That subject is much to broad, unless you want a 20 page paper, you must narrow it down. Some possible directions you could take your paper:
*What influenced his writing
*How he became what he was as a writer and person
*The parts of his life that we dont really see, the harder times which might have affected him as a person
Any of these can be tweaked to your preferences, but narrowing it down will really help you to make better thesis than just stumbling about with something so big and broad. It will also guide all of your research.
I just wrote a research paper throughout the last month with an MLA handbook guide and im just about finished with it, i'll be done with this entire semester in a week.
This is my 3rd year of doing these. Hope it helps and happy researching.