Titles Of Some Hemingway's Short Stories example essay topic

Analysis of Hemingway's Narrative Technique as a Short- Story Writer For many years, the narrative technique of Hemingway has been under debate. Writers before him had already achieved works that bear the characteristics of the modern short story, and many of their works could stand today, with those of Hemingway and of writers like Faulkner, as representative short stories of modern times. What distinguishes Hemingway both from his predecessors and from his contemporaries, however, is the theory he produces to deal with the challenge of spatial limitation which every short story writer has to face: how can he say more than his space actually allows him to say? The principle of the iceberg, as the theory is called by Hemingway, leaves distinctive imprints on his short stories: a clipped, spare style, naturalistic presentation of actions and observations, heavy reliance on dramatic dialogue, and a pattern of connection extending backwards and forwards between the various stories. Because of the above, it is helpful to have some understanding of his theory. In Death in the afternoon, Hemingway (1932,191) points out that no matter how good a phrase or a simile a writer may have, he is spoiling his work out of egotism if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary.

The form of a work, according to Hemingway, should be created out of experience, and no intruding elements should be allowed to falsify that form and betray that experience. As a result, all that can be dispensed with should be pruned off: convention, embellishment, rhetoric. It is this tendency of writing that has brought Hemingway admiration as well as criticism, but it is clear that the author knew what he was doing when he himself commented on his aim: ... I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Everything you know you can estimate and it only strengthens your iceberg (cited in Moritz 1968,168).

One observation that can be made on Hemingway's narrative technique as shown in his short stories is his clipped, spare style, which aims to produce a sense of objectivity through highly selected details. Hemingway refuses to romanticize his characters. Being "tough" people, such as boxers, bullfighters, gangsters, and soldiers, they are depicted as leading a life more or less without thought. The world is full of such people, and it is unrealistic to put sublime thoughts into their heads. So Hemingway writes about them in their own ox like, instinctive, thoughtless language. To write about gangsters, for example, Hemingway adopts their own language, with its slang and vernacular, as can be found in "The Killers": "hot town"", what the hell", "talk to goddam much"", blow his head off."it ain't that".

In "After a Storm", the narrator as protagonist is probably a sea adventurer, so he tells the story in a language that is cold and void of emotion. It wasn't about anything, something about making punch, and then we started fighting and I slipped and he head me down kneeling on my chest and choking me with both hands like he was trying to kill me. Brother, it was some storm. It is his use of carefully selected details that enables Hemingway to achieve distinctive verbal economy, characterized flat, neutral diction, which make his stories simple, in a distinctive simple. Consider his use of "basic" vocabulary, and the heavy load of implication carried by such uncertain monosyllables as "fine" in "The Killers": We all know that, bright boy, "Max said, "Talk about something else. Ever go to the movies?" Once in a while", You ought to go to the movies more.

The movies are fine for a bright boy like you". Such flat, neutral diction is most frequently couched in simple declarative sentences, with repetition replacing subordination. Consider the following passage in "Big Two-Hearted River": There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees. The trunks of the trees went straight up or slanted towards each other. The trunks were straight and brown without branches. The branches were high above.

The simple sentences are typically Hemingway when they are linked by a chain of repeated "and", as can be observed in a sentence in "The Short Happy Life Francis Macomber": His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa., but she was not a great beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it and he knew it. The last sentences of a Hemingway story sometimes epitomize the tone of the story and are thus understatements worthy of note. Consider, for example, the last episode of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", in which Margot kneels over her husband's body with Wilson beside her. At every ironic remark by Wilson ("Of course it is an accident. I know that"), the woman repeats only two words: "Stop it", but they mean a lot. It is as if Hemingway wanted to say: "Stop talking anymore.

She knows herself, and the reader by now must understand. You need not explain". This tone of understatement, as can be detected in nearly all of Hemingway's short stories, give a sense of depth to what otherwise flat, two-dimensional portraiture. His short stories, na " ive and pointless as they may appear, are thus packed with emotion and atmosphere. The titles of some Hemingway's short stories are also significant. Take "In Another Country", for example.

Like Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms, the major in the story survived the war at the front only to find that his wife had died at home ("though no one expected her to die")", Death, as the major came to realize, was not a by-product of war but a universal condition. Just as life never permits us to say "farewell to arms" to life, there can never be "another country" where death is concerned. This implication, reinforced by the fact that the major "only looked out of the window" at the end of the story, makes the title highly suggestive and ironical. Another observation that can be made on Hemingway's narrative technique is his naturalistic presentation of actors and facts. Consider a passage in "Big Two-Hearted River": There was a tug on the line. Nick pulled against the taut line.

It was his first strike. Holding the now living rod across the current, he brought in the light with his left hand. The rod bent in jerks, the trout pumping against the current. Nick knew it was a small one. He lifted the rod straight up in the air, it bowed with the pull.

There is nothing more. There are no authorial reflections on the pleasure of fish ing. There is apparently but a series of sensory details so that the reader can see and hear everything with Nick Adam but cannot at first feel clearly what he feels and see what the story means. For in this particular story, as in many others, there is no overt attempt by the author to influence the reader. There is scarcely any exposition, analysis, or comment of any kind. What Hemingway offers his reader is a direct pictorial contact between eye and object; the rest is to be inferred by the reader.

Occasionally, there is some amount of exposition in a Hemingway story, but it is never from the author. Indeed, episodes and events are visualized through the eyes of those most directly involved. Observe, for example, the following passage in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", and see that the hunt is actually drawn from the animal's point of view. Thirty- five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened out along the ground... All of him, pain, sickness, hatred and all of his remaining strength, was tightening into an absolute concentration for a rush. He could hear the men talking and he waited, gathering all of himself into the preparation for a charge as soon as the men would come into the grass.

Such naturalistic presentation of actions and observations lead naturally to a further observation on Hemingway narrative technique: his use of the dramatic method, his reliance on dialogue for plot and characterization. What must first be said about Hemingway's dialogue is that it is made of seemingly casual conversational exchange, of scrappy speech. Yet, observe, in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", how such scrappy speech can reveal the situation of a character:" Last week he tried to commit suicide", one waiter said". Why?"He was in despair."What about?"Nothing."How do you know it is nothing?"He has plenty of money". And how it can form plot in "The Killers":" I'll tell you, "Max said.

"We " re going to kill a Swede. Do you know a big Swede named Ole Anderson?"Yes". ... ". What are you going to kill Ole And reson for?

What did he ever do to you?"He never had a chance to do anything to us. Al said from the kitchen". What are you going to kill him for, then?" George asked". We are killing him for a friend.

Just to oblige a friend, bright boy". The dialogue presented in these two stories is highly dramatic. Indeed, both "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" and "The Killers" are arranged very much like one-act plays, each with three or four scenes. The dialogue is practically ready for use by the actors, and the brief passages that are not dialogue can be taken as stage instructions.

In the essay "Hemingway in Italy", Mario Praz points out this distinctive feature of Hemingway's narrative technique: "Hemingway relates half a sentence, sketches the expression of a face, a twitching of the lips, a nothing; but this nothing throws light on a whole situation: a maximum of evocation with a minimum of means". (Mario Praz 1969,117.) However, it is in a series of short stories about Nick Adams, especially the plot less ones, that the narrative technique of Hemingway can be said to reach its height of complexity. In fact, some of these stories cannot be understood at all if read separately from other stories. Take, for example, "Big Two-Hearted River" where the "plot" is simply a trout fishing. Clearly, all the facts provided in the story do not help us at all because they are seemingly superficial and unsuggestive: Nick eats, Nick fishes, Nick sleeps. The overall impression is that of a pointless story told in a very native language.

But a reading of some other stories about Nick will improve our understanding. In "Now I Lay Me", for example, an unnamed American volunteer in the Italian army (actually Nick himself) told us about this sleeplessness". I had different ways of occupying myself while I lay awake. I would think of a trout stream I had fished along when I was a boy and fish its whole length very carefully in my mind; fishing very carefully under all the logs, all the turns of the bank, the deep holes and the clear shadow stretches, sometimes catching trout and sometimes losing them. I would stop fishing at noon to eat my lunch; sometimes on a log over the stream; sometimes on a high bank under a tree and I always ate my lunch very slowly and watched the stream below me while I ate.

Some nights, too, I made up streams, and some of them were very exciting, and it was like being awake and dreaming". We now can perceive what we have missed on our first reading of "Big Two-Hearted River". Nick's fishing trip, if it is to make sense, should be regarded as a sort of escape from his nightmarish experiences. And thus, things become clearer and clearer to us: "Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking... , other needs. It was all back of him".

Other plot less stories (some of which are not about Nick Adams), though they may not be "bare" and "pointless" as "Big Two- Hearted River" and may be regarded as completely by themselves, are also linked together by some sort of association. We do notice, for example, there is something in common between the sleeplessness of the middle-aged waiter in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place", the American soldier in "Now I Lay Me" and Nick in "A Way You " ll Never Be". The middle-aged waiter felt for those who "need a light for the night" and could go to sleep only "with daylight"; the American soldier told us that "if I could have a light I was not afraid to sleep because I knew my soul would only go out of me if I were dark"; and Nick told Captain Paravicini that he could not sleep "without a light or some sort". What all of them share, we can say, is a fear of Death and Nada.

Hemingway's narrative technique, then, is characterized by a curt style that emphasizes objectivity through highly selected details, flat and neutral diction, and simple declarative sentences capable of ironic understatements; by naturalistic presentation of actions and facts, with no attempt of any kind by the author to influence the reader; by heavy reliance on dramatic dialogue of clipped, scrappy forms for building plot and character; and by a sense of connection between some different stories so that a general understanding of all is indispensable to a better understanding of each. He thus makes the surface details suggest rather than tell everything they have to tell, hence the strength of his "iceberg". His short stories, accordingly, deserve the reader's second or even third reading.