In my recent literature class at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (University of Richmond), I advised my students not to try to read Hemingway’s Short Stories, for the first time, without an experienced facilitator or interpretation manual. Hemingway, who became a world-class deep-sea fisherman trolling the waters between Key West, Florida, and Cuba, would likely echo that advice if anyone asked him if they should try to fish the Caribbean waters without an experienced professional guide. Reading any fictional works by Hemingway can be challenging for even the most experienced readers of other noted authors; they can be tough to navigate without a map and fraught with layers of symbolic language seemingly aimed to throw inexperienced Hemingway readers on to some dangerously jagged rocks! Hemingway’s Short Stories could even be more difficult to understand than his complex novels. However, with the proper key codes, readers who are willing to spend time examining these works will be rewarded for the time spent. Also, they may better ready to appreciate and understand his more nuanced writing in his later novels, such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bells Toll, and The Old Man and the Sea, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Perhaps this is a stretch, but I would even recommend to anyone who either had not read or had not understood Hemingway’s works before, to start with an exploration of the sample of nine short stories that I taught in my Lifelong Learning Class:
- “Indian Camp”
- “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”
- The End of Something”
- “Soldier’s Home”
- “Big Two-Hearted River – Part I”
- Big Two-Hearted River— Part II”
- The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
- “Hills Like White Elephants.”
- “Fathers and Sons”
In these nine stories, Hemingway provides glimpses of the foundations of his writing style, lays out his central themes and values, and conveys the principle tenants of his philosophical way of thinking about life and death. These stories, particularly The Nick Adams series, tell us about Hemingway’s personal life, from being a twelve-year-old boy on outings with his father in Northern Michigan (“Indian Camp”), to being a father (“Fathers and Sons”), who is taking his twelve-year-old son on a fishing and hunting trip in the same natural settings he valued as a boy. “Indian Camp” was the first of the Nick Adams stories I covered in class, and it offered an appropriate bookend for the last one we discussed—“Fathers and Sons.” Other Nick Adams stories include “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” which focuses on Nick’s mother and father and their dysfunctional associations with each other and with the Native American Ojibway Indians; “The End of Something,” about the end of a town and Nick’s earliest serious girlfriend; the two “Big Two-Hearted River” stories, Walden Pond like stories, where Nick tries to live purposely and heal using fishing therapy after returning from the horrors of World War I.
“Soldiers Home,” though not specifically a Nick Adams story, also focuses on the problems of a soldier who returns from the war and has many difficulties adjusting to home life and new societal demands of the 1920’s. Anyone who also read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Jelly Bean,” will find similar themes to Hemingway’s soldier’s tale. “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” highlights the temptations that a couple who remain married ‘for convenience’ face when they go as inexperienced hunters on safari to Africa. The possible parallels between the couple in that story and Hemingway’s marriage with his second wife, Pauline, who also went on safari in Africa, are interesting to consider. This turns out to be a first-rate mystery. Look for clues to determine whether a key character was murdered and who was responsible.
“Hills Like White Elephants” best illustrates Hemingway’s attempt to replicate the style of late Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne in a literary format. The painting illustrated below highlights both background and foreground features of mountains near his home in Provence, France, while keeping the main concerns of the work in the shadows.
Everything we know about this fleeting couples is outlined in shadows and beaded curtains. We don’t know their names, where they have been and what they are going to do when they arrive in Madrid, Spain. Their true feelings are not revealed in what they say to each other. and what they do say is fragmented and highly symbolic. We only know they have unresolved issues and that a train will be coming in minutes to take them on their journey. The reader is left to try to make something out of their mess but has inadequate information to clean it up. It is interesting to consider that this impressionistic tale may contain the kernel of some of the same central issues the couple faces in Hemingway’s World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms. In that novel, Katherine Barkley repeatedly says she is afraid of the rain. In the short story kernel, “Jig” accuses her partner of not understanding what she means when she says, “The hills remind her of white elephants.” What are these female characters talking about and how can we better understand Hemingway’s complex feelings about women?
In my next Litchatte.com column, I will offer a code to help understand some of these enigmas, symbolic themes, and Hemingway’s simplistic, yet nuanced writing styles. In the meantime, I invite you to join this conversation and let me know what you think about Hemingway’s writing in the dialogue box at the bottom of this or any Litchatte column.
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