The Garden of Eden and The Garden of Eden: Edenic Imagery in Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden

This thesis attempts to prove that there is a definite link between Ernest Hemingway's last novel The Garden of Eden and the biblical Eden narrative of Genesis 2-3. Through the use of both the novel and the Bible, and many secondary pieces of scholarship, both critical and biographical, the thesis demonstrates a substantial connection between Hemingway's work and the larger issue of religion.

The thesis is arranged in three parts. The study starts with the very general and grows more specific as it progresses.

Chapter 1 is a study of Hemingway's religious history. Through the use of available biographical information, I analyze Hemingway's various religious stances throughout his life and other significant biographical events.

The second chapter starts with a discussion of what exactly is meant by the phrase "biblical Eden narrative." The chapter then discusses some of the Edenic imagery and themes in Hemingway's other work, especially the short stories and the novel The Sun Also Rises.

Chapter 3 then attempts to tie these two themes together. The chapter takes the established archetype and Hemingway's biography, and applies itself to a close reading of The Garden of Eden, discovering along the way, that Hemingway in fact had a great deal to say about reIigion and his relationship to it. More specifically, the thesis looks at the concepts of Adam and Eve in the Garden before and after the invasion of the serpent, the significance of the eating of the apple from the tree of knowledge and what is gained (knowledge) and what is lost (innocence).