American Literature / Unit 15 AML 1440 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Telling Hemingway From Faulkner From Fitzgerald
The idea
The three are the period's most confused names and the prose separates them at once. Hemingway: short declarative sentences joined by and, concrete nouns, almost no adjectives or abstractions, dialogue that circles what it will not say, and settings abroad or outdoors. Faulkner: very long sentences with piled subordinate clauses, present participles, capitalized abstractions, shifting or unreliable narrators, and a Mississippi county whose families recur. Fitzgerald: measured, lyrical, image-heavy prose in the middle register, an onlooker narrator, parties, money, and an elegiac closing cadence. If the sentence is short and the emotion is missing, it is Hemingway; if the sentence will not end and the past will not stay past, it is Faulkner; if the prose is beautiful and somebody is rich, it is Fitzgerald.
In practice
Withheld, accumulated, or elegiac.
Where people slip
All three write about loss, so subject alone decides nothing. The test is the sentence: its length, its joins and whether it names feelings.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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