Analysis of "Cat in the rain" Hemingway

The story under analysis “Cat in the Rain” was written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the most favourite American novelists, short-story writer and essayist, whose simple prose style for the first sight influenced at a lot of writers.

So, the story begins with the description of the hotel where two Americans stopped. It is raining, so it`s the reason why the married couple stay in their room. But a cat in the rain attracts the young woman’s attention. She wants to get the cat inside but fails so the service of the hotel brings her another one.

The story is written in one mood which the author creats from the very begining. The very title of the text gives us an impression of incleament wheather, miserable and pitful. Hemingway keeps this atmosphere of “rain” by using certain epithets in his description: puddles, deserted square, glistening war monument. I suppose it`s rare time when the atmosphere of the whole story serves as a symbole of the relationships between the wife and her husband.

The protagonist here is the woman. Her emotions and her relations are at the first plan. We can see how deeply the author describes her emotions with his lovely device, repetition, when he reveals her attitude to the owner of the hotel: “she liked...she liked”. It`s interesting that the verb “to like” is not used to characterize relations of the wife to her husband. So we can see here inderectly and later directly in the conversation with her husband that she seaches response of her husband and doesn`t get it so she has despaired so much that tries to find it somewhereelse.

    The vocabulary that is used by the author makes us realize that the woman is a little girl with her meaningless, capricious wishes which are not to be satisfied by her nearest man so she bears the drama of her fate, the absence of comfort in her life, that we can compare with the cat in the rain.

The title of the story anticipates this confrontation and the fact that the cat’s image takes a part in the story twice – just increases the total effect. In fact, the young woman wants love and maybe a child as a result of it, what exactly symbolized in that cat. By the way a cat is a traditional symbol of home and comfortand this is what she needs. She wants warmth, attention, care, joy, happiness; however she gets a cat at all but another one, so the author could hint us a following outcome, that maybe for her future the desteny reserved a cat, as a love. And the owner of the hotel can be compared with the Lord who is over all circumstances and who care about her.

The war monument is also mentioned purposely. The husband George and his wife belong to uncomfortable, homeless after-war world. It seems that George took a part in that war so he looks tired of it and he just wants a real peacful rest but his wife has other wishes so she behave with him in disrespectful annoying him a lot with her endless caprices. So the plot is not so monosemantic as it could seem for the first sight.

If to speak about the text itself, it is told in the 3rd person narrative. the description is bound with descriptive passages and dialogues of the personages. The author makes extensive use of repetitions to render the story more vivid, convincing, more real and emotional.

Everything the author touches seems to reflect the feelings of the heroes.

To my personal opinion the story reveals the author's great knowledge of man's inner world. He penetrates into the human heart and disclose its verges. The author tried to disclose the deep dificulties in mutual understanding between man and woman by the reason of different natural aims in marrige. Man searches for tranquility in woman and she searches love and care in the man and babies as result of it, so we can say that it`s the main massage of the story.