Ernest Hemingway and His Growth as a Political Activist in the 1930s

Ernest Hemingway was one the United States’ most famous authors of the twentieth century.  Known primarily for his fiction, Hemingway was also a journalist and a political commentator. Although he was reluctant in his early years to share his political beliefs with a wide audience, as he grew older and the political events of the 1930s grew more ominous, Hemingway went to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War as a journalist. Although he began with a more neutral approach to the fighting in Spain, as the war wore on, Hemingway openly became a strong supporter of the Republican cause. He then began to work as a political commentator for the magazine Ken , openly espousing an antifascist view, clearly breaking with his previously neutral approach to world affairs, continuing this position with the publication of his world-famous novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls . By the 1940s Hemingway was internationally known and his political beliefs were an integral part of who he was.