The Thread of Food in Hemingway's Works

Photo from here. 

In comparison, A Moveable Feast and The Nick Adams Stories present two different Hemingways: one exploring the fine alcohols and food, or lack thereof, amidst the streets of Paris, another eating canned beans and spaghetti over a fire in the great American outdoors. Assuredly, the contrast between these settings is about as pronounced as it could possibly be; A Moveable Feast presents a Hemingway flirting with the ideas of stereotypical French luxury, whereas The Nick Adams Stories depicts the glory of hard-earned campside foodstuff. These, also, are only two texts that demonstrate Hemingway's exploration of food; The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bells Tolls, for example, all each have their own nuanced approach to eating. 

Young Hemingway. Photo from here. 

As a whole, the variation of food in Hemingway's works demonstrates a searching for identity, and a grasping to find himself amidst the different physical and food landscapes that he surrounded himself with. In Paris, he played the part of the artist, refusing food to save money at times, eating fine and expensive meals at others, and having whiskeys after breakfast with F. Scott Fitzgerald. On the trail, he was a man of the land, subsisting off of necessity food of simplicity and efficiency.

Hemingway approached food the same way that he approached a new city or a piece of art or wilderness: as unexplored territory, seeming with possibilities of finding something new about one's self, a fleeting chance of revelation. It is this sense, this feeling of searching, that permeates all of Hemingway's works.

As Hemingway searched through various avenues, food is one of the ways in which he explored the ever-shifting, roaming, transitioning version of himself, and how he tried to capture the essence of who he viewed himself to be at a particular moment. Looking at his works as a whole, Hemingway never seemed to stop looking for that something, that definable characteristic and all-encompassing model of himself. Food in each text was a detail in which Hemingway encapsulated an era of an Ernest.

Photo from here.