By: Jermany Gray

The Old Man and The Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was an accomplish author of incredible novels such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the 1953 Pulitzer. Hemingway also won the Nobel Prize. Hemingway also served in World War I and married 4 times and also had 3 children (Jack Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, Gregory Hemingway)

Ernest Hemingway Childhood

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park , Illinois. Ernest was the first born son of Clarence and Grace Hemingway and was raised with 4 sisters and one brother. He was raised in a suburb in Chicago, but mostly spent their time in northern Michigan in a cabin. While at the cabin, Ernest learned to hunt, fish and appreciate the outdoors. Hemingway then attend Oak Park and River Forest High School. While in high school, Hemingway wrote for the school newspaper, Trapeze and Tabula ( sports section). After graduation, Hemingway then began to work for the Kansas City Star. He once said, "On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time."

Military Career In 1918, Hemingway went overseas to serve in World War I as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army. Hemingway was also awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery. Unfortunately, Hemingway soon sustained injuries and was hospitalized in a hospital in Milan. Hemingway was in a bunker and it was hit by a mortar and shrapnel went into his legs. While at the hospital, Hemingway meet a nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky and propose to her, but she left him for another man. Hemingway was devastated and soon wrote the novel A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway was still nursing his injuries for the war so he returned to the United States and spent time in northern Michigan before taking a job at the Toronto Star. He was 20 years old at the time.

First Wife

It was in Chicago that Hemingway met Hadley Richardson, the woman who would become his first wife. The couple married and quickly moved to Paris, where Hemingway worked as a foreign correspondent for the Star.

Life in Europe

In Paris, Hemingway soon became a key part of what Gertrude Stein would famously call "The Lost Generation." With Stein as his mentor, Hemingway made the acquaintance of many of the great writers and artists of his generation, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce. In 1923, Hemingway and Hadley had a son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises was then publish and is widely considered Hemingway's greatest work. Soon after the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway and Hadley divorced, due in part to his affair with a woman named Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become Hemingway's second wife shortly after his divorce from Hadley was finalized. The author continued to work on his book of short stories, Men Without Women.

4 Wives later Pauline became pregnant and the couple decided to move back to America. After the birth of their son Patrick Hemingway in 1928, they settled in Key West, Florida, but summered in Wyoming. During this time, Hemingway finished his celebrated World War I . When he wasn't writing, Hemingway spent much of the 1930s chasing adventure: big-game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, deep-sea fishing in Florida. Pauline and Hemingway then got a divorce. During Spanish Civil War in 1937, Hemingway met his third wife Martha Gellhorn and gathered material for his next novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which would eventually be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Gellhorn and Hemingway soon purchased a farm near Havana, Cuba, which would serve as their winter residence. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Hemingway served as a correspondent and was present at several of the war's key moments, including the D-Day landing. Toward the end of the war, Hemingway met another war correspondent, Mary Welsh, whom he would later marry after divorcing Martha Gellhorn.

Death In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hemingway's body and mind were beginning to betray him. Recovering from various old injuries in Cuba, Hemingway suffered from depression and was treated for numerous conditions such as high blood pressure and liver disease. He wrote A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his years in Paris, and retired permanently to Idaho. There he continued to battle with deteriorating mental and physical health. Early on the morning of July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in his home in Ketchum, ID.

Cuba• The Old Man and the Sea is based in a small village on the northern coast of Cuba. • Cuba`s official name is the Republic of Cuba.• Cuba population is about 11 million.• The capital and largest city of Cuba is Havana or "La Habana" in Spanish.

• Cuba is a one-party Communist state and the president is Raúl Castro• Cuba`s national flower is the Butterfly lily.• The national bird is the Cuban Trogon. • The National tree is the Royal Palm• Flag: The triangle is a reference to liberty, equality and fraternity, while the red color of the triangle symbolizes the blood that would be

required to win independence. In the middle of the triangle, the white star symbolizes absolute freedom. The three blue stripes represent the eastern, central and western colonial regions, interspersed by white stripes signifying the purity and virtue of the Cuban people.

• Cuba has 15 Provinces: Pinar del Río, Artemisa, Mayabeque, City of Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo.

• Cuba`s legal voting age is 16

Cuba • The official name of Cuba is the Republic of Cuba.• Cuba has a population of 11 million people • The United States had a strong influence over the island until 1959,

when communist revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro, took over. The country remains one of the world's four self-declared communist states today, although Castro himself stepped aside in 2008 due to health complications.

• The official flower is White Mariposa. • The official bird is Tocororo. • Flag: It was first raised in the city of Cárdenas (Matanzas Province)in

1850; The three blue stripes represent the departments that the Island was divided into at that time. The two white stripes evoke the purity of the intentions for independence of the people. The equilateral triangle stands for freedom, equality and fraternity. Its red color is the announcement of the blood that would be necessary to shed in order to reach the independence. The white and lone star is the symbol of absolute freedom among the other people.

Cuba Coat of Arms Coat of Arms: (adopted 1906) A golden key symbolizes Cuba’s position at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and between the two Americas, while the rising sun represents a new nation. Three blue strips in the bottom left represent the three regions of the colonial period. In the bottom right, the royal palm (Cuba’s national tree) stands as a symbol of the nobility and the steadfastness of Cuban people while the mountains and the clear blue sky represent a typical Cuban landscape. The bundle of eleven staves behind the shield support it, and symbolizes the unity of the Cuban people in their struggle for freedom. The staves are crowned by a Phrygian, or Liberty cap on which there is a lone white star, symbolizing independence. Bordering the shield, to the right, there is an oak branch, and to the left, a laurel branch, representing strength and victory.

Fun Facts• Cuba is made up of the island of Cuba, Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) and many smaller islands.• Bacardi rum was originally manufactured in Cuba. However, the brand moved to Puerto Rico after

Fidel Castro’s takeover.• Cuba actually possesses one of the best health care systems anywhere in the world! The typical life

expectancy is equal to any other progressive nation.• Ernest Hemingway wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and  “the Old Man and the Sea” while he lived in

Cuba.• Cuba has one of the lowest birth rates in all of the Western Hemisphere.• The worlds’ smallest hummingbird and smallest frog are found in Cuba.• The Manjuari is a fish not found anywhere else in the world.• There are no animals or plants in Cuba that are poisonous or lethal to humans.• Cuba is the 17th largest island in the world.• The Vinales Valley, including Havana City, Cienfuegos and Trinidad, is a World Heritage Site.• Christmas did not become an official holiday in Cuba until 1997• Cuba is the most populated country in all of the Carribean, with more than 11 million residents.• The favorite sport is baseball.• Approximately 22% of the country is protected natural areas.• Cuba is famous worldwide for its cigars.• Pico Real del Turquino is the highest peak in Cuba.• Very few people are allowed internet access, and violators are given a 5 year prison sentence.• There are so many doctors in Cuba that they are often sent to other countries that have a shortage.

USA and Cuba The ongoing state of frozen relations between the United States and Cuba is rooted in political and economic acrimony that reached its apex in the early 1960s in the midst of the Cold War. In 1959, Fidel Castro and a group of revolutionaries overthrew the government of President Fulgencio Batista. As the new Cuban regime began forming trade deals with the Soviet Union, nationalizing U.S.-owned properties, and hiking taxes on American imports, the United States responded with escalating economic retaliation. U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower slashed the import quota for Cuban sugar, Cuba's chief industry. Washington then instituted a ban on nearly all exports to Cuba, which President John F. Kennedy expanded into a full economic embargo that included stringent travel restrictions. By the early 1960s, the United States had severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and was pursuing covert operations to overthrow the Castro regime. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, a botched CIA-backed attempt to topple the government, further inflamed Cuban mistrust and nationalism, leading to a secret agreement allowing the Soviet Union to build a missile base on the island. The United States discovered those plans in October of 1962, setting off a fourteen-day standoff. U.S. ships imposed a naval quarantine around the island and Kennedy demanded the destruction of the missile sites. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended with an agreement that the sites would be dismantled if the United States pledged not to invade Cuba (and a secret deal in which the United States agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey).Since the events of 1961–62, economic embargo and diplomatic isolation have been the major prongs of U.S. policy toward Cuba. Since the events of 1961–62, economic embargo and diplomatic isolation have been the major prongs of U.S. policy toward Cuba, even after the Soviet Union's collapse. Washington strengthened the embargo with the 1992 Cuba Democracy Act and 1996 Helms-Burton Act [PDF], which state that the embargo may not be lifted until Cuba holds free and fair elections and transitions to a democratic government that excludes the Castro's (Raúl is scheduled to leave office in 2018). It also calls for improvements in human rights, including ensuring a free press and releasing political prisoners. Some adjustments have been made to the trade embargo, however, so that U.S. medical supplies and agricultural products can be exported to the island under certain conditions. Companies in many U.S. states have brokered agricultural deals with Cuba in recent years. But the Cuban government estimates that more than fifty years of stringent trade restrictions has resulted in a loss of approximately $1.126 trillion.

USA and Cuba Today The United States and Cuba do not have formal diplomatic relations, and tough sanctions remain in place, but contacts between the states are growing. Certain U.S. restrictions have loosened during Obama's tenure. While the administration of George W. Bush strongly enforced the embargo against Cuba and sharply lowered the cap on family remittances (from $3,000 to just $300 in 2004), Obama reversed some of these policies during his first term, and even went further, allowing U.S. citizens to send remittances to nonfamily members in Cuba and to travel there under license for educational or religious purposes. The Obama administration has also resumed migration talks with Cuban officials in 2009 (after they were stalled during the previous administration). Regular six-month migration talks officially resumed in 2013. Americans with family living in Cuba can travel freely, however, and there is no cap on remittances for them.

Bibliography

• http://autenticacuba.com/quick-guide/#axzz3C1KZNblc

• http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113• http://autenticacuba.com/history/#axzz3C1KZNblc• http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113• http://

www.egs.edu/library/ernest-hemingway/biography/• http://

www.biography.com/people/ernest-hemingway-9334498#synopsis

• http://truenomads.com/2013/09/facts-about-cuba/• http://www.dtcuba.com/cubainfodetails.aspx?

c=9&lng=2• http://www.factmonster.com/country/cuba.html