Hemingway reproduces the genuine...

[Tom]

Hi

Could you please shed some light on the given sentence?

"Hemingway reproduces the genuine features of the hard countenance of the age."

Thanks in advance

Tom

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

The word countenance usually refers to a face. We often talk about the features of a face in order to describe someone, but lots of other things also have features.

In this sentence countenance is used figuratively to refer to what life "looked like" in Hemingway's era (age) and the sentence comments on how realistically Hemingway portrayed this difficult era.

Amy