What does it mean for a work of literature to be universal? In the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, there is an interview with a female North Vietnamese soldier. Before she left home to serve the communist cause, her parents gave her a copy of A Farewell to Arms. She helped to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the illicit road through Cambodia and Laos that brought armaments to the Viet Cong in the south. At night, when the work was done, the road she had just built would be bombed by the Americans. While she was huddling in a trench, waiting out the bombardment, she would read A Farewell to Arms. She said the novel connected her to all the soldiers in history who ever suffered in war.
Join Andrew and I as we discuss Hemingway as a universal writer, a white male writer, an anti-war writer, and more.
If you can’t get enough Hemingway, be sure to also check out my Three Writing Prompts Inspired by Hemingway.
Narrative with Valerie Lute 