Ernest Hemingway has a talent for writing stories that captivate and test his readers’ imagination. He is famously known for writing in, what he calls, the Iceberg Technique. In other words, Hemingway was a simplistic author giving his readers only the “tip of the iceberg”, and leaving their minds to create meaning behind specific words while he just guides us with his stories dialogue, simple imagery, and symbols. In order to fully understand his stories, readers must piece the symbols and dialogue together to create the bigger picture! This was a common theme found in “Cat in the Rain” and “Hills Like White Elephants.”
In the short story, “Cat in the Rain”, Ernest Hemingway sets the scene of his fiction in a hotel room in Italy on a rainy day. When I first began reading this story I was rather bothered by the American wife nagging to her husband about a street cat stuck in the rain, while her husband was preoccupied reading a book. For example, when the wife says, “I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes” it sounds like she is a materialistic American that has a never-ending list of wants and needs. However, as I kept reading the story I realize that the sense of romance was completely absent between this husband and wife. One would expect an expression of love between a married couple while they’re away on a trip in Italy, especially since they are stuck indoors due to the bad weather. That’s when it struck me that Hemingway is trying to illustrate how a wife starves for attention and love in her failing marriage. And, in actuality, the short story isn’t really about the cat in the rain at all, but instead it is about the deteriorating marriage.
The Essay on “Cat in the rain” by Ernest Hemingway
... of the short story “Cat in the rain” by Ernest Hemingway. The discourse under analysis is a short story titled “Cat in the rain”. It is written ... a hotel in Italy. The wife wants to get a cat that she saw under the rain, while her husband doesn’t seem to care ... can also notice that when the American wife talks to her husband she is referred as “wife” and when she talks to the ...
Many people that read “Hills Like White Elephants” for the first time may think they just read a story about a young couple waiting at a train station. The entire story is based on the conversation between the man and women. So what sounds like a young couple is just waiting for their train, enjoying the scenery, and drinking some beer is really a short story that relies on symbolism to execute the theme of choosing to live selfishly and deal with the guilt, or choosing a more difficult yet selfless path of life. Furthermore, similar to “Cat in the Rain”, the sense of romance between this couple seems to be deteriorating as well; especially when the female says “…that’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?” In this scene she seems bored of the relationship she shares with her significant other.
Hemingway uses symbols throughout both of the short stories to give his readers clues about the message he is trying to relay without actually saying the message. For example, The cat in “Cat in the Rain” is a symbol of compassion and affection: emotions that the woman is longing for from her own husband. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her” this quote said by the American wife reveals how she wants to show love and compassion and receive the same back. Also, the wife’s eagerness to save cat from the rain can be seen as a symbol of her determination to save her marriage. The wife is willing to go through the heavy rain storm to save the cat, which represents affection and compassion, and can be associated with her need to save her marriage with her husband. The rain was also used as a tool in Hemingway’s symbolism to confine the American couple to their room, thereby allowing the author to illustrate the interaction between the husband and wife and further demonstrating their deteriorating marriage. Another symbol of confinement is when Hemingway describes the female in the story as “the American wife” this displays how she is confined to that label that society has placed her in, much like how the cat is confined to under the green table “trying to make herself so compact so that she would not be dripped on.”
The Term Paper on Short Story Analysis: Cat in the Rain
It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, which she wants to protect from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel, which is kept by an old Italian who really seems to do everything to please that woman, and wants to get the cat, it is gone. After returning to the hotel room, she starts a ...
In “Hills Like White Elephants”, Hemingway uses the setting to help convey his theme. For instance, Hemingway presents the reader with two contrasting hills as part of the scene. One of the hills is dull, desolate, uninviting and barren, it was very much like a desert; “it had no shade and no trees.” The other hill, however, is beautiful, plentiful in nature, and abundant. It had “fields of grain and tress along the banks of the Ebro River.” These two hills can be associated with the two contrasting decisions that the girl must choose from: whether to keep her baby, or have an abortion. For instance, the barren hill can represent sterility while the beautiful and plentiful in nature one represents fertility. In addition, the train tracks are set in between the hills, symbolizing how Jig, the girl, is in the middle “weighing” her options. Lastly, the fact that the station these two characters are waiting at isn’t a final destination is another symbol on its own. Planted in the middle of a desolate valley, the station is merely a stopping point between Barcelona and Madrid, where the travelers must decide where to go, or in this case, they must decide whether to go to their destination together and continue their relationship or not.
Both short stories not only had similar themes, but they also shared similar symbols and meanings to these symbols! They both taught a lesson of living with your life choice and the hardships of a broken romance. Hemingway conveyed these two stories solely by using imagery and symbols, yet he still was able to capture his readers’ minds and convey the same hidden message to every one of them. That is true art.
