Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

In:

Submitted By vulehoaibac
Words 1697
Pages 7
An analysis about ‘Lack of Communication’ In Terms of ‘Cat in the Rain’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘Cat in the Rain’ is the short story of Ernest Hemingway written in the 1920’s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. In the story, ‘Cat in the Rain’ Ernest Hemingway sets the scene for his fiction in a hotel room in Italy on a rainy day. On the first reading of this short story it can be easily interpreted as a wife nagging her husband, who is lying in bed while reading a book but after analyzing the story carefully it is not difficult to see the indifference of man to the woman. This paper aims to analyze the theme ‘lack of communication’ in terms of the story ‘Cat in the Rain’.
It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, which she wants to protect from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel, which is kept by an Old Italian who really seems to do everything to please that woman, and wants to get the cat, it is gone. After returning to the hotel room, she starts a conversation with her husband George, who is reading all the time, telling him how much she wants to have a cat and other things, for instance her own silver to eat with. Her husband seems to be annoyed by that and not interested at all. At the end of the story there is a knock on the door and the maid stands there holding a cat for the American woman in her hands. In the story, the woman is an ‘isolated woman’ because of the indifference of her husband. Although the scene is quite romantic such as spring and rain, the man has no sense of romanticism at all. The woman wants the alone and wet cat outside the hotel insistently. The reason of her insistence is that she fells intimacy for the cat as they are nearly in the same position. The woman sees her loneliness in the weakness of the little cat. The woman is alone; she spends time with her

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...Cat in the Rain By E.Hemingway The story under analysis is written by a well-known American writer of XX century Ernest Hemingway. One of his main topics was animals as symbols and we can see this tendency in the title of the story. Cat in the Rain was written in the 1920’s. It is about an American couple who spends their holidays in a hotel in Italy. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat on the street and she wants to protect it from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel and wants to get the cat, it has already gone. As wife returns to the hotel room, she starts a conversation with her husband George and tells him how much she wants to have a cat and a lot other things. Her husband is not interested at all. Later there is a knock on the door and a maid brings a cat for the American woman. The text of the story is not homogeneous: it presents a piece of narration intercepted with dialogues, descriptions and open ending. It is also divided into several parts according to the change of the place of narration: in the room, in the hotel and outside The general slant of the story is emotional, pathetic, depressive and tense. As the author was a war journalist and a representative of the lost generation. Cat in the Rain contains several semantic fields. The semantic field of colour: bronze, blue, green; of nature: sea, palms, rain, cat; of emotions: liked, smiled, disappointed, laughed, feeling of being of supreme importance, tired; of water: sea, rain...

Words: 855 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...The story under the title “Cat in the Rain” was written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the most favourite American novelists, short-story writer and essayist, whose deceptively simple prose style has influenced wide range of writers. So, the story begins with the description of the hotel where two Americans stopped. It was raining, that’s why the couple stayed in and just a cat in the rain attracted the young woman’s attention. She wanted to get the cat inside but failed and was brought another cat. The problem of the story lies very deeply and we are to uncover it. The story is written in one mood which constantly and directly increases. It starts from the beginning where it’s created by a persistent and repeated use of the “rain” with a number of phrases associating it, such as puddles, deserted square, glistening war monument. Repetition is one of the widely used and favourite stylistic devices of Hemingway. Here he applies it to reveal the relationship of the protagonist to the old hotel owner (she liked ... , she liked...). As the verb “to like” is not used to characterize relations of the wife to her husband, this contrast is full of the concealed but easily read meaning. Though the cases of repetition in the story may seem a bit obtrusive, their modifications enter into the core of the narration very organically. They carry emotional character, however penetrating the story the deep sorrow becomes evident gradually. We realize that little, as if meaningless, capricious...

Words: 545 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...Cat in the rain essay The main theme: It’s about a woman and a man, there are sitting in a hotel room. The woman see a cat downstairs under a table. It sitting outside in the rain and the American woman feel poor for the cat. She go downstairs to save the cat, but when she gets out the cat is gone. She walks up to her husband and he still sit in the bed reading, suddenly it’s knocking on the door. The American woman open the door and someone who work at the hotel stand there with a cat in her arms. The theme in the story it is to feel alone even if there are any, the woman feel alone even when the man is sitting in the room. It’s like he doesn’t are there, she walk around in the room and feel like she is the only one in the room. The narrative technique: It is third person narrator, it is a restricted narrator, since we hear about the wife's feelings for the hotel keeper. The story is primarily showing. The narrator have focus on the wife, and therefore the events are seen by her point of view. You can´t really tell what the narrators attitude is, the narrator is reliable. The main character’s relationship with her husband: Their relationship is very tense, they are not really talking to each other. It seems like it is the man that determines in their relationship. It was as though he was the one who decides that she well had to go down and pick up the cat, yet is he brought it up to them. Every time the wife asked the husband at something, he answered in a short...

Words: 511 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...more complex. He had a high degree of detail in description of places/things and his typically themes in his stories were love, war, loss, wildness etc.. Cat in the rain Writtin by Hemingway and publised in 1925. An American couple is on vacation in Italy. The American wife sees a cat outside in the rain and she wants it very bardly, so she goes out to get it but the cat is gone. She goes back to her hotel room and starts a conversation with her husband. She tells him the things she wants but her husband doesnt seem to be interested at all. But in the end, the padrone comes with a cat to her. There is a very long description of the enviroment (typical Hemingway style). ”In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colors of the hotels facing the gardens and the sea.” First of all, he descripes the enviroment like it’s summer but then he writes that it’s raining. It’s sympolizes their relationship. First it was great and they were happy but then it all turned to grey, rain and very cold. The American wife sees a cat outside in the rain in the beginning of the story. The cat sympolizes her need to be responsible for something and her loneliness. She sees the cat as a baby who needs to be taking care of. But her reaction when she sees the cat is a little bit childish. She uses the word ”kitty” which is something a child would say instead...

Words: 913 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

A Cat in the Rain

...“Cat in the Rain” is a short psychological story by Ernest Hemingway. The plot revolves around an American couple on a vacation in Italy; there isn't any preface to the story, we know nothing about the couple’s past. The narration starts straight off when the young woman sees a cat hiding from the rain in the hotel yard. At first sight the setting is ideal: a cozy room on the second floor, a lovely view from the window. However, there is one thing which spoils the whole picture, and that is the rain, which is why the couple stays inside. Rain is also often associated with sadness; to bring home this air of melancholy, parallel constructions are used: "The rain dripped from the palm trees. The water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slippedback down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain ". The abundance of water is not accidental either; the rain, the sea, the pool – water symbolizes something inevitable; water is everywhere: it is on the ground, it is pouring from the heavens as though the nature weeps for something. This might also be regarded as a case of parallelism, since as the story progresses we realize that the feelings of the girl are not that positive. Here author also uses alliteration of sounds [r], [l]: "Rain dripped from the palmtrees, the sea broke in a long line in the rain", it brings the rhythm to the description of the weather. The conflict starts to unfold when the girl notices a cat in the rain...

Words: 1037 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...Ernest Hemingway – Cat in the Rain Ernest Hemingway was a very famous American author who managed to publish seven novels, six short story collections, two non-fiction works; Win the Nobel Prize in literature, survive two successive plane crashes and be a part of three wars, before committing suicide at the age of 61 in 1961. “When less is more”- Ernest Hemingway’s career as an author was based on that phrase. Many, if not all, of his short stories have been written in a minimalistic writing style and Cat in the Rain is no exception. Throughout the short story, it’s easy to see that the Cat in the Rain is a minimalistic short story. We see a lack of details regarding the characters. We don’t get to hear the name of the wife, we only know her as the American wife, or the American girl. We don’t get a lot of details either about the American wife or George, the husband. But in the end we do get some details about the American wife but only because she talks loudly about her appearance and desires in front of her husband. Unimportant things do in some cases have a decent description in a minimalistic story, and that’s also the case in Cat in the Rain; the settings outside the hotel and the war monument have been described pretty well. The sentences are short and the language is simple, which confirms that this is a minimalistic short story. The American wife and her husband don’t have a healthy relationship. George doesn’t really pay attention to his wife, and it is only...

Words: 728 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...The story under the title “Cat in the Rain” was written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the most favourite American novelists, short-story writer and essayist, whose deceptively simple prose style has influenced wide range of writers. So, the story begins with the description of the hotel where two Americans stopped. It was raining, that’s why the couple stayed in and just a cat in the rain attracted the young woman’s attention. She wanted to get the cat inside but failed and was brought another cat. The problem of the story lies very deeply and we are to uncover it. The story is written in one mood which constantly and directly increases. It starts from the beginning where it’s created by a persistent and repeated use of the “rain” with a number of phrases associating it, such as puddles, deserted square, glistening war monument. Repetition is one of the widely used and favourite stylistic devices of Hemingway. Here he applies it to reveal the relationship of the protagonist to the old hotel owner (she liked ... , she liked...). As the verb “to like” is not used to characterize relations of the wife to her husband, this contrast is full of the concealed but easily read meaning. Though the cases of repetition in the story may seem a bit obtrusive, their modifications enter into the core of the narration very organically. They carry emotional character, however penetrating the story the deep sorrow becomes evident gradually. We realize that little, as if meaningless, capricious...

Words: 536 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...November 13, 2013 A Deep Psychoanalytical Interpretation of “Cat in the Rain” Hemingway’s meaning to the “Cat in the Rain” is more than just the literal cat in the rain. Yes, the story talks and discusses a cat that is stuck in the rain; but, this is not the true meaning of Hemingway’s story. The character the “American Wife” shows similar elements of confinement and restraint as to the cat in the story. The constant obsession for the cat in the story from the wife shows that she thinks of herself as the cat and wants to be freed from this rain. Two Americans are stuck in a hotel where their room is facing the sea, a public garden and a war monument. A rainy day it seems to be there somewhere in Italy and the American wife is looking out the window and she spots a cat under the table that is trying to keep dry from the rain. The American wife begins to express a desire for many things in the story. She tells her husband if she cannot have fun on this trip that she should get anything she wants. She starts to request material goods and the story shows that she requests these things due to the lack of intangible goods such as love and affection. The American wife suddenly becomes obsessed with the idea of saving this random street cat. You can metaphorically say the cat is her and she is trying to save the cat from the rain and in the Americans wife case the rain is the lack of love and affection. But, George (her husband) ignores her desires and...

Words: 983 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...Stylistic analysis of the story “Cat in the Rain” by Earnest Hemingway The author. The story under the title “Cat in the Rain” was written by Ernest Hemingway. He was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. The summary. The story describes an American couple, who have a trip to Italy. The story begins with the woman, who sits in the hotel’s room and sees a cat in the window. It’s a rainy day and woman wants to protect the cat. Then she leaves the room and when she returns, she doesn’t see the cat. All the time her husband spends reading. She tries to tell him about her desire to buy a cat and some other things, but he doesn’t listen to her. At the end of the story there is a knock on the door and the maid stands there holding a cat, for the woman, in her hands. The structure of the text. Every text is organized in a specific way, and this is not identical. Speaking about its structure there is an introductory paragraph...

Words: 890 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...The short story "Cat in the Rain" was written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920´s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, which she wants to protect from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel, which is kept by an old Italian who really seems to do everything to please that woman, and wants to get the cat, it is gone. After returning to the hotel room, she starts a conversation with her husband George, who is reading all the time, telling him how much she wants to have a cat and other things, for instance her own silver to eat with. Her husband seems to be annoyed by that and not interested at all. At the end of the story there is a knock on the door and the maid stands there holding a cat for the American woman in her hands. The first thing that caught my eyes was the long description at the beginning. First there is a description of the environment in good weather, which means spring or summer, then a description of the momentary situation in the rain. This description creates an atmosphere that is sad, cold and unfriendly. To create this atmosphere Hemingway uses words such as "empty" or "the motorcars were gone". Later on, by looking at the relationship of the two Americans, you can see that this description was a foreshadowing of the state of the couple´s relationship: First it was nice, the spring-time of their love, and now there is only rain, their relationship...

Words: 314 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...Cat in the rain by Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. The story begins with the description of the hotel where American couple stopped. It was raining, that’s why the couple stayed at their room and just a cat in the rain attracted the young woman’s attention. The man was reading and almost didn’t pay any attention on his wife. He was absolutely indifferent in that cat; but the woman wanted to get the cat inside. Then we saw the woman’s attitude to the owner of the hotel. She really liked him and there were words to prove it: “She liked the hotel-keeper. 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.” The woman went downstairs in order to bring the cat at her room...

Words: 1231 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Cat in the Rain

...“The Cat in the Rain” 1. The underlying emotions in this story are desire, neglect, and obliviousness. The American wife expresses her needs and wants to her husband by telling him that she wants to grow her hair long, the need for the cat, she wants her own silver and candles, new clothes, and that she wants to have fun. The wife obviously desires many things in this story, but they seem to reflect a sort of compensation for the emotional neglect she is experiencing from her husband. George seems oblivious, or else just apathetic towards his wife’s wants and needs. 2. In this story, the cat seems to be the most important symbol. Throughout the story the American wife expresses her desire to have a kitty. The cat is a symbol for her real desire of wanting a baby and compensation for George’s lack of affection. She says that if she can’t have long hair or any fun then she wants a cat, which means that if she can’t live the single lifestyle then she wants to start a family. 3. This story shows us that the relationship between the American wife and George lacks true communication skills, affection, and consideration. The wife is trying to communicate to her husband what she wants out of life, but he just hears the shallow surface and ignores her true desires. Even the hotel owner makes her feel more important and worthy than George does. The hotel owner does this by giving her attention, showing concern for her needs and fulfilling her desires by sending the cat to the...

Words: 308 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain

...The two main characters in this story are the unnamed wife and her husband George. There are also sub-character are maid and padrone. They are on vacation at Italia hotel. The wife want to rescue a cat when she sees it out in the rain, but George is described as he unconcern with her needs and desires. He makes no move to help her. He remains lying on his bed and read the book while his wife goes outside in the rain to search for the cat. His reading indicates his nonchalance and selfishness. When she returns and says that the cat is gone. He just replies with a casual response “wonder where it gone to”, while his eyes resting from reading. He doesn’t suggest that both of them can search for it, or even he doesn’t offer her hope that the cat will come back. Once she tries to tell him her feeling, he doesn’t listen and resume with his reading. He seems more care about his book than his wife. On the other hand, the maid and padrone give her something of hopefulness. She like him very much as he lead he to find the cat that is important to her. There are many things that she likes “she liked his dignity, she liked the way he wanted to serve her”. All of these things suggest that something fundamental missing inside hers. She can find it in the ways padrone serves her that she can’t in George. The hotel owner constantly taking care of her “you must not get wet” and sent the maid to her with an umbrella. The maid represented of the kindness and understanding that does not existed in...

Words: 288 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain, Essay

...Cat In The Rain Being married and committed to each other, means listing and showing each other your love. Feeling lonely and bored, and feeling like the person you love the most doesn’t give you anything, but rejection, shouldn’t be a part of a marriage. This is what the wife in “Cat in the rain” seems to deal with. The wife in this story has a lot of needs; especially because of the lack of attention her husband, George gives her. She wants something more, something he doesn’t give her. She’s bored and lonely and wants something more: “Anyway, I want a cat,’ she said, ‘I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.” – This line actually says a lot about her, because she sounds extremely immature and selfish, but what is really is, is a desperate beg for attention, and not any attention, but his. In some way she’s really egoistic, because at first you would think that she wants to safe the cat, because she feels bad for it, but later on we discover that she actually feels bad for herself, she doesn’t care about the cat and how it feels, she only cares about herself and how she feels. She desires some excitement, and the cat is just a tool to get that. It’s clear to see how the wife, goes from being a grown women, to being childish, because in the beginning of the story, the narrator refers to her as the American wife, but as the story progresses, he refers to her as a girl “As the American girl passed the office...” “Something felt...

Words: 878 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Cat in the Rain Essay

...Cat in the rain The short story, “Cat in the Rain”, by Ernest Hemingway, describes the relationship between two married American tourists in Italy, where one is striving to get a cat. The American wife wants to bring the cat into they’re room, but the husband is indifferent to her wish. Under these actions, there are a lot of important points. This cat is symbolic and reveals the psychological state and emotional desires of the American wife. The cat is caught by the rain. It needs help and care, but it is ignored by others. Just like the American wife. When you have wanted something for a long time and you haven’t got it, sometimes you just do what you feel is best for you. The American wife does her best to save the cat, which is held back because of the rain. Her husband gives a courtesy and says “I’ll do it” (p. 1 line 14) but he makes no further attempt to help, which gives us a view of him being careless for this cat. The wife never catches the cat. The rain that held the cat back, stopped, and it ran away. The cat is a clear symbol of a baby and the American wife who is held back because of the rain, which symbolizes the husband. The wife is so determined to get a baby, but is unable to, because of her husband’s missing wish for a baby. When the woman comes back to the hotel, she starts mentioning all the wishes she wants in her future. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?” (p.2 line. 15) she asks her husband, where he answers “I like...

Words: 684 - Pages: 3