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 ” (130).
An early reader of “ Big Two - Hearted River ” called it a purely naturalistic story in
which nothing happens; there is no action. No one did more than Hemingway to
teach readers to see the drama inherent in the telling of such stories in which “ nothing
happens. ” On the surface, the narrative tells of one man ’ s journey over familiar terrain
to a place where he will pitch his tent for a few days of fi shing for trout in a stream
he has fi shed in the past. In focused detail Hemingway unfolds his story of a man
returning to a place and an activity that is deeply meaningful to him. Everything
Nick Adams does he does carefully, exactly as it should be done, from pitching his
230
George Monteiro
tent and cooking his food to threading a grasshopper to bait his hook. Nick places
great value on technique and expertise, but things do not go as smoothly as he would
like. Just as he fi nds the land around him burnt and the grasshoppers scorched black
from the fi re, he too fi nds himself spoiling his immediate pleasures by thinking
thoughts he had tried hard to repress. Indeed, there is tension running through the
narrative which is intended to orchestrate the theme of tension threatening the psy-
chological balance of the young man returning to old haunts and fi nding that they
seem to harbor new and unnamed ghosts he has brought with him. Not for nothing,
apparently, does he put off going into the swamp, rejecting the place where fi shing
would be “ a tragic adventure. ” Nick ’ s world is a world of pressure. Even from the
bridge over the river Nick sees tension and quiet force in each trout ’ s holding itself
fast in the stream:
Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and
watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fi ns. As he
watched them they changed their positions by quick angles, only to hold steady in the
fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.
He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout
in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy
convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance
of the log - driven piles of the bridge. (163)
D. H. Lawrence was the fi rst critic to suggest that In Our Time was unifi ed in a
unique way. He called it “ a fragmentary novel ” – “ a series of successive sketches from
one man ’ s life. ” If the book does “ not pretend to be about one man, ” it is nevertheless
exactly that, he insists; for “ these few sketches are enough to create the man and all
his history: we need know no more. ” 3 A related critical idea that has affected the
ongoing publication of Hemingway ’ s stories involves the life of Nick Adams, boy and
man. Eleven years after Hemingway ’ s death, The Nick Adams Stories appeared. This
volume reprints all previously published Nick Adams stories (including chapter 7 of
in our time ), several unfi nished and/or rejected fragments from manuscript, and two
previously unpublished stories, “ Summer People ” and “ The Last Good Country, ” that
were determined to be in more - or - less fi nished form. The sequence of the stories
follows, insofar as his age can be determined, Nick ’ s life from childhood to his mid -
to - late thirties. The book adds little to Hemingway ’ s reputation as a short - story writer,
a fact indirectly acknowledged by the publisher ’ s blurb, which says only that the
collection includes “ Eight New Additions Hitherto Unpublished ” (emphasis added). 4
After the favorable critical reception of In Our Time , Hemingway chose to follow
up his triumph with Torrents of Spring , a work that not only parodies the novel form
but satirizes contemporary fi ction, particularly Sherwood Anderson ’ s. It was published
in 1926 by Scribner ’ s, which became Hemingway ’ s regular publisher. The Sun Also
Rises , a second novel, was published later in the same year. By 1927 Hemingway had
in hand enough new short stories to warrant a second collection. Echoing the titles
of Robert Browning ’ s Men and Women and Ford Madox Ford ’ s Women and Men (Ford ’ s
The Hemingway Story
231
book appeared in Pound ’ s “ Inquest ” series, as did the 1924 in our time ), Hemingway
called his book Men Without Women , explaining wryly to his editor, after he had listed
the stories he proposed to include in the volume, that the title was meant to indicate
that “ in all of these ” stories, “ almost, the softening feminine infl uence through train-
ing, discipline, death or other causes [is] absent ” ( Letters 245).
The fi rst story in the volume is “ The Undefeated, ” a more complex treatment of
the material on bullfi ghting appearing in the chapters of In Our Time and a comple-
mentary back - story for the Pedro Romero episodes of The Sun Also Rises . It is the fi rst
of his stories to probe deeply into the limits of professionalism, a theme that interested
Hemingway all his life. The aging professional, still recovering from a goring, is given
the chance to perform in a nocturnal, a nighttime bullfi ght. He requests the services
of an experienced picador, a friend who will help him. The performance goes well
enough at fi rst (though the fi ghter ’ s efforts are not appreciated by the third - string
newspaper critic). But the bullfi ghter runs into diffi culties, not of his own making,
and he is severely gored. And in the fi nal scene, as he lies in the infi rmary waiting
for surgery, he implores his friend, the picador, not to cut off his pigtail. It is the
symbol of his profession.
“ The Undefeated ” dramatizes the tragic situation in which the bullfi ghter, weak-
ened through wounding and aging, is not able to overcome his bad luck in drawing
bulls he can no longer master. Hemingway fi nds pathos and poetry in the bullfi ghter ’ s
desperate attempts to meet his standards as a torero and preserve his personal integ-
rity. At the end the bullfi ghter breathes deeply into the anaesthesia, ready for surgery.
He is the fi rst of those heroes who are destroyed but not defeated – a theme that
Hemingway returns to often, most famously in The Old Man and the Sea (1952).
The human value of performing professionally – being “ pretty good in there ” (272)
– is the major theme of “ Today is Friday, ” which is included in this collection as a
story in the form of a one - act play. Hemingway sets his piece historically in Jerusalem
on the fi rst Good Friday. The characters, besides a tavern keeper, are the Roman
soldiers who have carried out the execution of Jesus and now, at the end of their
working day, stand around talking over the day ’ s events. Not yet suffused with his-
torical Christianity, mythology or legendry, Jesus emerges in the eyes of some of the
Romans, not as an outlaw or a man obsessed by a vision but as a courageous performer
under extreme duress. In “ Fifty Grand ” (1927) Jack Brennan breaks with the code of
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fairness in prizefi ghting in asserting his own personal, largely implicit, sense of moral-
ity. Knowing he cannot win an honest fi ght, he bets heavily against himself only to
have his opponent deliberately foul him in an attempt to throw the fi ght. The old
fi ghter, double - crossed, fouls his opponent and is disqualifi ed, thereby losing both
the fi ght and his championship. But through crossing and double
-
crossing, the
outcome of the fi ght is the same as it would have been had it been fought squarely;
besides, the old fi ghter has won his bet. The complex issue of “ outlaw ” morality reap-
pears in To Have and Have Not (1937), a novel developed out of two narratives, “ One
Trip Across ” ( Cosmopolitan , 1934) and “ The Tradesman ’ s Return ” ( Esquire , 1936), both
published originally as short stories.
232
George Monteiro
Hemingway ’ s working title for “ The Killers ” ( Scribner ’ s
, 1927) was
“
The
Matadores, ” linking the story to bullfi ghting. Set in a town outside of Chicago, it tells
the story of two hit men waiting in a lunchroom for their victim, and can be seen as a
particularly sardonic parody of the professional ’ s performance of an ugly, ritualized
killing that misfi res – if only for the time being. Nick Adams is the link between the
two parts of the story: he witnesses the visit and the departure of the hit men, after
which he hurries off to warn the intended victim of his danger. Because of his presence
at these events, the point of the story is often seen to be that he has been affected by
what he has experienced. As such, the story becomes, like the earlier “ Indian Camp ”
and “ The Battler, ” the rendering of still another milestone episode in Nick Adams ’ s
worldly education. Still other milestones in that journey, both earlier and later ones,
appear in Men Without Women , including: “ Ten Indians, ” which focuses on the boy ’ s
discovery of adolescent sexual infi delity; “ Now I Lay Me, ” the concluding story in the
volume, which takes up a neurotic, war - wounded Nick terrifi ed that if he goes to sleep
at night his soul will disappear from his body never to return; and “ In Another
Country ” (1927), a fi rst - person narrative in which the narrator goes unnamed. This last
story presents us with another of Hemingway ’ s professionals – this time an Italian army
offi cer, formerly a fencer, who now comes for machine - rehabilitation of his wounded
hand. He does not believe that the machine will have any effi cacy. Yet, despite his belief
that the only thing a man can do for himself is to keep from putting himself in a posi-
tion to lose what he values, and despite the bitter, unexpected death of his young wife,
he continues to come for the treatments that he knows cannot help him.
In what has proven to be, especially in recent years, the most topically interesting
story in the collection, however, Nick Adams is absent. “ Hills Like White Elephants ”
(1927), in some ways, takes up the theme of heterosexual confl ict and complexity of
earlier stories, such as “ Up in Michigan, ” “ Out of Season, ” and “ Cat in the Rain. ” In
a tightly controlled story in which setting and image brim with potentially symbolic
meaning, especially for the woman, whose frustration and anger motivates the dra-
matic focus, two persons sit at a table in a railroad station bar. The story is told mainly
through conversation between two troubled and discomfi ted people. There is talk but
no agreement. The young man, identifi ed as an American, is agitated; the woman is
nervous, out of sorts. They argue at some length, as they await their train, but avoid
naming the thing that plagues them. The reader begins to sense what the unnamable
thing is when the conversation suddenly turns away from open bickering and
bitchy talk:
“ Should we have another drink? ”
“ All right. ”
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
“ The beer ’ s nice and cool, ” the man said.
“ It ’ s lovely, ” the girl said.
“ It ’ s really an awfully simple operation, Jig, ” the man said. “ It ’ s not really an opera-
tion at all. ”
The Hemingway Story
233
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
“ I know you wouldn ’ t mind it, Jig. It ’ s really not anything. It ’ s just to let the air
in. ”
The girl did not say anything.
“ I ’ ll go with you and I ’ ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then
it ’ s all perfectly natural. ” (212)
The man is right; it ’ s not really an operation. The current synonym – procedure – is
meant to allay fears, reduce trepidation. But the increasingly disturbing note in the
scene lies not only in what the man proposes for the woman, but in the irony emanat-
ing from his presentation of the procedure as “ perfectly natural. ” There ’ s a subtle
transvaluation going on here that goes beyond the ethics or morality of what the girl
has agreed to undergo. It is the human potential for so considering, for whatever
human reason, valid or not, what is, neutrally speaking, an unnatural act and so
domesticating it that it can appear to be entirely natural. It may well be, as has been
argued, that the girl fears her own death. But the story seems to resonate beyond that
possibility to the recognition of a greater death, that of personal sympathy and the
humanistic spirit. The horror lies almost as much in how they talk about what is to
be done as in any contemplation of the consequences of the proposed operation itself.
In the fall of 1929 Hemingway published his second major novel, A Farewell to
Arms , followed three years later by Death in the Afternoon , a hefty volume telling the
historical and contemporary story of the Spanish bullfi ght, along with what amounted
to his ars poetica . In 1933 appeared Winner Take Nothing , a third collection of short
fi ction, which would prove to be the last such volume of uncollected and new stories
to appear during Hemingway ’ s lifetime. Hemingway ’ s title (playing on the phrase
“ winner take all ” ) echoes the epigraph for the book, lines that he wrote himself in
pseudo - Elizabethan speech: “ Unlike all other forms of lutte or combat the conditions
are that the winner shall take nothing; neither his ease, nor his pleasure, nor any
notions of glory; nor, if he win far enough, shall there be any reward within himself. ” 5
He had never been interested in pyrrhic victories, and too often, he felt, unalloyed
victories were impossible (the young Pedro Romero ’ s heroics in and out of the arena
in The Sun Also Rises constituting an exception), but personal achievement in the face
of defeat was a matter he had already treated and would do so again. But in Winner
Take Nothing Hemingway ’ s overarching theme seems to be that there really are no
winners for there is nothing to win. The book opens with “ After the Storm ” (1932),
a story that deals with a sunken ship and its salvageable contents. It is told from the
fi rst - person point of view of a Key West tough whose language and outlook make
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br /> him a forerunner of Harry Morgan, the outlaw hero of “ One Trip Across, ” “ The
Tradesman ’ s Return, ” and To Have and Have Not . Although the narrator ’ s failure to
profi t from his discovery of the submerged ship at least superfi cially embodies
Hemingway ’ s overall theme for the volume, it was not the story he wanted to place
as his lead. His choice for that spot was “ The Light of the World, ” a story he later
insisted was “ a very fi ne story about whores – as good or better a story about whores
234
George Monteiro
than Maison Tellier ” by Maupassant ( Letters 393), but his editor, arguing that placing
it fi rst “ would play into the hands of his critics, who would again accuse him of using
a ‘ small - boy wickedness of vocabulary ’ simply for its shock effect, ” talked him into
leading with “ After the Storm. ” 6 What Hemingway did not argue is that “ The Light
of the World ” was a Nick Adams story, and that taken with “ Fathers and Sons, ”
another Nick Adams story, which he insisted from the start must close the volume,
they would have given the collection a frame similar to the one employed in In Our
Time . The third Nick Adams story in Winner Take Nothing , “ A Way You ’ ll Never
Be, ” again deals with a soldier, still psychologically jittery and jumpy, though he has
largely recovered from his physical wounds.
The collection is fi lled out with a mixture of stories on familiar Hemingway themes
and stories that constitute new departures, “ The Mother of a Queen ” (bullfi ghting),
for example, but “ Homage to Switzerland ” (1933) (Americans in Europe as targets
for satire, recalling, in its ambience, the earlier story, “ A Canary for One ” [1927]),
“ One Reader Writes ” (a lonely - hearts letter), and “ Wine of Wyoming ” (1930) (remi-
niscent of Turgenev
’
s
A Sportsman ’ s Sketches
, a Hemingway favorite).
“
A Natural
History of the Dead ” was an anecdote he culled from Death in the Afternoon . This story
is in two parts: an essay on dying, the combat dead, and the absurdities of the self -
proclaimed humanists of the day, followed by a dramatized incident exemplifying the
moral complexities of triage at a battlefi eld dressing station. This interest in the
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 51