Title
Into the Silence: Hemingway, Woolf, and Beckett in the Wake of War
Document Type
Article
Annotation
Comparison study contextualizing and analyzing the linguistic resistance of post-World War I texts. Will discusses how Hemingway’s minimalist style portrays both the lived experience and ethics of war, examining his famous passage on the distortion of abstract words in A Farewell to Arms. Compares Hemingway’s reliance on the communicative effects of restricted vocabulary to Woolf’s ambivalent presentation of both the capacity and limitations of language in To the Lighthouse (1927). Concludes with a short history of Beckett’s gradual resistance to authority through self-administered and carefully executed literary and journalistic silence.
Published in
South Central Review
Volume
35
Issue
2
Date
Summer 2018
Pages
90-102
Citation
Will, Barbara. “Into the Silence: Hemingway, Woolf, and Beckett in the Wake of War.” South Central Review 35, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 90-102.