American Literature

Module 9: Ernest Hemingway

Topic: Cat in the Rain (Short story)

Sources: Encyclopedia

             World Literature

             www.shortstories.com

Objectives: At the end of this module the students are expected to:

1.            Understand unfamiliar words;

2.            Appreciate short story;

3.            Construct or draw or write another ending of the story.

Author’s Background

                Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. After finishing high school in 1917, he worked for a Kansas City Newspaper, Star. During World War I he served as an ambulance driver in Italy, where he was severely wounded in action. After recuperating, he settled in Paris where he began his serious writing career. In 1926, Hemingway published his first major novel, “The Sun Also Rises” which did not only established him as an eminent writer but also reveled two key principles of his writing styles: stripping language to its most essential components by omitting any word not necessary and stressing the importance of authentic experience in his work.

                During the following decade, he traveled to Spain, Africa, and Florida, gaining materials for his future works through his experiences as bullfight aficionado, big game hunter and deep sea fisherman. He served as a journalist during the Spain Civil War and during World War II. His short novel, “The Old Man’ and ‘The Sea” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and contributed to his winning The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. By the 1960’s, however, Hemingway was in poor health, depressed and losing his memory. He committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.

                Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

                During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

                Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).

                There were two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the public garden and the war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colours of the hotels facing the gardens and the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. 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. The motor cars were gone fro the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the café a waiter stood looking out the empty square.

                The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under than one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.

                “I’m going down and get that kitty,” the American wife said.

                “I’ll do it,” her husband offered from the bed.

                “No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty was out trying to keep dry under a table.”

                The husband went on reading, lying propped up with two pillows at the foot of the bed.

                “Don’t get wet,” he said.

                The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.

                “I’ll prove him,” the wife said. She liked the hotel keeper.

                “Si Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather.

                He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. 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.

                Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in rubber cape was crossing the empty square to the café. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the leaves. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

                “You must not get wet,” she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.

                With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her.

                “Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?”

                “There was a cat,” said the American girl.

                “A cat?”

                “Si, il gatto”

                “A cat?” the maid laughed. ’A cat in the rain?”

                “Yes,” she said. ‘Under the table.’ ‘Then, Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.”

                 When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.

                “Come Signora,’ she said. ‘We must get back inside. You will be wet.”

                “I suppose so,” said the American girl.

                They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very, very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed reading.

                “Did you get the cat?” he asked, putting the book down.

                “it was gone.”

                “Wonder where it went to?” he said, resting his eyes from reading.

                She sat down on the bed.

                “I wanted it so much,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.”

                George was reading again.

                She went over and sat in front of the mirror of the dressing-table, looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of  her head and her neck.

                “Don’t you think it would be good idea if I let my hair grow out?” she asked, looking at her profile again.

                George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy’s.

                “I like it the way it is.”

                “I get so tired of it,’ she said. ‘I get so tired of looking like a boy.”

                George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.

                 “You look pretty darn nice,” he said.

                She laid the mirror down the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.

                “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.”

                “Yeah?” George said from the bed.

                “And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candies. 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.”

                “Oh, shut up and get something to read,” George said. He was reading again.

                His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm tress.

                “Anyway, I want a cat,’ she said. ‘I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have a long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”

                George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in a square.

                Someone knocked at the door.

                “Avanti,” George said. He looked up from his book.

                In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoiseshell 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.”

Activity: Vocabulary. Give the meaning of each underlined words.

1.            a cat was crouched under

2.            one of the dripping tables

3.            the padrone bowed from his desk

4.            feeling of supreme importance

5.            she studied her profile

6.            a kitty to sit on my lap

7.            and purr when I stroke her

8.            lying propped up with two pillows

9.            go along under the eaves

10.          glistened in the rain

Discussion:

1.            Do you know what you want in life?

2.            What makes you happy and contented?

3.            Do you yearn for something basic that you wonder why you don’t have it?

4.            Obviously, the wife is not happy. What do you think will make her happy? What does she really want?

5.            Is the husband capable of making his wife happy? Why do you say so?

6.            Do you think the hotel-keeper loves the wife? Defend your answer.

7.            Why was the wife not given a specific name? Why was she called American wife throughout the story? What is implied by this?

8.            Read the part when the wife was enumerating the things she wants. Will you say that she is rather childish? Why or why not?

9.            Why was the story entitled “Cat in the Rain”?

10.          Relate the following familiar lines to the story:

a.            Little things mean a lot.

b.            The basic things in life are free.

11.          What symbolism do you find in the story?

Application: Do at least one of the following:

1.            Write a deconstructed version of the story.

2.            Draw a picture that best reflects the relationship between the husband and the wife.

3.            Write another ending of the story.

Blogger Insight

                When I was growing up I was a hell of a brat. I remember my mother once told me, “do not buy the things that you want but buy the things that you need,” but because I am very stubborn and hard headed I ended up in tears with a “red” in my butt.

                Human as we are we love to have many things—we are so materialistic; buying things that are not necessary at all and not even worth buying for. Well, it is only but a few of the whims and caprises of a man. Some people take drugs, and do illegal things, gamblings just to meet their vices. The story “Cat in the Rain” teaches us a lesson that we should not pay so much attention to the things which do not even lasts for eternity. Rather pay attention to things that are worth buying, waiting and having for. So, if I will go and shop I put in my head the words of Benjamin Franklin which states, “don’t give too much for a whistle,” short but definitely right!