Cat in the Rain – Ernest Hemingway

Genre "Cat in the Rain" is an archetype of its genre, the short story. It is brief and relies more on suggestion than actual words, and therefore, it carries multiple meanings. Hemingway is quite economical with descriptions and dialogues. Plot Analysis Initial Situation First there is a description of the environment in good weather, which means spring or summer, then a description of the momentary situation in the rain. This description creates an atmosphere that is sad, cold and unfriendly. To create this atmosphere Hemingway uses words such as "empty" or "the motorcars were gone". Later on, by looking at the relationship of the two Americans, you can see that this description was a foreshadowing of the state of the couple´s relationship: First it was nice, the spring-time of their love, and now there is only rain, their relationship got cold and unfriendly. The couple stuck in their room. The description of the view from the window suggests that the woman has spent a lot of time looking at it. While she looked listlessly on the view outside her husband lay on bed absorbed in his book. The wife is an extrovert focused on lived life while her husband is focused on the internal world of books and ideas. Conflict Seeing the cat gives the wife a reason to move. Her dismissal of her husband's half-hearted offer to go down to fetch the cat suggests her dissatisfaction with him. Complication Downstairs, the wife encounters the hotelkeeper whom she refers to by the more dignified Italian term, “padrone”. When she looks under the table, however, the cat isn't there. Suspense The padrone gives the wife a sense of importance. The wife is strongly affected. Climax  After returning to the room without the cat the wife makes a list of the things she wants: long hair, a cat on her lap, her own silver, candles, springtime. Her husband, George, fed up, tells her to shut up and find something to read. The sentence that she wants it to be spring again stands for her huge wish for a new spring in her relationship Denouement The wife doesn't react to her husband’s scolding; instead, she looks out the window as the evening darkens around her. As she cannot have "long hair or any fun," she states that she wants a cat. Conclusion The room and the couple go back to the same state at the beginning of the story. It is at this point the hotel maid knocks on the door and announces that the padrone has sent a cat for "the signora." It's a gesture of thoughtfulness. Setting A small coastal village in Italy on a rainy day soon after the end of WWI. The couple in the story is staying at an upscale sea-side hotel and their room is located on the second floor facing the sea – this implies that the two people are well-off, and therefore, the reason for the palpable tension that permeates the story cannot be due to financial worries. The impact of WWI or the Great War, as it was called, is strongly felt throughout the story. WWI wiped out nearly an entire generation of young men in Europe and left the landscape as well as the minds of people deeply scarred. We are told that there is a War Monument in the middle of the town square. Such monuments are quite common in Europe. They represent lost hope for the near-and-dear of those hundreds of thousands who have fallen as well for the country at large. At the end of the war two groups remained: those who did not join the war and the emotionally and physically scared veterans. I have the impression that George belonged to the former category as implied by the inertia he displays throughout the story. We are told that people from all over Italy come to pay their respects to the War Monument in the public garden. It's one of the things the wife sees from her perch at the window. We are also told that a lot of people come there to paint the sea-side view. The juxtaposition of the people painting the seaside view and those who come to pay respects to the WM in the opening paragraph points at the complexity of emotions experienced by people after the war came to an end. It was time of celebration as well as of sorrow. While some picked up the threads of their lives and tried to move on beyond satisfying their basic needs, some were trapped in the memories of their losses and pains experienced during the war.  Hemingway sets the story on a rainy day. No one can go out on such a day – a sense of imprisonment/ entrapment and an acute disappointment hangs heavily in the air. People come to a sea-side resort to frolic out in the sun and not to gaze out of a closed window.       What parallels can you draw between the rainy day described in the short story and the state of the marriage of the American couple? Point of View The third person narrator relates the story using basic sentences, mostly statements. This encourages the reader to believe that the narrator is being strictly factual about the event he is narrating and that he has no personal opinions or biases. However, a closer reading implies that the narrator allocates more ‘space’ to what the wife is doing than to any other character, especially her husband George. Yet, in his defense one can say that George does very little to write about throughout the story. The reader’s view of the hotel owner depends heavily on what the wife feels about how she is being treated by him. The third person narrator conveys her feelings, which she herself cannot fully articulate in speech. By using an omniscient narrator, Hemingway is able to convey both conscious as well as unconscious/ unarticulated thoughts of the characters. Tone The tone is controlled to the point of terseness. The husband and wife seem to have very different temperaments and are dissatisfied with one another. However, they don't talk about it. As Blake in his poem “The Poison Tree” had very successfully illustrated unexpressed dissatisfaction/anger festers and brings about ruin. Their trip to Italy could have been a last ditch effort to save their floundering marriage. However, their unexpressed differences seem insurmountable. Consequently, instead of the new surroundings pushing them towards each other, it seems to widen the emotional chasm between them. In such a situation being trapped in a hotel room on a rainy day in a foreign country with only each other for company would bring out the very worst in each other as implied by the terse exchanges between the two. Hemingway's sentences, both in the dialogues and descriptions, are clipped/terse/ minimalistic to the point of being rude. The Title The actions and the dialogues centre on a cat in the rain. However, why an American wife on a holiday in Italy with her husband should take a particular interest in a wet cat hiding under a table is a question that begs an answer. One might ask whether she sees any parallels between her own situation, trapped in a hotel in a foreign country on a rainy day with a neglectful husband, that makes her sympathize with the cat? The title "Cat in the Rain" as opposed to" The Cat in the Rain" points at the possibility of any number of people/animals experiencing such a situation. The four words in the title are all monosyllabic words which are deceptively simple. Cat: The absence of the articles "the" or "a" in the title makes the it sound like the title of a painting which points at the possibility of Hemingway trying to paint a word study of a couple of restless dissatisfied American tourist on a rainy day in an Italian sea-side village. Cats for the most part, are calm and collected. But a wet cat anything but. In means to be in the middle of something—surrounded by it on all sides. In the story the cat is trapped under a table in downpour. The - helps take the title a more literally - there is a cat and there is rain. Rain - is ordinary yet fascinating. It invariably alters one’s mood. Characters Characters  There are only a very few characters: the wife, husband, the hotel keeper, and the maid. Hemingway does not describe characters. Their characteristics reveal themselves through what they do/not do and speech. The wife: While sitting at the window and looking out at the square, the American wife spots a cat in the rain. She tells her husband that she's going to go downstairs to get it. Downstairs at the hotel, the wife has a brief exchange with the hotel owner about the rain. We hear about all the different little things she likes about him. She turns to go out into the square. As she opens the door, a maid appears with an umbrella and goes out with her. They look under the table but they do not find the cat, and return inside. The hotel owner bows from his desk as the American wife passes. She is filled with a sense of importance in his presence. The American wife returns to the hotel room where her husband is still reading. She sits in front of a mirror, looks at her profile, and asks if she would look better with long hair. Her husband tells her she wouldn't, and she begins to talk about the things she feels she wants: a cat, long hair that she can feel and twist, candles, silver, and for it to be spring outside. The husband tells her to shut up. She pulls back to one simple desire: she wants a cat. As the room grows darker, there's a knock at the door. It's the maid, and she's holding a cat that the hotel owner asked her to bring to the wife. We are told that the husband and wife are the only Americans in the hotel. We can't be sure why they're there. Their marriage is on the rocks. The woman is identified as the “wife”- it is the only identity the woman seems to have. By not naming her, Hemingway seems to want the reader to take her as a stereotype "American wife" of 1920s. Her husband on the other hand has a name. Not having a name prevents the wife from being a real person on her own right. She is looked upon as an extension of her husband. While the husband reads, the wife sits at the window looking out. Her existence seems to revolve around her husband and house. In Italy she is out of her natural elements and completely dependent on her husband. Neglected by her husband who is bent on catching up on his reading on the rainy day, she expresses her dissatisfaction indirectly by saying that she wanted to rescue a cat. She seems to draw parallels between her situation and that of the cat in the rain – she is neglected, bored and miserably out of her element: "It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain." The idea of rescuing a cat serves two purposes: she wants to draw her husband’s towards herself and the act of rescuing the cat offers her a temporary sense of purpose. Upon returning to the room after the unsuccessful rescue mission, she adds some more items to her wish list: her own silver, candles, and her own dining table – in short, she seems to want a home of her own. She also wants long hair, springtime and new clothes. These items are suggestive of her desire for a change in the state of her marriage for the better. This in turn points to the possibility that the wife and her husband at the moment are living a rootless life which makes the wife feel insecure. The wife seems to crave stability and security, two things a lot of people lose during times of war. This is why the wife is fascinated by the hotel owner, the padrone, who is established, dignified, and serious. She seems to resent the brash American-ness represented by her husband and herself in favour of the more sophisticated values of an older and more established Europe represented by the hotel owner. A "signora" is what the American wife unconsciously wanted to be and that is exactly how the padrone made her feel like. George Unlike the wife, the hotel keeper, and the maid who are in perpetual motion, George, the husband, is in bed reading throughout the story. He even suggests that his wife does the same. George seems to derive satisfaction by reading about the lives recorded in books rather than by living his own life. He is the antithesis of his wife: static vs. mobile, intellectual vs. material, insensitive vs. sensitive, self-sufficient vs. dependent, etc. George says very little throughout the story. The reader gets an insight to his character through the way he says things, i.e., when he tells his wife that he would go down for the cat he does not even make an attempt to get out of the bed. In contrast, the hotel keeper goes out of his way to acquire a cat for the wife. Therefore, it is natural for the neglected wife to like "the way he wanted to serve her". The term “serve” has feudal connotations. The modern American wife finds the old fashioned gallantry padrone attractive.  When his wife is about to go out in the rain George simply says, “Don't get wet”; whereas the hotel keeper sends the maid with an umbrella to ensure that she would not get wet. During the time of the war, with the men absent, a lot of women took over men’s work out of necessity. Inadvertently, this gave rise to the Feminist movement. While many women said to have resented returning to their former state of total dependence, the wife in this story seems to be an exception. George, probably a upper middleclass neo-liberalist, seems to be more than happy to let his wife look after herself, both physically and emotionally. One might ask whether it was his nature that made him so insensitive or the war, more specifically post-traumatic stress induced by the war, that made him behave the way he did.     The Hotel Keeper We hear how the wife "liked the way he wanted to serve her" and that "she liked the way he felt about being a hotel keeper."  She seems to project her own desires of what she wants her husband to be on the hotel keeper. He makes her feel cherished: “Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance.” It seems that the wife sees the hotel keeper as a symbol of masculinity. He, being masculine, makes her feel feminine to the extent that she says to her husband that she is "tired of looking like a boy." At beginning of the story the American wife was looking for the reason for her unhappiness. She knew that she was unhappy but she did not know the why she was unhappy. Her encounter with the Old World charm of the “padrone” allows her to understand that the reason for her unhappiness is the dissatisfactory state of her marriage. Her husband expects her to be a modern woman. She craves attention which is given to her by the padrone. It is going to be inevitable that in future the wife is going to compare her husband’s lack of attention to the abundance of attention showered on her by the hotel keeper.      Techniques The cat as a symbol: There's something in the cat that the wife both wants and identifies with, which means that it's a symbol that works in at least two ways. The cat is pitifully isolated and completely out of its comfort zone. Compare this with the wife's own situation with the husband. She, too, is a cat in the rain. While the shelter offered by the café table makes the cat curls up to form a tight ball, it is the care the hotel keeper offers the neglected wife that makes her feel "small [and] tight." Themes 1. Gender ·        The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. ·        She liked his big heavy face and big hands. ·        As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. ·        George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy's. – This is how George sees his wife—as boyish – and he approves of it. ·        "I get so tired of it," she said. "I get so tired of looking like a boy." ·        "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." ·        "Excuse me," she said, "the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora." 2. Foreignness and the Other ·        “There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel.” The first sentence tells the reader that: 1) the story is set in a foreign country 2) it involves people in transit and 3) those people are the "others" in this setting. Even though the story is narrated from the perspective of the Americans, the husband and wife are outsiders. The American wife’s attraction to the padrone’s foreignness stems from her frustration with her own way of living. Why does Hemingway make the couple the only Americans at the hotel? Why is the story set in Italy? How and why does Hemingway shift between Italian and English in the dialogue? How does the setting of a hotel bring foreignness specifically to your attention – or mediate it? ·        They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. ·        Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. - conveys a sense of national cohesion in contrast to the distance between the husband and wife. ·        The American wife stood at the window looking out. ·        "Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It's very bad weather." - The padrone, while acknowledging the wife’s attempt at speaking in Italian, makes sure that they communicated.   ·        When she talked English the maid's face tightened. 3. Dissatisfaction Unable to express the reason for her dissatisfaction, the wife's restlessness increases throughout the story. Does Hemingway seem to sympathize with the wife's dissatisfaction? Or does he, like George, think that she's just being whiny? Does Hemingway signal that the George is dissatisfied too? How? How does Hemingway use the wife's specific "wants" to describe the source of her dissatisfaction? Do you think that the couple will stay together? Why or why not? In "Cat in the Rain" Hemingway uses frustrations and desires for material things to point towards deeper existential dissatisfactions in his characters. The American wife's restlessness with her restless lifestyle allows Hemingway to critique the paradox of free-spirited American Bohemians in the 1920s. Discuss. The American wife stood at the window looking out. (2) "Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty." "I wanted it so much," she said. "I don't know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty." - The wife's desire to "save" the cat from the rain is replaced by the term "want." Why do you think this is? What is it about that feeling of holding the cat and owning it that appeals to her? What does it have in common with the other things she wants? "It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain." She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. - the boredom or satisfaction of her life rests on more than her hairstyle. So why does she attach her sense of satisfaction to these things here? Why does she express her discontentment this way? "I get so tired of it," she said. "I get so tired of looking like a boy." - there is something draining about this boyish appearance. It's something she has to keep up, and something that's not very "fun." "Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again. His wife was looking out the window. – the use of past continuous suggests that locked up in their own worlds the husband and wife aren't really paying attention to what the other just said. George was not listening. He was reading his book. – use of the continuous form here suggests that this sort of inattentiveness has happened in other "discussions" before. 4. Isolation Like the cat in the rain, the wife and the husband are not only alone they are also trapped in their own worlds. Their isolation is reinforced by the discomfort of their feelings towards each other. There is a serious lack of real communication. Why can't the husband and wife communicate? Why does the wife think that a cat will help her to feel less isolated?  Why is reading an insufficient solution for the loneliness felt by the wife?  Why does the padrone, specifically, make the wife feel less alone and insignificant than before? The wife might feel that a different lifestyle will solve her isolation, but Hemingway shows in this story that it is a deeper problem of attitude and communication that plagues her. Discuss. The "very small and tight" feeling that the girl has before the padrone, as well as her "feeling of being of supreme importance" in that moment, offers sexual re-awakening as a possible solution to the problem of isolation. Discuss ·        There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. ·        Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. ·        When she talked English the maid's face tightened. ·        She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. ·        George was reading again. ·        "I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her."

Writing Style Before he started writing fiction, Hemingway worked as a journalist in Michigan, and the lessons he learned at his newspaper job stood by him throughout his career. His stories don't include many adjectives or adverbs, with the primary focus normally on the action. Sometimes this can lead people to assume that his writing lacks emotion, but we think it's just a more artful way of building emotion. Feeling is created and conveyed without the narrator having to name it and, as in this story, that emotion can feel more authentic because it goes unnamed. Another unfortunate assumption about Hemingway's style is that it's simple. This can lead readers to be less attentive than they should be to the art and beauty of Hemingway's lines. Take this one from the first paragraph of "Cat in the Rain"…it's beautiful and quite lovely: 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. (1) That right there is one single, fluid clause: no commas, no modifiers. This sentence is one "long line," just like the sea it describes. If you read it to yourself aloud, you can hear and feel the movement of the waves, slipping back, only to break again; it's the way the sentence moves. This is an example of the incredible artistry of Hemingway's style: his sentences might be simple, but they can also embody the essence of what they are describing. They can make the thing, the movement, the feeling they are describing actually happen in your mind and body as a reader. Clearly, this is something more artistically advanced than a newspaper article. As prosy as Hemingway's writing style is, you might say that it's actually almost like poetry. So take a moment, pretend you're in an art gallery, stop looking at your computer screen and worrying about your paper. With stories like this, you are looking at the art of language: simple, but in no way plain.