Establishing Context: Reader Participation in Hemingway's “Marriage Group” Stories

Neither Hemingway the author nor his characters frequently confront head-on what they seem to consider difficult, if not absolutely terrifying, about life. Avoidance and repression are certainly recurring themes in the author's fiction. When characters do not, or are unable to avoid confrontations with what is in Hemingway the quintessence of life—suffering, failure, meaninglessness—the consequences can be traumatizing. Young Nick Adams, in “Indian Camp,” witnesses the ugliness and suffering with which people enter and leave this world. Though after seeing the pain of the woman giving birth Nick's “curiosity” dissipates and he tries to look away, in the end, he still gets “a good view” of the Indian man who cuts his own throat. Similarly, in the intertexual vignette of Chapter II of In Our Time, a young girl watches a woman give birth. Both Nick and the girl are confronted with their unattractive destinies as humans: painful childbirth for the girl and inevitable death for both of them, and, as the narrator comments in the intertexual vignette, they are both “scared sick looking at it.” Because of the traumatic nature of such terrific realizations, characters in Hemingway more often prefer to deal with life as the older Nick Adams does in “Big Two-Hearted River: Part II”: they recognize the presence of the swamp yet decide there is plenty of time to fish that swamp later, though the reader is usually given no reason to believe that the character will ever face whatever they are repressing.

Though we certainly can not treat Hemingway the author as we do his characters, we surely can see how the themes discussed heretofore may relate to the author's style, and how this style works to reinforce these themes. Like many of his characters, Hemingway often opts not to deal explicitly with certain things in some of his fiction. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway describes his theory that “you could omit anything if you knew you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood” (75). We can see this theory being employed, effectively, in Hemingway's so-called “Marriage Group” stories: “Out of Season,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Cat in the Rain,” and “A Canary For One.” Here I aim to explore Hemingway's use of intentional omission in the first three of these stories, and the effect of this technique. I will use a discussion of “Hills Like White Elephants” as a way of exploring Hemingway's use of omission in general, then we will look at how a similar process is used in “Cat in the Rain” and “Out of Season.”

“Hills Like White Elephants” is an extraordinary artistic achievement, and it is what Hemingway decides to omit from the story that gives it much of its meaning. Essentially, it is a story about an abortion in which all direct mention of abortion is omitted. As we will see, though, it would be over-simple for us to conclude that direct mention of abortion is the only or most important thing omitted from the story. To understand what is omitted from the “Hills Like White Elephants,” we must briefly examine what I argue is the most important word in the story: “it.” Grammatically, “it” is a demonstrative, and, like all demonstratives, the referent of “it” is context-relative. Without a clear context, demonstratives like “it” refer to nothing, or rather, could refer to many things. This clear context is precisely what Hemingway omits from the story. Of course the author provides a situational or spatial context for the reader, but the conversation the couple has is neither explained nor placed clearly within the context of a larger discussion. To establish this context, and to realize that the couple is indeed talking about an abortion, the reader his- or herself must do a few things. First, a knowledge of Hemingway's works and a cursory biographical knowledge will get the reader far way in filling in what is omitted from the story. Childbirth and anxiety related to childbirth is a recurrent theme in Hemingway, and the author, in his own life, was undeniably at least unsure about the ideas of childbirth and parenthood, if not positively resentful of them. But neither a knowledge of the author's oeuvre nor the author's life is necessary in order for the reader to participate with the story in a way that reveals its full meaning. What is explicitly omitted from the story can be inferred from what is present in the text. It is not difficult, actually, to conclude from the man’s comments that whatever they are talking about is “really and awfully simple operation,” and is “just to let the air in,” that what is being discussed is an abortion (212). Yet the reader surely has no reason to be certain that an abortion is being discussed based solely on these comments. The idea that the operation mentioned in an abortion gains strength when we note certain things within the text.

First, and perhaps most obviously, we should note the repetition of pairs of things in the story, and the word two: the station is situated “between two lines of rails,” the couple order two beers, which are brought in “two glasses,” with “two felt pads,” they get “two Anis del Toro,” the girl takes hold of “two of the strings of beads” hanging from the doorway, they have “two heavy bags.” This repetition—as is common in Hemingway—is intentional and serves a specific purpose. We are constantly reminded that there are two and only two people present, and as we being to piece together the larger context of the conversation, it becomes clear that the mean at least seems to think three would be too many. Secondly, we can look to Hemingway's use of the description of the landscape –another common technique the author employs—for clues about the situation and the “thoughts” of characters. In the story, the girl stands up and walks away from the man, and we are told she looks at the land. The imagery here, the “fields of grain and trees along the bank of the Ebro,” ought to make the reader think of fertility, and we can infer that perhaps the girl herself is thinking of her own fertility as she looks at these things, especially in light of other stories, such as “Cat in the Rain.”
Once the reader notices these things, and others, a second reading of the story is definitely needed and is very rewarding. Now that a possible context for the conversation has been established by the reader, one realizes just how crucial to the story the word “it” is. The word is used in the story too frequently for us to examine every instance in depth here, but it is instructive to look briefly at the versatility of this word in the story. Toward the beginning of the story, when the girl asks the man what is painted on the bead curtain, he answers, “anis del toro. It's a drink.” The girl responds by asking “Could we try it?” Of course this is a reasonable response to the man's statement, but, too, it seems as if the girl has actually changed the subject, and is asking if they could try having the baby. Later the girl says rather enigmatically, “once they take it away, you never get it back.” If we assume “it” refers here to a child, this becomes a very meaningful and resonate sentence. Much of the story can, and I think should, be read in this way. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a great example of the kind of attention Hemmingway gives to each word in a story, and a perfect illustration of the effectiveness of his theory of omission.

“Cat in the Rain” is certainly a story about which, upon initially reading it, the reader will “feel something more than they understood.” The reader can “feel” there is something more to the American wife's attachment to the titular cat, but it is not immediately clear why. Again, the reader must participate with the text to fill in what has been left out by the author. As in “Hills Like White Elephants,” what seems to be left out of “Cat in the Rain” is mention of pregnancy. Keeping in mind how important the landscape often is in Hemingway, the reader is first clued into the subject matter of the story upon noting all of the fertile imagery in the opening paragraph. But perhaps more important is the repetition of the image of the woman at a window looking at these symbols of fertility. This image occurs three times in a three-page story. This image is appropriate given the stories theme of enclosure and entrapment, but it also points us to what may be going on in the woman's thoughts, that is, her looking at the fertile landscape may be correlated to her thinking about her own fertility. Perhaps the most obvious, if not most important, instance of omission is the story is signaled to the reader when the woman comes back into the hotel without finding the cat, and the narrator tells us that “something felt very small and tight inside the girl” (130). This sentence could be read to reinforce the already well established theme of enclosure but it is a rather curious sentence and not a stretch for one to infer that the “something” may be a child, and what the couple is really talking about in the story is pregnancy.

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway claims that what is omitted from “Out of Season” is Peduzzi's suicide at the end of the story. Even though this ending does seem to fit the story, the reader has no access at all to this ending within the text itself. This is something one does not “feel” about the story unless told by the author himself that this was omitted. For this reason, we can be at least somewhat skeptical of what the author says about this story. Rather, this story is quite similar to “Hills Like White Elephants” in that what seems to be left out is a clear context in which to place the conversation that occurs between a woman and a man. The first indication the reader gets that something important has been omitted from the story is the wife's “sullen” attitude. Later, offering his wife a drink, the young gentleman says to her, “maybe it'll make you feel better” (136). Later still the young gentleman apologizes—though one senses half-heartedly—for the way he talked at lunch. No more is said about the conversation at lunch or about why the wife may be feeling so “rotten.” Many argue that what is omitted from this story is pregnancy and abortion. I think this story lacks adequate textual evidence to come to this conclusion for certain, but the possibility is certainly present. The story is saturated with “muddy” and dirty imagery: the “muddy drinks,” the “rusty bobsleds,” the river “brown and muddy,” and the “dump heap” to the right of the river. These images do evoke the idea of abortion, but could easily point to the wasted state of the relationship.

Hemingway's practice of intentional omission is only appropriate given the themes of avoidance and repression is much of his fiction. As we see often in his stories, things must be dealt with delicately, if not evasively, lest we become overwhelmed by reality, as Nick Adams does in “A Way You'll Never Be.” But the author's technique is not only appropriate but very effective. This technique forces the reader to actively participate in filling in parts of the narrative, involving the reader critically and emotionally in the story.