New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

by Jackson J Benson

  The wife as a “poor kitty,” whose circumstance is comparable to the fugitive circumstance of the cat in the rain, clarifies why Hemingway changes the way by which he identifies the wife in the course of the action. Early in the story, when she is in the room looking out of the window, she is called the “American wife” (91), and when she speaks to George about the cat, she is again called the “American wife” (91). Then when she leaves George to get the cat, she is called “the wife” (92), and when she passes the padrone on her way out of the hotel, speaking to him in Italian, “‘Il piove’” (92), she is again called just “the wife” (92). The change here has to do with the couple’s homelessness and isolation. They are the only “two Americans” (91) at the hotel, and they do not “know any of the people” (91) staying in the hotel. Their isolation is presented as resulting from a nationality barrier, but when the wife decides to act on her own, independent of the husband—“‘No, I’ll get it’”—she is no longer identified as “American,” nor is she identified as “American” when she speaks Italian to the padrone. Outside, however, when the maid brings the umbrella, the nationality and language barrier is reintroduced in relation to the maid: “There was a cat,’ said the American girl” (92), and the maid’s face “tightened” (92) when she “talked English” (92). At the same time, in relation to the maid, the wife is no longer identified as a “wife,” but as a “girl.” The implications here have to do with the wife’s troubled marriage in relation to the padrone and the role of the maid in the story, but this will be considered later. Returning to the hotel, the wife is still the “American girl” (93), not “the wife.” When she “passes the office” (93) of the padrone the second time and the padrone “bow[s] from his desk” (93), her identity is changed again. At this point Hemingway uses only the unmodified noun, “girl,” in describing her sensations: “Something felt very small and tight inside the girl” (93). Figuratively, she has been a “poor kitty out in the rain,” protected from the downpour, not by her husband, but by the padrone and his umbrella, which explains the girl’s unusual responsiveness to the padrone. Neither her nationality nor her marriage are relevant at this moment with the padrone.

  When the girl returns to “their room” (91), her sexual feelings are transferred to George. She goes over to George and tries to express her desire for closeness by sitting down “on the bed” (93). The following scene dramatizes how antithetical George’s character is to the padrone’s character and what it is about George that prevents the girl from having a satisfying relationship with him. George remains perversely propped “at the foot of the bed” (91), and he is using “the two pillows” (91)—hers as well as his—for himself. There is no place for her. When she says, “It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain” (93), she is trying to tell him how unfulfilled and displaced his “kitty” is. But “George [is] reading again” (93). Rejected, she gets up from the bed and goes to the mirror. Again she tries to draw George’s attention to her sexuality by suggesting that she let her “hair grow out” (93). This time she gets his attention: “George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy’s” (93). His response, “‘I like it the way it is’” (93), is not what she wants to hear. George’s preference, that she be “like a boy” (93), reflects his self-centeredness.2 He wants and expects her to suppress her female sexuality and create the appearance of being like him, a male. But she is female and wants him to see her as such. She tells him, “‘I get so tired of looking like a boy’” (93). Her insistence agitates him, so much so that he finally “shift[s] his position.” He hasn’t “looked away from her since she started to speak” (93) and he becomes equally insistent: “‘You look pretty darn nice’” (93), that is, as a boy. The girl goes to the window. It is “getting dark” (93), symbolically as well as literally. The growing darkness, her sexual frustration, and George’s rejection of her individuality all launch her into a desperate listing of things she “wants.”

  “I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,” she said. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”

  “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 my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.” (93–94)

  George hears what she is saying, and he doesn’t like it. He prefers her as a “boy,” and he responds with both intolerance, “Oh, shut up” (94), and a self-centered prescription, “get something to read” (94), that is, like me. The authorial voice then identifies the girl by the possessive, “His wife” (94)

  For both the cat which the girl has seen in the rain and for the girl as a “poor kitty,” it is bad weather. It is “quite dark and now still raining in the palm trees” (94). Good weather would be “spring” (94), and the girl’s garden would have an “artist with his easel” (91). The girl would “eat at a table with [her] own silver” (94), she would have someone to “stroke her” (93), and she would “purr” (93). But it is not good weather and her life with George is as empty as the square outside. She stands at the window, her back to the emptiness in the room, and stares out at the empty square, just as the “waiter” (91) earlier in the story stood in his door, his back to the emptiness of his cafe, and stared at the empty square. Now, however, the square is not only empty, it is shrouded in darkness, a symbol of existential nothingness, the loss of meaning and the loss of hope. In a final act of desperation and defeated defiance, the girl refuses to give up one thing: “I can have a cat” (94). If she cannot be her husband’s kitty, she wants a kitty with which she can identify, and there is a strong sense of urgency in her. “I want a cat now” (94). “George [is] not listening. He [is] reading” (94). As she continues to look away from him and out of the window, she is again called “His wife” (94).

  A “light [comes on] in the square” (94), which is an image that suggests hope, but artificial light is only a substitute for daylight, and the hope which this light foreshadows will be only a temporary substitute for what the girl really wants. There is a knock at the door, as if the padrone has heard the girl’s complaint and is again trying to come to her rescue in response to her urgent “now.” George, however, asserts his authority by calling, “Avanti” (94). He looks up from his book.

  In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora.” (94)

  The maid’s function in the story is significant because her attitude toward the girl introduces a factor that restrains the girl’s search for meaning outside her marriage. In the earlier scene in the garden, the maid initially “smiled, speaking Italian” (92), but her smile is more professional than personal. When the girl “talked English the maid’s face tightened” (92). The girl is an outsider. The padrone may like her and may want to “serve her” (92), but the maid does not like her, perhaps partly because the padrone does like her. When the maid is again dispatched by the padrone to “serve” the girl by giving her a cat, the maid’s role acquires renewed significance by the strange way the maid is holding the padrone’s cat. If the cat itself were the only important factor in the scene, the action could be simply stated: In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell cat. “Excuse me,” she said, “the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora.” But it is not simply stated. Instead, the maid is given a kind of precedence over the cat in the highly unusual way she holds it, “pressed tight against her and swung down against her body” (94). Since the cat is the padrone’s and he has sent it to the girl, the cat personifies to the maid the padrone himself, in which case she is symbolically giving the padrone away to the girl. Holding the cat “pressed tight against her” (94) suggests possessiveness, not of the cat, but of the padrone. And holding the cat’s body “down against her body” (94) is an impl
icitly sexual image. The description strongly implies feelings on the part of the maid toward the padrone which parallel the girl’s feelings toward the padrone. The fact that the maid calls the cat a “this” (94) implies the maid’s resentment of what the padrone has asked her to do for this “American girl.” The maid’s earlier hostility toward the girl as an outsider is now extended to an acted-out sexual possessiveness.

  The tortoise-shell which the padrone has sent to the girl is a unique variety of tricolor cat. For a cat to be a tortoise-shell, it must have certain hues: black, light red, and dark red. A tortoise-shell is a handsome cat, gentle, affectionate, companionable, and especially good in a family situation. The tortoise-shell however, is a variety of cat whose occurrence is both accidental and extraordinary. Tortoise-shells do not naturally reproduce: that is, a female tortoise-shell will not reproduce tortoise-shell kittens and male tortoise-shells are sterile.3

  Hemingway could have chosen any description of a cat, including just “a big cat,” as in his notes, but he did not. The “tortoise-shell,” therefore, must have a significance as an image beyond its literalness as a cat, and that significance must be related to the padrone who sends the cat, and to what is most notable about a tortoise-shell, which is that it cannot be naturally reproduced. That the “tortoise-shell” is figurative of the padrone is suggested by the language Hemingway uses in regard to each of them. The word “big” occurs only twice in the story, once to describe the padrone’s “big hands” (92), which indicate a big man, and again to describe the “big tortoise-shell” (94), and the way the maid carries the cat suggests that it is not only big, but long, as the padrone is big and tall. The tortoise-shell is both extraordinary and unique, as the padrone is both extraordinary and unique, and the tortoise-shell is attractive, and the padrone is attractive to the girl—and to the maid. Most importantly, a tortoise-shell may occasionally appear, but a tortoise-shell cannot be naturally reproduced, and a man like the padrone, with dignity, will, and commitment, may occasionally appear, but a man like the padrone is too exemplary to be found elsewhere.

  The tragic figure in “Cat in the Rain” is the girl, the wife. She is cut off from meaning and fulfillment both inside her marriage and outside. An exceptional person like the padrone will like her, respond to her, and give her protection, but others, like the maid, will resent her when she speaks English and will see her as an outsider. There is no place for her in another country, speaking another language. She is herself a kitty in bad weather, inside the room and outside, desperately searching for a place and for companionship. Ironically, what the girl wants is not really a “kitty . . . and some new clothes” (94); what the “poor kitty” wants is a loving place with a “padrone” incarnated in a man of her own generation. But this is impossible. A man like the padrone is unique. The feelings and desires which the padrone has inspired in her will be denied and will bear her no fruit. They have been aroused only to have her husband, the antithesis of the padrone, reject them and her; he will allow her no expression of her true identity and no true place in their marriage. Such betrayed feelings and lost hopes will turn into more loneliness and more despair. “April [will be] the cruellest month” (Eliot, 61) because her imagined “spring” (94) will never come. The poor kitty’s destiny is that of a barren, wandering soul with no place and no purpose in the futility of the wasteland In Our Time.

  Hemingway’s “The Denunciation”: The Aloof American

  Kenneth G. Johnston

  The American experience, broadly speaking, is not faithfully reflected in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robert Jordan represents only the handful of American volunteers, fewer than three thousand idealists and adventurers, who were willing to risk their lives in the fight against fascism on the battlefields of Spain.1 Actually, as historian Gabriel Jackson observes, the attitude of the United States toward the Spanish Civil War “was dominated by the twin desires for isolation and neutrality.”2 The policy of “moral aloofness,” enunciated by the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull,3 was widely supported by both the American public and Congress. A joint resolution banning shipment of arms to either side in the Spanish conflict swiftly passed the Senate by a vote of 81 to o and the House by 406 to 1. In May 1937—the month and year in which Robert Jordan carried out his mission in Hemingway’s novel—passage of a revised Neutrality Act gave further evidence that the nation was determined to stand aloof. Although there was widespread sympathy in the United States for the Loyalist cause, an official policy of neutrality was maintained throughout the war, a policy which, in the opinion of many, including Hemingway, doomed the legitimate government of Spain.4

  To discover Ernest Hemingway’s fictional response to the aloof American, one must turn to his neglected and underrated short story “The Denunciation.” Though written in 1938 while the war was still in progress, it is not a propaganda piece. Ever the artist, Hemingway, in relating his tale of conflicting loyalties, rāises the question of one’s ultimate responsibility to self and to others. “If you get as much intensity and as much meaning in a story as some one can get in a novel,” declared Hemingway, “that story will last as long as it is any good. A true work of art endures forever; no matter what its politics.”5

  In the final analysis “The Denunciation” is a story of self-denunciation, for it is sharply critical of the narrator for his failure, his refusal, to assume the responsibilities which come with commitment. His policy of moral aloofness, which helps neither friend nor foe, provides the rationale for his evasion of duty as a professed and loyal supporter of the Loyalist cause. Moreover, there is strong evidence in the story to suggest that Hemingway was aiming his criticism at America, as well as at his American, at the U.S. policy of nonintervention, as well as at the narrator’s stand of self-righteous “impartiality.”

  “The Denunciation” takes place in Madrid one winter evening in 1937, the second year of the war. Fascist batteries are sporadically shelling the Loyalist capital, which has been under seige for a year now. The narrator, an American writer named Henry Emmunds, stops by Chicote’s bar to wait out the bombardment. He has a special fondness for the place. Before the war Chicote’s had an enviable reputation; it was where “the good guys” went. The service and the liquor there were the best in Spain; the atmosphere and the waiters were invariably pleasant. It was “like a club,” declares the narrator: “It was the best bar in Spain, certainly, and I think one of the best bars in the world, and all of us that used to hang out there had a great affection for it.”6

  The story appears to center on an old waiter who is agonizing over whether or not to denounce a fascist, Luis Delgado, who sits in the bar enjoying a gin and tonic. The question is not an easy one. In the old days Delgado was a good client; furthermore, Chicote’s has an apolitical tradition: that is, “you did not talk politics there” (89). The old waiter, with his “very old-fashioned manners which the war had not changed” (92), is part of that tradition, and thus he is tempted to a course of silence. Perhaps one of the other waiters will denounce Delgado, says the narrator. “No,” replies the old waiter. “Only the old waiters know him and the old waiters do not denounce” (93). That should settle the matter.

  Still, the old waiter feels strongly that it is his duty, his obligation, to denounce this fascist in their midst. “‘I have nothing against him,’ the waiter said. ‘But it is the Causa. Certainly such a man is dangerous to our cause’” (93). It is a cause for which one of his sons has already given his life and another is serving at the front.

  The old waiter wavers in his dilemma. At first he says the presence of the fascist in the bar is none of his business. But he cannot let it rest there. He tries to share the responsibility with Henry Emmunds. But the narrator will have none of it.

  “It is thy problem.”

  “And you? Already I have told you.”

  “I came in here to have a drink before eating.”

  “And I work here. But tell me.”

  “It
is thy problem,” I said. “I am not a politician.” (92)

  When the waiter returns to the table for the third time, he concedes that the responsibility is his, and he writes down the phone number, which the narrator has offered to give him, of the security police. But still he is very reluctant to denounce the old client. “Perhaps then he is on our side now, too,” he says. “No,” the narrator tells him. “I know he is not” (93). The waiter leaves but soon returns, still wrestling with his problem.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I would never denounce him myself,” I said, now trying to undo for myself what I had done with the number. “But I am a foreigner and it is your war and your problem.”

  “But you are with us.”

  “Absolutely and always. But it does not include denouncing old friends.”

  “But for me?”

  “For you it is different.” (97)

  With those last words the narrator has signed Luis Delgado’s death warrant. The old waiter now makes the phone call because, as he tells the narrator, “it was my duty” (98). He is proud to have done this extremely difficult task, but his spirits are dashed when the narrator, by word and action, quickly disassociates himself from the denunciation. “I did not denounce for pleasure,” the old man reminds him. Shamed by the mild rebuke, the narrator suggests that Delgado be told that he, Henry Emmunds, denounced him to the police. “No,” the old man replies with quiet dignity. “Each man must take his responsibility” (98). Clearly, the old man is the touchstone by which we are to take the measure of the Hemingway hero, Henry Emmunds.