My One True Sentence: A Reflection on Hemingway and the Hidden Self
I painted this rock after watching a PBS documentary on YouTube about Ernest Hemingway (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAQ5HfLLIk). The film left me thinking not only about Hemingway’s literary influence but also about the private pain he carried—and ultimately succumbed to. He was a disaster in his final years, tormented by mental and physical decline, and he died by suicide.
Hemingway lived hard. He drank heavily and suffered at least nine major concussions throughout his adventurous life. The rock I painted—left outside the Brick Road Bookstore in Ellensburg in July 2021—is an expression of the part of Hemingway he tried never to show. We all have a side like that if we are human, and perhaps we’re right to keep it hidden. It’s ugly. Vulnerable. Sometimes unspeakable.
And yet, Hemingway was adored. Revered. He reshaped American literature. He believed in showing rather than telling, in crafting writing that allowed readers to experience emotion through sparse, honest prose. Since then, English teachers like me have urged the same from the young minds in their classrooms.
He’s also remembered for this iconic piece of advice: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
You might expect, as an English teacher, that I’d be drawn to his writing style. But honestly, I never connected with it. Reading Hemingway felt like being drunk—disoriented, distanced, unmoored. And since I don’t enjoy being drunk, reading him was never enjoyable for me. That, ironically, proves how powerful a writer he was. I accept that about him, even if I don’t personally admire his work.
But what is the lesson I take from the life and death of Ernest Hemingway?
I’m not judging; I’m analyzing.
First, there was likely a genetic component to Hemingway’s struggles. Mental illness ran deep in his family—four of the eight members of his immediate family died by suicide. That tragic pattern suggests inherited vulnerability. Additionally, Hemingway was diagnosed with hemochromatosis, a genetic blood disorder that can cause fatigue, depression, and cognitive decline when iron builds up in the body and damages organs, including the brain. Though it was never treated in his lifetime, the disorder may have compounded his psychological suffering. Together, these inherited conditions created a biological storm that likely fueled both his physical deterioration and mental anguish.
Second, Hemingway’s numerous head injuries almost certainly contributed to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated concussions. Dr. Andrew Farah, in his book Hemingway’s Brain, documents at least nine major head traumas Hemingway sustained during his lifetime—from a World War I bomb blast to multiple car accidents, falls, and two plane crashes during an African safari in 1954. In one crash, Hemingway reportedly used his head to break open a jammed door to escape the wreckage. CTE is now known to cause memory loss, emotional instability, confusion, and depression—symptoms Hemingway exhibited in his later years. It’s a sobering reminder of how physical trauma can silently accumulate and shape a person’s life and death. I believe this knowledge should shift America’s love affair with football. But it hasn’t. (Learn more here: https://concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/what-is-CTE.)
So, what do I conclude? What is my one true sentence?
People are strange—most of us recognize what’s destroying us, acknowledge its harm, and still keep moving toward it, as if powerless to stop.
That’s the part of Hemingway I see in the rock—the side he tried to hide, but that still found its way into everything he wrote and eventually overtook him.
PLEASE RESPOND IN THE COMMENTS SECTION:
WHAT DO YOU THINK?? Do you do this? Why do we as a society or as individuals, continue behaviors that could literally destroy humanity?
