In his frictional story, “Cat in the Rain,” Ernest Hemingway sets the scene for his fiction in a hotel room in Italy on a rainy day. On the first reading of this short story it can be easily interpreted as a wife nagging her husband, who is lying in bed preoccupied reading a book. The young married American’s being in a foreign country on business or pleasure, (Hemingway does not say) one would expect that the expression of love would be more prominent even more so on a rainy day, however, this is not evident in Hemingway’s story. What Hemingway does illustrate is how an “American wife” feels starved for attention and love in her failing marriage. 

He uses a cat as a symbol of compassion an affection to express the woman’s need for these emotions. Her frustration with her husband, whom does not readily allow her to physically share these feelings with him, also becomes very evident in the story. Hemingway uses the heavy rains as a tool to confine the American couple to their room, thereby, allowing him to display the interaction between the couple and further demonstrate their deteriorating marriage.

In the story, the “American girl” sees the cat through her window “crouched under one of the dripping green tables,” and immediately feels the need to rescue it. Here is where Hemingway begins to use symbols to express the girl’s determination to save her faltering marriage. He shows the girl’s eagerness to go through the heavy rains to save the cat. The cat represents what she wants in her marriage, affection and compassion, and the rain signifies the struggles she is willing to go through to better her marriage, even if it means getting wet in the process. The “American girl” believes this is a challenge she alone has to endure. Thus, when she announces that she is going to rescue the cat from the rain and her husband George offers to be the hero in the rescue attempt, even though it was a halfhearted offer, she quickly replies “No, I’ll get it.”

With the help of the maid she goes through the rain in search of the cat but when she gets to where she saw it last it has disappeared. The “American wife” becomes even more irritated with herself and her husband when she returns to the room empty handed. She desperately wanted the cat, “I wanted it so much,” but more so, she wanted change in her marriage and change in her appearance. She was tired of her boyish look and felt she needed to be more feminine, “I get so tired of looking like a boy.” However, George was contented with how things were. He barley even shifted from his book when she began scrutinizing her appearance. The only comment of support he could offer was, “You look pretty darn nice,” but she required more for herself.

The cat, even though symbolic, would have allowed her to express her feelings of affection and compassion, “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.” George, being insensitive to her needs, did not even offer himself as an outlet for her emotions. Instead his remark to her was, “Oh, shut up and get something to read,” as she continued to utter her discomforts in her appearance and her femininity.

Hemingway’s fictional story does have a surprising ending when the maid brings the “American wife” a “big tortoise-shell cat”. The “American wife” receives what she wanted, an outlet to express her affections and compassions, but in fact, it would not help her marriage. The cat was just a symbol of what she wanted from her husband, George. Unless she can convince him to be more open with her and more lovingly expressive with her, her marriage will still falter. 

"Cat in the Rain" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), which was first published in 1925 as a part of the short story collection In Our Time. The story is about an American man and wife on vacation in Italy.

Contents

  [hide] 

·         1 Background

·         2 Reception

·         3 Plot Summary

·         4 Analysis

o    4.1 The American Wife

o    4.2 George (the Husband)

o    4.3 Selfishness

·         5 Writing Style

o    5.1 The "Iceberg Theory"

o    5.2 The Iceberg Theory in Cat in the Rain

·         6 In the Media

o    6.1 "Cat in the Rain": The Movie

·         7 References

[edit]Background

In the biography Hemingway's Cats, the author writes: “["Cat in the Rain"] was a tribute to Hadley, who was dealing with the first year of marriage, the loneliness it entailed, and her deep desire for motherhood. According to biographer Gioia Diliberto…Hemingway based the story on an incident that happened in Rapallo in 1923. Hadley was two months pregnant when she found a kitten that had been hiding under a table in the rain. ‘I want a cat,’ she [told Hemingway], ‘I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have hair or any fun I can have a cat.”[1]

[edit]Reception

"Cat in the Rain" was first published in New York in 1925, as a part of the short story collection In Our Time. In Our Time, which derives its title from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer ("Give us peace in our time, O Lord"), was Hemingway’s first published work. It contains notable short stories such as “The End of Something”, “Soldier’s Home”, and "Big Two-Hearted River”.

When it was published, In Our Time received acclaim from many notable authors of the period, including "Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald" who praised "its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period."[2] In a New York Times book review from October 1925, titled Preludes to a Mood, the reviewer praised Hemingway for his use of language, which he described as "fibrous and athletic, colloquial and fresh, hard and clean; his very prose seems to have an organic being of its own. Every syllable counts toward a stimulating, entrancing experience of magic."[3] Author D.H. Lawrence, who is notable for his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, also reviewed In Our Time. Lawrence wrote that In Our Time was "a series of successive sketches from a man's life...a fragmentary novel...It is a short book: and it does not pretend to be about one man. But it is. It is as much as we need know of the man's life. The sketches are short, sharp, vivid, and most of them excellent."[4] Another reviewer commented that Hemingway's writing illustrated that the author had "felt the genius of Gertrude Stein's [his longtime mentor and friend] Three Lives and had obviously been influenced by it."[5]

[edit]Plot Summary

“Cat in the Rain” recounts the story of an American couple on vacation in Italy. The entirety of the story’s action takes place in or around the couple’s hotel, which faces the sea as well as the "public garden and the war monument".[6] Throughout the story it rains, leaving the couple trapped within their hotel room. As the American wife watches the rain, she sees a cat crouched “under one of the dripping green tables.”[6] Feeling sorry for the cat that “was trying to make herself so compact she would not be dripped on,” the American wife decides to rescue "that kitty.”

On her way downstairs, the American wife encounters the innkeeper, with whom she has a short conversation. In this encounter, Hemingway specifically emphasizes how the wife "likes" the innkeeper, a word that is repeated often throughout the stories of In Our Time: "The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands".[6]

When the American wife finally arrives outside that cat is gone, and, slightly crestfallen, she returns to the room alone. The American wife then has a (rather one-sided) conversation with her husband about the things she wants with her life, particularly how she wants to settle down (as opposed to the transient vacation life the couple has in the story): “I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And 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.”[6] However, her husband, George, continues to read his books, acting dismissively of what his wife “wants.” The story ends when the maid arrives with a “big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body,”[6] which she gives to the American wife. This ending is both abrupt and ambiguous, and “hinges on the mystery of the tortoise-shell cat's identity. We do not know whether it is the "kitty" the wife spotted outside and so do not know whether she will be pleased to get it."[7]

A New York Times book reviewer comments on the plot of the very short story, writing “that is absolutely all there is, yet a lifetime of discontent, of looking outside for some unknown fulfillment is compressed into the offhand recital.”[8]

[edit]Analysis

[edit]The American Wife

The “American wife” is the protagonist of the story. Despite being the main character, the "American wife" remains unnamed during the course of the story. Throughout the story, the American wife becomes increasingly child-like. While at the beginning of the story, she is referred to as the “American wife,” she becomes the “girl” as the story progresses: “As the American girl passed the office…Something felt very small and tight inside the girl”.[6] The wife’s immaturity is also shown in the dialogue of the story. Several times she refers to the "kitty" ("I'm going down and get that kitty"/ "I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap")[6] instead of the more mature "cat" that would be expected from a grown woman.

Another important aspect of the American wife is her loneliness. Her husband treats her dismissively, although she desperately desires to be loved. She desires a stable home life, instead of a life of travel, where she can enjoy the basic luxuries of a husband and potential family, as well as a “kitty to sit on [her] lap” and “a table with [her] own silver and…candles.”[6] Some scholars have even suggested that the American wife is pregnant in the story, and if she is not, scholars have argued that she at least desires to be pregnant.

[edit]George (the Husband)

Throughout the story, George, the protagonist’s husband, is painfully unaware of his wife’s needs. Although at the beginning of the story he offers to retrieve the cat, “‘I’ll do it,’ her husband offered from the bed,”[6] through the remainder of the story he acts contemptuously towards his wife. When the American wife tells George what she wishes for her life, he responds in an irritated way, telling her to go "'shut up and get something to read.'"[6] George’s actions in the story are contrasted to those of the innkeeper, who sends a cat to the American wife at the end of the story when she cannot find the “cat in the rain.” The American wife even comments that, “She like[s] the way [the innkeeper] wanted to serve her.”[6]

[edit]Selfishness

Both the American wife and George display tremendous selfishness throughout the course of the story. George continues to read and ignore his wife, while the American wife complains about all the things she does not have and wishes she did. The selfishness of these two characters is contrasted to the “Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument.”[6] While the two Americans can only think about themselves, while the Italians, who have experienced the war, have a better perspective and understanding of life, illustrated through their trips to see the monument to those who have died.

[edit]Writing Style

[edit]The "Iceberg Theory"

Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker writes that Hemingway learned from his short stories how to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities, and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth".[9] The style has become known as the iceberg theory, (or sometimes the "theory of omission,") because in Hemingway's writing the hard facts float above water while the supporting structure operates out of sight.[10] Hemingway himself is responsible for the naming of this theory, writing in his non-fiction work Death in the Afternoon: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."[11] As evidenced from this quote, Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface.

Hemingway learned how to achieve this stripped-down style from his friend Ezra Pound, who, according to Hemingway, "had taught him more 'about how to write and how not to write' than any son of a bitch alive".[12] Similarly, Hemingway was influenced by his friend and fellow author James Joyce who taught him "to pare down his work to the essentials".[13] A third important influence on Hemingway was American author Gertrude Stein, who Hemingway met during his time in Paris during the 1920s.

[edit]The Iceberg Theory in Cat in the Rain

This "Iceberg theory" is evident in Hemingway’s short story "The Cat in the Rain": "Though Hemingway learned as a professional reporter how to report facts as they were, he felt that there was a limit to representing reality. This is what he conveys through Cat in the Rain."[14] The idea that there is "something below the surface" to this story is particularly evident in relation to the cat. The cat is not just a cat. Instead, as Professor of English Shigeo Kikuchi writes, the animal’s nature is shrouded in mystery: "The moderately distant location of the room and the two words suggestive of the cat’s size, have the effect of concealing from the reader the cat’s true size and sort [which makes] it impossible to identify the “cat in the rain.”[15] But what does the cat represent? One explanation that scholars have offered is that the cat is a physical manifestation of the wife’s desire for a child: “The cat stands for her need of a child.”[16]

Other examples of things being more than they appear abound throughout the story. In one line, Hemingway mentions: “A man in a rubber cape…crossing the empty square to the café.”[17] Although this character at first might seem innocuous, it was not Hemingway’s style to add meaningless interludes to his stories. Therefore some scholars have taken this character to represent a “rubber condom” which the use of “prevents her from becoming pregnant, which was her main dream.”[18]

Cat in the Rain – Critique/Summary

Summary:

The story “Cat in the Rain” written by Ernest Hemingway is about a couple that stay in Italy. The woman in the story sees a cat abandoned outside in the rain under a table and wants to get him and bring him into her hotel room. When she finally convinces her husband to let her go out and get him, it is gone. She returns to the room with out a cat and her husband is still propped up on a pillow reading his book. He insists she lay down and read a book, when she starts talking about how much she wants a cat, how she wants it to be sitting in her lap as she brushes her hair. A short while later one of the hotel workers who helped her try to find the cat the first time had discovered his presence and bought him to her.

Critique:

The story “Cat in the Rain” talks about a cat stuck outside in the rain, but I don’t think that this is what Hemingway meant when he wrote this story. I like how Hemingway started the story off with describing the setting, where the two Americans were and how they were the only ones stopping in to this particular hotel. It gives the reader something to picture right off the bat. I think that Hemingway could have described the characters in more detail to get a better understanding of them. Also I think the in-depth description of the hotel wasn’t necessary I would of liked to see the description put in to the characters more. I really liked the way Hemingway’s character the American Woman acted because it felt very real to something in real life. The way Hemingway portrayed the woman at first was more along the lines of a nagging wife, but when she goes to the window to see the cat her persona changes, I liked this because it made me get into her head and see how she was feeling Hemingway started in a unique way because I very rarely see a story start like this, and he pulled it off very well. The description of the location and setting pulled me right into the story, I liked this because it kept me interested and wanting to keep reading. I think the title that was given to the wife as the “American Wife” lacks individuality and has no special meaning, signifying that she is just a mere American Woman and nothing else. I think that the title Hemingway chose was to portray that the wife felt that she was condoned to George her husband and that he never really paid much attention to her. This lack of attention makes her feel that she does not have much freedom to express herself and keeps much of her feelings inside. She definitely feels the restraint that George has put on her, and in order to please him, she attempts to make herself compact just like the cat. I think this is why Hemingway makes it seem that she is so attached and drawn to helping the cat out of the rain.

In Cat In The Rain, Ernest Hamingway illustrates the problems that an American couple have, and symbolizes the loneliness and protection need of the American woman by a cat which she sees huddled under a dripping table outside their Paris hotel, and attempts to rescue . Her husband, George, spends the entire story curled up in bed reading a book, paying little attention to his wife.

The American woman is struggling because this marriage can't meet her expectations. The woman wants a stable home where she is loved and respected by her husband. But her husband doesn't share the same idea and he is content with their current lifestyle. The woman wants to have the cat so that she can have it sit on her lap and purr when she strokes it. She wants o eat with her own silver and she wants candles. She wants new clothes and wants it to be spring. Her wishes may seem like vanities, but the other hand these "wishes" are symbolic of a deeply-felt human need with which we can sympathize

The hotel keeper's attitude towards her is like a father. It is quite different from her husband's senseless behaviour. When she is going out to get that cat, her husband only offers to go, however he doesn't insist, that means he dosn't pay attention to her wife's desires. But the hotel keeper actually prevents her from the rain, so that is the reason why she liked him. Hotel keeper gives her what she needs, respect and protection. And this makes her feel small and important at the same time.

The author focuses on the American man's dominance over his wife. Even she doesn't like her hair, she doesn't change it. She wants to look like a woman however her husband is happy...

The sample of emotive prose, which has been chosen for stylistic analysis, is a short story "Cat in the rain" by Ernest Hemingway. It has been chosen because it is suggestive and contains a definite psychological implication. The story is interesting from the point of view of the author's approach to conveying the main idea to the mind of the reader. It is always implicit and remains unspoken. It is the reader himself who should find it behind the simple, at first sight, description of the events.

Hemingway presents only sequence of outward actions and leaves the reader to imagine more than the words themselves can convey. This is characteristic of Hemingway's manner of writing he is famous for.

The author was born in 1899 in Chicago. His family was rich and well provided. His father’s democratic views influenced Earnest greatly, but ignorance of bourgeois society lighted up a protest in the writer. The young man early left his family’s home. Working as a reporter in the newspaper he came in touch with cruelty of American life and decided to go in the Army. Since this time his searches began. He saw lives of different circles, people of different nationalities.

The author let us analyze a lot of characters and events. His literature was his own interests in hunting, love, fishing, military services and so on. Hemingway avoided conventional narration in his stories. He tried to make the reader understand his ideas by sketching in vivid scenes his own experience. The story "Cat in the rain" reflects the writer's approach to life in general. It is about an American couple that is spending their vacations in Italy. The writer leaves the surface comparatively bare: the meaning is plain and simple.

A close study of the story for the purpose of examining its style involves a careful observation and a detailed description of the language phenomena at various levels.

The text of the story is not homogeneous: it is interrupted with the elements of description and the characters’ dialogues. The writer’s strong sense of place is revealed by the use of foreignisms: “Si, si, signora, brutto tempo” and so on. The very structure of the story adds to the effect of implication but the actual meaning of what is going on is not clear at the beginning of the story, as the feelings suggested by the writer are not precisely determined.

The plot of the story is meant to begin before the narration itself starts. There isn't any preface to the story; the reader knows nothing about the couple’s past. Hemingway shows his characters in a certain period of their lives - his favorite device.

The story begins with the description of the hotel where they stayed. At first sight everything seems to be ideal: a cozy room on the second floor, lovely view from the window. And only the description of the rain evokes the mood of sadness in the reader. To bring home to the reader this air of melancholy, which is felt when it is raining, the author uses such stylistic device as parallel constructions: "The rain dripped from the palm trees. The water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain ". One can notice that nouns rain, pools, sea belongs to one semantic sphere - the water. This stylistic device is employed by the author to create the atmosphere of inevitability. One cannot hide from the rain. Water is everywhere: it is on the ground, it is pouring from the heavens as though the nature weeps for something. All this pricks the reader's ears and makes him think that something will happen with this American couple. In this abstract the author also resorts to the help of stylistic device known as alliteration, namely the repetition of the sounds -r-and -l-: "Rain dripped from the palm trees, the sea broke in a long line in the rain" which brings the necessary measured rhythm into the utterance. Skillfully combining these three stylistic devices the writer obtains the needed effect: within three sentences he gives an exhaustive picture of one of the melancholic rainy evenings when time goes by so slowly. 

It is also the syntax that serves for this purpose.

The author resorts to parallel constructions consisting of short simple sentences to create a downcast atmosphere of dull, monotonous evening and at the same time presentiment and alarming anticipation of something that is likely to happen in the nearest time. In such deadly boring evening the American girl saw a cat in the rain. “The cat sat under the table and tried to make herself so compact that she wouldn't be dripped on”. Suddenly the girl felt strong inexplicable desire to get this cat. May be she just pitied it. It must have been a miserable spectacle: wet, homeless cat crouching under the table in the empty square. The girl decided to go down and get this cat. Here the reader gets acquainted with her husband. He is lying on the bed and reading and he has no desire to go out in such weather for the cat his wife wants so much. Although he proposed it but sooner out of politeness and he did not insist. “Don’t get wet”- he said, but it wasn't a care - he said it just to say something. Later the reader can see that the hotelkeeper gives the girl more attention than her own husband. That's why she liked the owner of the hotel so much. Emphasizing the girl's attitude to the hotel-keeper the author resorts to repetition: "She liked the deadly serious way he received any complains. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotelkeeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands ". Unconsciously comparing him with her indifferent husband she liked him because he displayed a kind of attention to her. He always bowed seeing her. His attention can be explained by the fact that he was the owner of the hotel and it was his due to take care of his clients, especially if they were foreigners. He just wanted them to feel comfortable and convenient. He displayed paternal care and attention to her. May be the girl was disposed to the hotelkeeper because he reminded her of her own father who was always kind to her. Anyway, it was so pleasant for the girl to feel sympathy and care. The author says: " The pardon made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance". That is the reason she liked him. He made her feel important. He listened to her every word and request, and she knew that her every little whim will be fulfilled, and that can not be said about her husband who never worried about her feelings.

Quite the opposite picture the reader can see when the girl went upstairs in her room. The only reaction of her husband was the question if she got the cat. He did not notice her disappointment. Suddenly the girl felt unhappy. Through her sad monologue the writer shows all her dissatisfaction with the life, beginning with the absence of the cat and ending with her short clipped hair. "I get so tired of it“- she says about her hair, but it is not just looking like a boy that she is tired of. She is tired of a boring life, of her indifferent and selfish husband who remains deaf to her despair. She does not say directly that she is not satisfied with her family life. But the reader can see it in the context.

She says: "I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I feel. I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her". She wants to have long hair to look solid and respectable. She wants to have children and her own house, which she associates with silver and candles. And the cat in her dreams is a symbol of refuge, something that she corresponds with such notions as home and coziness.

The author underlines the idea of dissatisfaction using repetition. In importunate repetition of the construction "I want" the reader can see the girl's emotional state. This stylistic device discloses her excitement; she is on the verge of hysterics. The emotional tension increases. "And I want to eat at a table with my own silver, and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush up my hair out in front of the mirror and I want the kitty and I want some new clothes ". Here is an example of polysyndeton. The abundant use of the conjunction and makes the members of enumeration more conspicuous and also serves to emphasize the girl's state of confusion. 

The syntax also contributes to the effect of extreme agitation of the girl. The writer deliberately avoids the use of commas in the girl's speech to show uninterrupted, without any pauses flow of speech, which testifies to her emotional excitement.

This abstract may be regarded as the climax of the story. Here the emotional tension reaches its highest degree. The girl throws out all her discontent, all her negative emotions which she accumulated during her joint life with her husband. Then the peak of the climax comes: "Oh, shut up and get something to read" says her husband. Estrangement grows between two people. The girl feels insulted and stays looking out of the window. It is still raining. The rain is present during the whole narration. It is the silent witness of the running high drama. The rain pierces the plot of the story and has a symbolic meaning. It symbolizes their unfortunate family life.

The girl stubbornly continues: "Anyway I want a cat - she says. -I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat". Suddenly she realizes that her marital life was not successful and the cat for her is the only possibility to feel satisfaction. But her husband does not care about it. He even does not listen to her. Probably he never mused over their joint life. To the end of the story the author gratifies the girl's wish and she gets the cat. But it is not that very cat from the street. It is a fat replete Tomcat sent by the hotelkeeper. Then the writer impartially leaves the reader to guess further development of the events. But it is this very device that makes the reader realize that the girl won't be satisfied, that she never be happy with her husband. And this big tortoise-shell cat does not symbolize home and coziness; it won't bring her happiness, sooner it symbolizes missed opportunity.

The main stylistic device the story is built upon is suspense. The author deliberately postpones the denouement keeping the reader in pressing anticipation. Hemingway's wonderful mastery of the language permits him to keep the reader tense till the denouement. Although everything seems to lie on the surface, but indeed the reader should make a great effort to derive the unspoken reference from the description of the facts. Hemingway's scrupulous attention to details permits him to introduce the hidden idea between the lines, without saying it directly. Hemingway's talent lies in deep psychological insight into human nature.

Cat in the Rain, by Ernest Hemingway 

Analysis and symbolism

In "Cat In The Rain", the American girl's husband treats her with a lack of affection, apathy and indifference. When she starts telling him all the things she desires, he just tells her to shut up. She wasn't asking much, simple things, little things, and most of the times little things are what count most. He thinks she's acting like a spoiled child, he doesn't understand her, and he makes no efforts to make her feel loved, wanted, to make her feel like a real woman. 

She claims to feel like a boy, because she needs physical and emotional attention, which her husband doesn't provide her. 

The hotel keeper was the man who made her feel important, she admires his will to serve her, he gave her the attention she needed and that she's not getting from her husband. In other words, he made her feel like a lady. 

Just like the cat, the American girl feels lonely and she needs to be "pet". She hides from the rain, she tries to keep safe and dry. So, in my opinion, the girl is the cat, her husband is the rain that makes her feel unsafe and unfulfilled, and the hotel keeper is the table under which she hides. She needs someone to hold her, to love her and take care of her, and those are qualities that her husband doesn't have.

__________________________________________________ ________________________

The Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway is a story of an American couple in Italy. Hemingway portrays this couple as having differences of priorities and also a difference in the amount of attention they give to one another. This story takes place over a short few hours, and even though we only know these characters for a brief period of time, we can predict the type of relationship they have. Most likely if we observed George and his wife a week or so from this day, their conversation would not be about a cat, but the underlying causes would be very similar.

George and his wife (also known as the American girl) are in their hotel room in Italy. George seems very ******* and comfortable sitting on the bed reading. His wife on the other hand gives us the idea that she is very bored, not only in the hotel room, but with their relationship, and herself, her physical appearance especially. Wanting to be anywhere besides stuck in a hotel room do to the rain, the American girl looks out the ******** Outside there is the sea, a public garden, and a war monument. Out in the garden we are also told that there are palm trees and benches for visitors to sit on. The Italians also liked to come and visit this garden because of 

. . . 

The hotel owner then goes on to have a brief conversation with her about the bad weather they are having. By this we again see the hotel owner giving George’s wife the attention she wishes to have from him. George and his wife have forgotten those things, which had brought them together in the first place. 

They walk back to the hotel doors and the maid takes down the umbrella as George’s wife heads back up to her room. As soon as his wife says it was gone and follows by complaining about the poor kitty, he picks the book back up again. Anyone that crossed her path every so slightly and recognized her was noticed and greatly appreciated. His wife complains about her shout boyish haircut, and for once George has been giving her his undivided attention. ” 

We can see from this conversation that George is used to his wife’s unusualiaty and quite bothersome adventures. George also offers his wife help that he knows she will not take, after all he has not intention of getting off the bed to leave his reading. She goes on talking of having her hair long enough to put up in a bun, while a kitty sits on her lap to stroke. The pardone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. “Excuse me, the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora,” said the maid. These two need to have time with each 

An analysis of one of his short stories.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on the 21th of July 1899. He died in 1961, 62 years old. As a seventeen-year-old boy he started as a writer in a newspaper office, and that was the beginning of his great career. He had a predilection for understatement, which was, and is, not a very usually way to give a text the meaning it depends on. But all the way he managed this technique very well, and his texts actually grown bigger at it. Almost every novels of his have been film, and many of the themes in them are still important today. Now I will write a short analysis of one of his short stories, called "Cat in the rain", and this one also has a theme, which draws its lines to the community of today. 

When I read this short story for the first time, I did not really understand the meaning of it. It is a text filled with nothing, and at the same time so much. 

An American couple is arriving a hotel in Italy, were they are going to spend their vacation. After reading the short description of the way it is there by spring- and summertime, you got a long description of the landscape around the hotel at that moment, and there is a feeling of an unknown, suppressive and empty place. The writer is always repeating the fact that it's raining, and everything seems to be hopeless. Apart from the American couple, the only sign of life you reach in the first paragraph is a waiter that stands in the doorway, looking out at the rain. 

In the next picture you can see the American woman, who is also looking out at the rain, but from the hotelroom-window. She suddenly discovers a cat, which is trying to keep dry under a table, and she wants to bring it inside. Behind her, her husband is "lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed." He is reading a book.

Still, there is a very relaxed situation. Noting unusually to find, just an ordinary scene of an ordinary couple in an ordinary hotelroom. The atmosphere is very monotonous and empty.

When the man's wife says she's going outside, her husband wants to go instead, be helpful to her. But she says no, and walks out to find the cat by herself. When she's downstairs, she meets the hotelkeeper, and you know by once that she really likes him - the next paragraph tells you that; every sentence starts with "she liked" - something about him. And the first sentence in the next paragraph starts with "liking him she opened the door", which is a very unusual way to open any sentence at all!

The wife walks out to bring the cat inside. After her a room-maid is coming up, holding an umbrella over her, and she thinks that the hotelkeeper must have sent her. When she looks under the table where the cat was hiding, she finds that it's gone. "Suddenly she felt disappointed".

In the following sentences there is something to notice; the wife is no longer a wife, but a girl. The maid asks her if she has lost something; - "There was a cat", said the American girl. Still, it's not that easy to find out why the writer suddenly is changing her "name". When she again passes through the doorway the padrone is bowing from his desk. This movement makes her "feel very small and at the same time so important". And "she had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance".

Here you are again; a young girl, who thinks of her dad or uncle, who wants them to protect her. And you start wondering about her relationship to her husband, who is laying at the bed, upstairs, reading a book, and do not have time for anything else but that. After she has returned to the hotelroom, still sad after the poor missing cat in the rain, her husband puts down the book. He starts talking to her, and she talks back in a way not unlike a child. She repeats again and again that she wanted that kitty so hard, but she is not sure why. Then her husband starts reading again, and when she walks over to the mirror and starts evaluating herself, he's not listening to her. I get this feeling of his indifference towards her, and I do not believe the big meaning of his words. While she's standing there studying herself from side to side she reel off all the things she wants in her life. And when she looks out the window she finds out that she wants it to be springtime. All the way while she's talking, he is reading, only answering a few times for being a little bit interested, which he is not.

The story ends with someone knocking at the door. It is the maid who's coming, and in her hands she's holding the little kitty, saying "the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora."

Even if this is a story that seems to have no contents at the surface, it's laying so much under it that you cannot see. We have this American couple. The wife is maybe the most interesting one. When you first hear about her, you probably think of her as a very grown up and mature lady. But soon you change this picture of her over to a younger lady, almost a little child. I do not think she is in love with the hotelkeeper. I rather think she looks at him like an uncle or a dad that will take care of her. 

When she finds that the cat is gone she feels very disappointed, but all the way she do not know why the cat is so important to her. I may think that the reason of her behavior is a result of being pushed into the grown up world to fast. She does not seem like that women she tries to imitate. Her husband, on the other hand, is a complete grown up. He is finished wondering about the worlds' many mysteries, everything is ordinary to him. He has seen them before. Therefore he thinks she is silly, when she wants all this new stuff all the time.

She mentioned this ting about springtime once, and I wonder if it also can have something to do with their marriage. I mean if she wanted a new springtime for her and her husband, or maybe only for herself?

Regard the name of this short story: "Cat in the Rain". It is okay that it is a cat in the rain in it, but I really wonder if it could not be the two of them??

Cat In The RaIn - HemIngway

To marry someone is to accept to live beside this loved person for the rest of the life. While time gives the opportunity to make the beloved happier everyday, it can also have disastrous consequences such as monotony. When a couple arrives at this sad situation, once will do anything to get a little excitements; whether by distracting his mind or worse, flirting with someone else. "Cat in the rain", written by Ernest Hemingway, presents a couple who lost their last spark of love. I will show the loneliness of the woman, her attraction for another man, and try to interpret her desires.

From the beginning of the text, a lot of spatial boundaries are drawn. These boundaries ultimately evoke a claustrophobic sense of isolation, especially for the American wife. Being the only American couple in an Italian hotel, the couple is isolated on a cultural level. The second sentence shows also cultural isolation: "They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on the way to and from their room" (Hemingway 129). The womanstanding at the window is also a sign of solitude. Instead of describing the relation between the American wife and her husband, Hemingway describes the view from the hotel's room as if there was nothing to say about them or their mutual love. By proposing to get the kitty for his wife, the husband dos not intend to serve her, but more assumes his duty of husband and gentleman. He gives her a choice, signaling his opposite desire. She refuses his offer as if she didn't expect anything from him anymore: "No, I'll get it" (19). The husband doesn't show any interest in what his wife is doing and comes up with a poor answer: "Don't get wet" (Hemingway 22).

When life beside her husband tends to be boring, a wife sometimes flirts with other man. The hotel owner bowing to the American woman as she passes the office is a contrast with the husband. He stands up whereas the husband stays on the bed. The hotel owner is the introduction of a new male...