Realistic Treatment of War in the Novels of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway

Abstract

From the very beginning, war has been depicted in the pages of literature romantically as heroic, adventurous, glorious, and good for peace and development. Until the twentieth century, this trend of romantically portraying war was quite prevalent. In the twentieth century, especially after WWI, there was a demand to perform battle realistically. There was a demand for such type of literature that could depict the harsh reality of war with all its devastating effects, torture, massacre bloodshed, suffering and mental trauma, which until now had been kept under the lustre of romanticism. Ernest Hemingway was a writer who, in his war novels, dealt with the issue of war realistically as he participated in WWI and the Spanish Civil War. Here in this study, we will be dealing with the realistic portrayal of war in the war novels of Ernest Hemingway.