ernest hemingway the first forty nine stories

We discuss these aspects of ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’ in more detail elsewhere. Instead, it’s through the conversation between the two waiters, and then the older waiter’s ruminations as he leaves the café, that the meaning emerges. ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’ is like many of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, in that the action – what little ‘action’ there is – doesn’t generate the meaning of the story. The story is about an old man who frequents a Spanish café at night, and the two waiters who discuss why the old man comes to sit there every night and is always reluctant to leave. This 1933 story uses its spare, direct dialogue to hint at the relationships between the characters and the themes the story is delicately and obliquely exploring. You can read our analysis of the story here. Alienation is a key theme of this classic Hemingway story. Harold Krebs has returned from the war and can no longer relate to the people in his hometown. This 1925 story is perhaps Hemingway’s best story about the lasting impact the First World War had on his generation, and all of the men who had served in the war.Ĭritics often draw attention to what’s known as Hemingway’s ‘iceberg’ technique, whereby the feelings and motivations of the characters in his work are largely beneath the surface, much as only the tip of the iceberg is visible above the surface of the water. The cat in the rain is not just a cat: she clearly symbolises something more to the wife. Hemingway’s stories often seem direct and matter-of-fact, as though they simply mean whatever they say, but there is, in fact, symbolic resonance to many of the ordinary and everyday details he builds his stories around. She fails to find the cat, and returns up to her hotel room, disappointed, but there’s a surprise development at the end of the story. She wants to go and get the cat and bring her indoors.

It is raining heavily one day, and the wife, looking out of their hotel room window, spies a cat under one of the tables outside, trying to shelter from the rain. An American couple are staying at a hotel in Italy.

Ernest hemingway the first forty nine stories