Analysis on the Cat in the Rain

Analysis on “The Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Miller Hemingway, Adel Abdraimova Ernest Miller Hemingway born in July 21 1961 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement, strongly influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and his public image. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. After leaving high school, he worked for a few months as a reporter for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to become an ambulance driver during World War I. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home within the year. In 1922, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives, and the couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent. During his time there, he met and was influenced by modernist writers and artists of the 1920s expatriate community known as the "Lost Generation". Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and '40s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961. “The Cat in the Rain” is a short story written while the author was living in France. It was first published in 1925 in the short story collection In Our Time.1 The story begins with a description of the hotel room where an American couple stayed in and its colorful surroundings. Their room was on the second floor and it faced the sea, public garden and the war monument. From this short description it is quite understandable that the hotel where the husband and the wife stayed in was not of low quality. Then the author described the rainy weather and how it influenced all that was nearby the hotel, and we can easily feel that dampness around after such a “watery” description. In this dreary weather the American wife saw a lonely cat when she was standing by the window bored and sad. The cat seemed like having found shelter under one of the tables and it did her best not to be touched by cold and merciless drops of the rain. The woman decided to go down and to get that poor kitty despite of the horrible weather outside. It might be her sense of pity for the creature which lacked care and attention, but who knows maybe she wouldn’t have done the same for a human being? There are people who raise animals over human beings, but superiority of the latter over the former is incontestable. The American wife can also be seen as an independent and ambitious one who mostly gets what she wants, what is characteristic of American women, so it is possible that she went downstairs just to satisfy her ego and her endless needs. It might be that it was just her personality to complain always that she lacks this or that what we observed through her dialogues with her husband and her monologues. Unfortunately we can’t judge that objectively, because the author used his favorite writing device when he presented the reader only a certain period of characters’ lives making us curious about their past. Downstairs she met the old and very tall hotel-owner who bowed to her as she passed him by, and it is obvious that he wanted to serve her and make her satisfied. On one hand, we can interpret his actions as ordinary ones what we can expect from a person whom we pay for his/her service. He was just doing his work and what residents of the hotel expected him to do and paid for that. On the other hand it could be a paternal care, desire to make her smiling and pleased, or even more than paternal love, because as an experienced person who had lived rather 1

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long life, he understood people and moreover relationship between a man and a woman, in this case relationship between the husband and the wife. The American woman correspondingly liked him, his dignified personality, “his old, heavy face and big hands” and the way how seriously he took complaints, so we can say that their sympathy was mutual. Above all she needed that feeling of being loved and respected, because her husband didn’t give her that, and probably he was not to blame. When the woman was looking for the cat under furious rain, someone opened an umbrella behind her - it was the maid who was certainly sent by the padrone. With protection above her head, the woman walked along the path until reaching the place where the cat must have been. She didn’t see anything under the table, the cat disappeared. The woman got upset and disappointed, her wish didn’t come true again. Together with the maid they returned to the hotel where she saw the hotel-keeper again. The Italian man was full of dignity and at the same time he respected her so much, that the girl felt both small and important in front of him. The woman found her husband reading a book when she was back from the street, and actually when speaking about the husband the author constantly uses repetition of these words like “read” and “book”. Yes, it points to his tiredness of his wife and even maybe his indifference to her, but nevertheless he showed his curiosity asking if she got the cat. When his wife was going downstairs for the cat he offered to do it instead of her, but she rejected. Let all this “care” be because of politeness and insincerity, but anyway it is not a reason to blame him. Interesting enough, what did she do to make him happy? She is even not able to make happy herself just complaining about her own needs and wants. Besides having a cat she also wanted to eat with her own silver and with candles, she also wanted to brush her hair out in front of a mirror, and some new clothes as well. However no one stops or hinders her to change her hairstyle, she should just go and have it, and if she doesn’t have enough means it is necessary to go and earn it. There is no need to rely on other people, and this is my second vision of the woman. As for her husband, he asks her to shut up every time his wife starts whining again, and naturally it is a bit rude for the man’s part, but it is quite usual and sometimes acceptable for men who got tired of monotonous marriage and eternally unhappy and dissatisfied wife. Despite of anything the man organizes a family holiday in a fashionable place of Italy and it is probably a sign of his love towards her, it shows us that he still values her. He could just tell his wife that he was going for a business trip to Italy and take with him another woman, but he didn’t do that. The weather depiction is definitely present in this story as the author’s favorite, meaningful and usual device. Here the weather description plays one of the most important roles as it displays the main character’s inner state and her mood in general, not only for that moment. Rain can be a symbol of romance, nostalgia and love for one, but in this story it symbolizes the sadness, loneliness, unhappiness and monotonousness. Marriage problem is revealed in the story as the American couple got used to each other so much that they started to take each other for granted, like furniture in the room. They don’t heed each other anymore as they did at the beginning of their relations, and he doesn’t listen attentively to her wishes, and so does she, and there is no one to blame. When there is a problem within a family both parties are responsible for a conflict burst out. Women are considered to be more cunning than men are, and this means that they are more successful in resolving conflicts using their intelligence and other female tricks. However our protagonist prefers just complaining about her unfortunate fate even not trying to put her hands to changing it. Because of her husband’s coldness the wife finds a harbor for her deserted soul in the hotel-owner’s magnanimity and grandeur. The old man is so good to her and is fond of serving her and it surely appeals to the woman, but at the same time it is natural for the

hotel-keeper’s side to be so friendly and caring, because it helps him earn money. It is his duty to take care of his tenants and reputation of his hotel, especially if they are American. The title of the story is “The Cat in the Rain” what proves the reader essentiality of this animal to the story. “The cat in the rain” symbolizes the woman whose emotional state is nearly to be drown under drops of rain. At the beginning of the story the cat was even described as “she”, although we cannot define its gender, so association between the cat and the main character of female gender in the story is created immediately. This cat helps us to understand the inner state of another character of female gender as well. The Italian maid “held a big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body” in the same way she would hold a baby. After rain the sun again comes out of clouds, and so is with the woman’s problems. She got the cat and let it be not the cat she wanted exactly at the beginning, but anyway her wish was realized due to the padrone. The man is like her savior rescuing her from indifference and sadness, and it seems that he will rescue her from the physical starving as well. The woman had a boyish hair-style and it exhibits us that she stopped feeling herself as a woman. And who knows maybe at the end of the story the union between the woman and the hotel-owner will take place. The main stylistic device the story is built upon is suspense. The author deliberately postpones the denouement keeping the reader in pressing anticipation. Hemingway's wonderful mastery of the language permits him to keep the reader tense till the denouement. Although everything seems to lie on the surface, but indeed the reader should make a great effort to derive the unspoken reference from the description of the facts. Hemingway's careful attention to details permits him to introduce the hidden idea between the lines, without saying it directly. Hemingway's talent lies in deep psychological insight into human nature.