick Henry thinks: “All I had to do was get to Pordenona with three ambulances. I had failed at that. All I had to do now was get to Pardenona. I probably could not even get to Udine. The hell I couldn't’t. The thing to do was to be calm and not get shot or captured.? Later when he is about to be questioned by the carabiniere, who are shooting officers they think are disguised in Italian uniforms, he notes: “I saw how their minds worked; if they had minds and if they worked. They were all young men and they were saving their country. He then dives in the river to escape and make his separate peace.

            Whatever the situation, whether it be stalking the wounded lion, waiting for the killers, resisting the oncoming Fascists, or succumbing to the final heart attack, the hero must in Dorothy Parker’s phrase exhibit  race under pressure. Endurance, without complaint of physical pain, loss of love, loss of virility, physical disablement, or emotional and physic wounds is the answer. The Hemingway hero endures. Emerson wrote, not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. Hemingway does not attempt to solve this riddle, but he shows a course of action man can take in the face of a hostile and implacable Fate. If we follow this, we cannot be defeated. In Old Man and the Sea he writes: “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.?/font>

            In addition to the code, Hemingway offers a moral and religious outlook which implicitly directs his characters. Although he is not a philosophical novelist in the sense that Sartre and Camus are, behind the actions of his characters lies a philosophy. His attitude toward nature forms a religion of symbolic significance. The mountains and the plain are loose symbols of what is good and what is bad. Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton spend their happiest days in The Sun Also Rises fishing in the Spanish mountains. Their descent to the fiesta in Pamplona brings them down to the disorder, brawling, drunkenness, and sordid sex affairs of Brett Ashley. At the height of the fiesta Brett is surrounded by orgiastic dancers who have adorned her with a wreath of arlics a pagan goddess in the center of a pagan ritual. In A Farewell to Arms “We lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. Across the plain march the soldiers with the leaves falling and the dust rising as the men will inevitably “fall in useless battle. When the Germans and Austrians break through the Italian front at Caporetto, the Italian army is driven down onto the plain where rain, mud, and death engulf them in disaster. To escape, Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley flee to the serenity of the mountains of Switzerland. Death, itself, is “true and “pure in the mountains. Robert Jordan awaits his violent end stoically in the Guadarama Mountains. In the Snows of Kilimanjaro, Harry, rotting and dying slowly from gangrene on the plain, dreams at the end that he is carried up beyond the snow line of Mt. Kilimanjaro “great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun. The symbolism is unmistakably clear.

            The Hemingway heroes exhibit a healthy interest in normal physical actions. Eating, drinking, sex, and athletic endeavors are taken seriously as pleasures in life all too brief. From the spaghetti course, which everyone ate very quickly and seriously in the opening pages of A Farewell to Arms to the dinner in the hotel in Milan of oodcock with souffle potatoes and pures de marron, a salad, and zabione for dessert, with a bottle of Capri Bianca and St. Estapha, eating is viewed as a serious and enjoyable rite.

            Drinking is equally normal. Excessive drinking which leads to brawls and disorder is often present but is nowhere condoned. Frederick Henry says to himself, “I was not made to think. I was made to eat, My God, yes. Eat, drink, and sleep with Catherine. Colonel Cantwell in Across the River and Into the Trees carefully orders Martinis made 15 to one, which he calls Montgomerys because in his opinion Field Marshall Montgomery never attacked the enemy unless he outnumbered them 15 to one. There are good drunks and bad drunks. In The Sun Also Rises Jake muses “Mike was a bad drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bad drunks abuse other people. “CJohn was never drunk and Cohn was a bad, messy person. In A Farewell to Arms Frederick Henry, having fled the disorder and violence of the war, orders a few Martinis in the Grand Hotel in Stresa, and thinks, have never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized. The conclusion is not surprising; drinking is healthy, if handled correctly.

            Sex, while it exists in Hemingway’s novels, is not a theme or subject of as great importance as violent death. His attitude is conventional. The ideal relationship is that of man and woman in love both physically and spiritually. Nothing could be more prosaic. This is the relationship between Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley, Robert Jordan and Maria, Henry Morgan and his wife, Colonel Cantwell and his Countess. Romance in Hemingway is fragile and inevitably crushed by the violence around it. If the hero is not killed by gunfire, the heroine dies from a biological accident in childbirth. As Catherine is dying in A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry thinks, but they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around long enough and they will kill you.

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