Earnest Hemingway: Truth & Fiction

The difference between fiction, reality and truth has been a subject of a long debate since Plato excluded literature from his Utopia. Plato insists that literature is a thrice-removed reality or at least an inferior imitation of it. Aristotle, on the other hand, believes that literature might be an improved version of reality. This article explores the possibilities of bridging the gab between fiction and reality and if literature has the power to express truth. I focus the discussion on Earnest Hemingway’s An Old Man at the Bridge, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and a collection of his nonfiction writing- his Spanish Civil War Dispatches. Hemingway indeed managed to portray what he refers to as “absolute truth” in his fiction more than he does in his journalism.