Problem: Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style--which he termed the Iceberg Theory--had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two non-fiction works.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, was a physician, and his mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, was a musician. Both were well-educated and well-respected in Oak Park, a conservative community about which resident Frank Lloyd Wright said, "So many churches for so many good people to go to". For a short period after their marriage, Clarence and Grace Hemingway lived at first with Grace's father, Ernest Hall, their first son's namesake. Later, Ernest Hemingway would say that he disliked his name, which he "associated with the naive, even foolish hero of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest". The family eventually moved into a seven-bedroom home in a respectable neighborhood with a music studio for Grace and a medical office for Clarence.  Hemingway's mother frequently performed in concerts around the village. As an adult, Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although biographer Michael S. Reynolds points out that Hemingway mirrored her energy and enthusiasm. Her insistence that he learn to play the cello became a "source of conflict", but he later admitted the music lessons were useful to his writing, as is evident in the "contrapuntal structure" of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The family spent summers at Windemere on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan. Hemingway's father taught him to hunt, fish, and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan as a young boy, early experiences in nature that instilled a passion for outdoor adventure and living in remote or isolated areas.  From 1913 until 1917, Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School. He took part in a number of sports--boxing, track and field, water polo, and football. He excelled in English classes, and with his sister Marcelline, performed in the school orchestra for two years. During his junior year he had a journalism class, structured "as though the classroom were a newspaper office", with better writers submitting pieces to the school newspaper, The Trapeze. Hemingway and Marcelline both had pieces submitted; Hemingway's first piece, published in January 1916, was about a local performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He edited the Trapeze and the Tabula (the yearbook), imitating the language of sportswriters, taking the pen name Ring Lardner, Jr.--a nod to Ring Lardner of the Chicago Tribune whose byline was "Line O'Type".  Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist; after leaving high school he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. Although he stayed there for only six months, he relied on the Star's style guide as a foundation for his writing: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."

Why was it a conflict?

Answer with quotes: he later admitted the music lessons were useful to his writing, as is evident in the "contrapuntal structure"


Problem: Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.  Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. He was himself a highly skilled canoeist; Nathaniel Hawthorne, after a ride with him, noted that "Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two paddles or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to require no physical effort to guide it."  He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in Walden, "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."  Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitrator between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of humanity in North America. He decried the latter endlessly but felt that a teacher needs to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. The wildness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country." His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail", but he also hiked on pristine land. In the essay "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher" Roderick Nash wrote, "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance." Of alcohol, Thoreau wrote, "I would fain keep sober always.... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor.... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"

What did he believe about instead if neither rejected or embrace wilderness?

Answer with quotes:
he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates nature and culture.