•

Landscape and Setting in Heminqway's Fiction:

Some Methodological Reflections
on Heminqway's Aesthetic Vision

Hicholas Hell Sloboda

Program of Comparative Literature
McGill University, Montreal
July, 1991

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate

Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the
requirements of the deoree of Masters of Arts.

(c) Hicholas Hell Sloboda, July, 1991

•
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 • Abstract

Heminqway's description of outside space plays a forma-

tive role in the expression of his aesthetic vision. By
in'teqrat ino an elliptical use of lanquaqe--his iceberg tech-
nique--within a complex set of stylistic devices, Heminqway
establishes a textual poetics which qoes beyond specific
meaning and conveys a sense of motion and an intensity. In
this thesis, I explore the methodological foundations of the
depiction of outside space in Heminqway's narrative worlds,
with a particular concern for examining the development and
meaninq of Heminqway' s aesthetic vision. Landscapes and
settings are thus structures of meanino that constitute the
author's creative world and interrelate closely with the plot,
the charact.erizations, and the dialogue.
•
Besume

Partie inteqrante de son imaginaire et de sa stylistique,

les descriptions de paysage de Heminqway temoignent pleinement
de sa creativite et de sa maitrise des moyens d'expression
litteraire. C'est pour cette raison que sa fameuse icebera
technique est a .considerer dans la perspective de cet te
maitrise novatrice des outils d'ecriture. Heminqway connait
et emploie avec justesse nombreux procedees de syntaxe
narrative et de poetique qui contribuent tous l la mis en
place des disposi ti fs semiotiques elabores. J' examine ainsi la
constitution d'une poetique de l'espace, poetique qui vient
completer lea structures purement narratives des romans et
reel ts. Lea paysages et lea descriptions d • interieur sont
perQus en vertu de leur fonction semiotique, comme structures
figurales du fictlonnel qui entretiennent une relation
complexe et dynamique avec lea autres elements structuraux de
l'univers textuel de l'auteur: !'intrigue, !'action, le
dialogue .

•
 Table of Contents
Page
Introduction. • • 1

Chapter
One: Heminqway's Iceberg Technique. • 8

Two: Heminqway's Artistic Vision . . . 23

Three: Oppositions and Counterpoints . . 36

Four: Characters and Motionscapes. . . . . 48

Five: Time in Motionscapes. . . . . . . . • . . 59
Six: Transforming Settings. . • . . . . . . 81
Seven: Human Bodies and the Body of the Earth. 93
Conclusion: To Feel and Feel Not. . .. . . 111
Bibliography. . . . . • . ...... . • 116

•
 1
Introduction

When we place silence aoainst lanouaoe,

we present ourselves with the possibility
of ooino beyond the limit of what the
ideals of clarity and distinctness in
lanouaoe allows us to say, to the realm
of what can be shown throuoh indirect
discourse.
Steven Bindeman, Heidegaer and Wittaens-
tein

Ernest Heminoway's fiction differs from a style of writ-

ino which emeroed in the 19th century and is characterized by,
as Patricia Wauoh explains, a "firm belief in a commonly
experienced objectively existino world of history.• 1 Hemino-
way, alono with other modernists who no lonoer believe in such
a world, shift the focus of their writino onto the fictional
worlds themselves. These writers write about a world no
lonqer ftlled with "eternal verities but a series of construc-
tions, artifices, impermanent structures."2 One result of
this new perspective is a concentration on the structure and
form of the work of fiction itself.
This innovative approach to fiction has produced a wide
ranqe of equally innovative critical responses. Some critics
mix Heminc,way's non-fiction, fiction, and his actual life
toqether. Jackson J. Benson, ~or example, in Heminqway .•. The
Writer's Art of Self-Defense, contends that Heminoway purges
his personal emotional problems through his art. External

•
criticism, however, fails to comprehend the work of art within
its framework. Other writers, such as James T. Farrell, dis-
 2

miss Hemingway's innovative use of language and his vision of

the world as juvenile and shallow. Farrell serves as an
excellent contrast to Hemingway. The former employs a type of
documentary realism to depict the ugliness of American urban
life and its destruction of human potential. In his writing,
his point of view is closely linked with his strong beliefs
about Trotskyism and Marxism. Hemingway, on the other hand,
employs a less didactic technique, emphasizing a more artistic
vision. His works lack what Alfred Kazin refers to as
Farrell 's "pressure of certain moral compul s 1ves that were
part of the very design of his work and gave it a kind of
dreary grandeur."3 In discussing Hemingway, Farrell claims
that Hemingway "has tended to reduce life to the effect that
sights, scenes, and experiences make upon the nervous system;
and he has avoided complicated types of response." He con-
cludes by noting that herein lies "one of the major factors
revealing his [Hemingway' s] 1 imitations as a writer." 4
Another early criticism, by William Phillips, elaborates on
the nature of Hemingway's so-called limited types of response,
contending that Hemingway is "handicapped by a narrow, some-
what immature sense of the world, and he has never been inter-
ested in or capable of understanding many of the larger
aspects of the human predicament." 5 Ihab Hassan studies the
use of language and silence in Hemingway's fiction and con-
cludes that the ethic of the characters Hemingway creates is

• "reductive" and "solitary," as "they disengage themselves from

 3

the complexities of human relations and simplify their social

existence to the primary functions of the body." 6 Hassan is
part of a trend in criticism which downplays the "aesthetic
value" of Heminqway' s fiction. Various extensions of this
claim are focused on by some contemporary cri tics. Bruce
Henricksen, for example, argues that Hemingway's characters
"are often entirely dominated by a single monological view-
point or subjectivity."?
In my thesis, I propose to demonstrate the significance
of the "aesthetic value" of Hemingway's fiction, by focusing
particularly on his landscapes and settings. Malcolm Cowley
was one of the first critics to recognize the different nature
of Hemingway's fiction:

When Hemingway's stories first appeared,

they seemed to be a transcription of the
real world ..•. Wlth his persistence on
'presenting things truly,' he seemed to
be a writer in the naturalistic tradi-
tion ... and the professors ... treated him
as if he were a Dreiser of the lost gen-
eration, or perhaps the fruit of a misal-
liance between Dreiser and Jack London.

Cowley proceeds to suggest an alternative reading which dis-

associates Hemingway' s fiction from that which mirrors empiri-
cal reality, and favours a world of "images that were symbols
of an inner world." 8 The images that Hemingway dwells on,
as recognized by Carlos Baker, include the sea, the mountains,
and the plains. He observes that "Hemingway likes the words
country and land. It is astonishing how often they recur in
 4

his work without being obtrusive."9

By revealing the complexity of Heminqway's settings and
landscapes, I intend to demonstrate that Heminqway employs a
polyphonic, as opposed to a "monological viewpoint." Specifi-
cally, in order to demonstrate that his fiction allows (1)
for a complex vision of the world to emerge and (2) his char-
acters to go beyond superficial 'sportsmen' codes of ethics,
or a bar-room 'just don't think' life style, in a series of
short chapters, I will focus on various qualities of Heming-
way's settings and landscapes, and their overall relation to
Heminqway's artistry. From this, I hope to provide a broader
foundation for an appreciation of Heminqway' s fiction in terms
of his aesthetic of omission.
In the first chapter, I will begin by providing an over-
view of Heminqway' s style of omission and introducing his
iceberg technique. Then, I will place his approach within the
larger context of the literature around him.
The second chapter will focus on how the landscapes and
settings in his fiction function in relation to the techniques

explained in the previous chapter. I will out 1 ine how Heming-

way typically organizes a landscape. The chapter will also
focus on the relation between his approach and that of the
visual-artistic world, in particular, that of the sculptor
Brancusi and the painter CAzanne.
The third chapter wi 11 examine in closer detai 1 the
specific structural elements of opposition and counterpoint in
 5

Heminqway's landscapes and settinqs.

The fourth chapter expands the study of the specific
qualities of Heminqway's landscapes and settinqs, and focuses
on the relation of time to the settinq. It examines how
characters develop in liqht of an altered temporal perspec-
tive.
The fifth chapter deals with the spatial perspective and
studies the relation between altered landscapes and character-
ization. It also focuses on the physical effect that the
introduction of motion has had on the landscape.
The sixth chapter will explore two instances of altered
landscapes and settinqs within Heminqway's fiction and how
they provide alternative worlds for the characters. I will
demonstrate that, because these worlds become too far removed
from the empirical world, that is, because the characters'
perception of the space has been altered too drastically, they
cannot develop an effective 'dialoque' with the world. They
are unable to, for example, establish a clean, well-liqhted
place, wherein they can effectively interact with the people

and the world around them.

The seventh and final chapter will further expand the
interconnection between Heminqway's landscapes and settinqs
and the fictional characters. I will show how Heminqway is
able to develop certain visions of community, in contradis-
tinction to individual isolation. The chapter concludes by
observinq some interestinq correlations between Heminqway and
 6
Bakhtin, with respect to the link between the human body and
the •body• of the earth .

•
 7

Notes

1 Patricia Wauqh, Metafiction: The TheorY and Practice

of Self Conscious Fiction (New York: Methuen, 1984) 6.
2 Wauqh, 7.

3 Alfred Kazin, on Native Grounds: An Interpretation of

Modern American Prose Literature ·(New York: Reynal & Hitch-
cock, 1942) 380.
4 James T. Farrell, •Ernest Heminqway's The Sun Also
Rises," The Leaaue of Frightened Philistines and Other Papers,
by Farrell (New York: The Vanquard P, 1945) 23-24.
5 William Phillips, .. Male-ism and Moralism," The Ameri-
can Mercury, LXXV (Oct. 1952): 97-98.

6 Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward A

Postmodern Literature (New York: Oxford UP, 1971) 91.
1 Bruce Henricksen, •The Bullfiqht Story and Critical
Theory, .. Heminaway's Neglected Short Fiction: New Perspec-
tives, ed. Sus an Beeqe 1 (Ann Arbor, MI : UMI Research P,
1989) 121.
8 Malcolm cowley, introduction, Heminqway (The Viking
Portable), by Ernest Heminqway, ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York:
Vikinq, 1944) vii.
9 Carlos Baker, Heminqway: The Writer as Artist, 4th ed.
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972) SO.
Alfred Kazin also observes Heminqway's .. passion for
nature" and compares his vision with Thoreau's in Alfred
Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American
Prose Literature, 332 .

•
 8

Chapter One
Heminqway's Iceberg Technique

Heminqway shifts away from a traditional.action-type of

novel where the goal is to find out what happened. Seymour
Chatman describes such writing as having the quality whereby
"a state of affairs is revealed."! Instead, Heminqway writes
in a style where the issue of what happened is rarely even
raised. In many of his stories, things appear to stay the
same. Although his tool box contains the same literary
devices as any other writer's, by carefully choosing and
omitting certain tools, Heminqway is able to produce a fie-
tional world which, at first glance appears to share the
qualities of his predecessors, but, upon closer scrutiny,
emerges as an altered landscape. In describing the qualities
of a minimalist style in fiction, Brian O'Doherty expresses
some qualities similar to Heminqway's style, including the
presentation of a

world around us [which] turns back into a

smooth surface, without siqnification,
without soul, without values, on which we
no longer have any purchase. Like the
workman who has set down the tool he no
longer needs, we ~nd ourselves once
again facinq things.

In such a world, there no longer exists the same degree of

connection between sign and referent. Gerald Graff responds

• to this new degree of division: "The modern anxiety that sign

• Chapter One
Heminqway's Icebero Technique
8

Heminqway shifts away from a traditional action-type of

novel where the ooal is to find out what happened. Seymour
Chatman describes such writino as havlno the quality whereby
"a state of affairs is revealed." 1 Instead, Heminoway writes
in a style where the issue of what happened is rarely even
raised. In many of his stories, thinos appear to stay the
same. Al thouoh his tool box contains the same 1 i terary
devices as any other writer's, by carefully choosinq and
omittino certain tools, Hemingway is able to produce a fie-
tional world which, at first qlance appears to share the
qualities of his predecessors, but, upon closer scrutiny,
emerqes as an altered landscape. In describino the qualities
of a minimalist style in fiction, Brian O'Doherty expresses
some qualities similar to Heminqway's style, includino the
presentation of a

world around us [which] turns back into a

smooth surface, without sionification,
without soul, without values, on which we
no lonqer have any purchase. Like the
workman who has set down the tool he no
lonqer needs, we find ourselves once
aoain facinq thinqs.

In such a world, there no lonqer exists the same deoree of

connection between siqn and referent. Gerald Graff responds

• to this new deqree of division: "The modern anxiety that siqn

and meaninq, meanino and referent, do not correspond is often
• accompanied by another emotion--a desire that they not corres-
pond."3 Hemingway expresses this separation between word and
9

meaning in his frequently cited passage from A Farewell To

Arms, where Frederic was

embarrassed by the words sacred, glori-

ous, and sacrifice and the expression in
vain ... I had seen nothing sacred and the
things that were glorious had no
glory .... There were many words that you
could not stand to hear and finaJlY only
the names of places had dignity.

Instead of attempting to communicate with old, tired words

devoid of meaning, Hemingway instead focuses on words, such as
names of places, that had not been abused to the point where
they were without meaning. The resulting space is not shallow
and superficiali it contains depth and irony. Stripping away
needless words and clamouring which simply disguise and con-
fuse the condition of the world, Hemingway tries to fill this
emptied world with the si lent struggle of the individual
seekinq to 'dialogue' with her/his surrounding community.
When examining the nature of this newly created medium or
framework, one discovers that it is characterized by the
omission of words and details. Hence, it is commonly known as
Hemingway's theory of omission, or his iceberg technique. The
most obvious quality of this technique is the minimal use of
words: Hemingway does not over-saturate his novels with

• words, expressions and terminologies. One result of this

sparsity is intensity, a hidden depth which allows the reader
• 10
to revisit the text, each time finding a new layer of meaning.

To demonstrate the power of such a minimalist text, I

will compare one of Hemingway's tightly written fictional
passages with an excerpt from one of his non-fictional works.
The following passage is an example of Hemingway's non-fie-
tional mediocre style of excess:

Cagancho is a gypsy, subject to fits of

cowardice, altogether without integrity,
who violates all the rules, written and
. unwritten, for the conduct of a matador
but who, when he receives a bull that he
has confidence in, and he has confidence
in them very rarely, can do things which
all bullfighters do in a way they have
never been doing before and sometimes
standing absolutely straight with his
feet still, planted as though he were a
tree, with the arrogance and grace that
gypsies have and of which all other arro-
gance and grace seems an imitation, moves
the cape spread full as the pulling jib
of a yacht before the bull' s muzzle so
slowly that the art of bullfighting,
which is only kept from being one of the
major arts because it is impermanent, in
the arrogant slowness of his veronicas
becomes, for the seem~ng minutes that
they endure, permanent.

In this passage from Death in the Afternoon, the reader

suffocates, stuffed with words. The first sentence wanders
from point to ,point, shifts metaphors, fails to maintain a
consistent mood or tone, and leaves the reader with very
little to do, other than to try to make some sense out of the

• sentence's run-on structure. No space is given for her/him to

think, as she/he is told almost everything. By way of con-
• trast, the following passage from his fictional writing, "The
Undefeated," presents a similar setting, but with a differ-
11

ence:

The gypsy was walking out toward the bull

again, walking heel-and-toe, insultingly,
like a ballroom dancer, the red shafts of
the banderillos twitching with his walk.
The bull watched him, not fixed now, hun-
ting him, but waiting to get close enough
so he could be sure of ggtting him, get-
ting the horns into him.

The language style of this example is short, precise and

intense. A mood is created. An emotional intensity is devel-
oped. Hemingway increases the rhythmic values of the text
immeasurably, though he does not bring the pitch to formal
simplification. Despite the omission of details, the essence
of the depicted scene is not lost: the reader delves into the
text without being totally engrossed in it. On the one hand,
there is a degree of involvementi on the other hand, there is
a degree of detachment--a sense of observation instead of
participation. Language dialogues between these two extremes.
That is, it has a creative, and not merely descriptive, func-
tion. Hemingway clears a space for the reader to explore
various feelings. The reader is afforded no such space in
Death in the Afternoon.
The distinct qualities of brevity, omission and implica-
tion, evident in the second quotation, are indicative of.~

• Hemingway's iceberg technique.

approach, Hemingway states,
In explaining his
"I always try to write on the
own
• principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under
water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can
12

eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the

part that doesn't show." 7 He also mentions the iceberg in a
frequently quoted passage from Death in the Afternoon:

If a writer of prose knows enough about

what he is writing about he may omit
things that he knows and the reader, if
the writer is writing truly enough, will
have a feeling of those things as strong-
ly as though the writer had stated them.
The dignity of movement of an iceberg is
due to only one-eighth of it being above
water. A writer who omits things because
he does not know them only makes hollow
places in his writing (DIA, 192).

Susan Lanser, a speech act theorist, effectively explains a

major component of the iceberg technique. She argues that, in
the process of analyzing a text, we must consider "what is not
said, what is not shown, what points of view or narrative
possibilities are not present, who does not speak or see"(em-
phasis Lanser's).a Heminqway excels in describing what is
not said between characters, in not directly showing a charac-
terization or a theme, and in not conveying all emotion and
information between characters. For example, in Across the
River and into the Trees, Cantwell's jealousy toward Alvarito
is never expressed directly. 9 Instead, they discuss loving
Venice, not their love for Renata. The Barone's reaction, "He

• looked at nothing" (ART, 301),

talked about: their three-way
emphasizes what is not being
relationshi~.
• Another example from A Farewell to Arms effectively
demonstrates the technique of presenting a strong emotion
13

without stating the issue directly. In the proceeding scene,

Frederic Henry sees a friend die:

I had liked him as well as any one I ever

knew. I had his papers in my pocket and
would write to his family. Ahead across
the fields was a farmhouse. There were
trees around it and the farm buildings
were built against the house. There was
a balcony along the floor held up by
columns CFTA, 214-15).

Hemingway's technique is similar to Eliot's 'objective cor-

relative,' as Frederic shifts his attention away from Aymo
lying in the mud and focuses on the details of the farmhouse.
By shifting his focus away from Aymo and onto the farmhouse,
Frederic transposes his emotions to the surrounding landscape.
As a result, the reader's experience widens. She/he comes to
see the farmhouse details as a response to Aymo's death. The
description, although not very precise, nevertheless evokes
strong emotion. While Aymo's death is on the reader's mind,
the landscape works as a point of departure from the event,
creating a scene of its own. The scene's intensity hints of
the added 'dimension' Hemingway strove for. Although Heming-
way's use of the word 'dimension' remains ambiguous, Ray B.
West Jr. interprets it as Hemingway' s at tempt to get "the full

• quality of the emotional experience."lO

A similar intensity can be found in "Hills Like White
• Elephants," where the young couple does not directly talk
about the woman's abortion. Irony demands that the reader
14

capture the tone and feeling that something has gone awry.
One example of this irony can be found at the end of the
story: "'I feel fine,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong with
me. I feel fine.'"ll The reader must recognize when the
narrator is winking when claiming that this is how things are,
right? Irony, through simple sentences, understatement and
omission, as a means of carefully withholding information,
intensifies the fear or anxiety being conveyed. Frank O'Con-
nor, however, claims that "Hills Like White Elephants" has
"too much significance and too little information" and hence
"is brilliant but thin ... 12 Basically, O'Connor acknowledges
that "Hills Like White Elephants" is a good minimalist story,
but that he would have preferred to have the trustworthy
authorial voice and guidance of a more explanatory text. No
doubt he would have appreciated, at least, some authorial
hints on the presented characters and some solutions for them.
Were Heminqway to have written such a text, its minimalist
qualities would have disappeared. With such a text, the reader
is told how to interpret the work and, hence, has less of a
possibility to question her/his own values and interpreta-
tions. Unexplained areas, in contrast, create an opening, an
area of silence,, which generates dialogue and thought.
Because of such spaces, the reader has the opportunity to

• return to the text and probe it further in an effort, not to

resolve the work--which is unresolvable--but to understand

/
4t 15
it. 13 Likewise, the importance of what is not said can be
seen in "The Killers," from Heminqway' s Men Without Women
collection. In this story, Ole regularly looks at the wall
without saying anything. The setting, where Ole is lying on
the bed, creates a space in which the reader is forced to
spend a certain amount of time, as she/he reads from one
paragraph to the next. When Ole looks at the wall and speaks,
the reader is given a glimpse of the dark landscape the char-
acter now finds himself in. Ole repeatedly comments--with
slight variations--that "there isn't anything I can do about
it." 14 The use of the pronoun it as an indefinite object is
a good example of not directly showing the story's thematic
concerns. The emotional intensity increases ten-fold through
the avoidance of directly addressing the issue.
Hemingway often employs pronouns without a clear antece-
dent. Note the frequent use of the third person in novels
such as A Farewell to Arms. Here, a series of ambiguous
references opens the text, delimiting the possible realms of
interpretations. Eric Rabkin examines the novel's beginning:
"In the late summer of that year we 1 i ved in a house in a
village that looked across the river and the plain to the
mountains" (emphasis Rabkin's).lS The reader has no clue as
to the specific year referred to by "that year" nor who the
"we" is who lived in "a house" (which house), in "a village"
(which village), and so on. Hence, while there is a distanc-

• ing away from a specific historical reality, there are enough

specific landscape references for the reader to not feel
• alienated from the world the narrator is describinq.
"the" creates a type of settinq that is on the one hand,
16

The word

singular, but on the other hand, vagus. The result is not an

acute awareness of exactly where "we" were, but a sense of
beinq in a villaqe "across the river and the plain to the
mountains." While such an effect sacrifices particular
details, it enhances emotional intensities. The reader is not
overwhelmed tryinq to picture an exact location: rather,
she/he can ponder various connotations of the key words in the
passaqe. Different emotions can come forth. For example, the
word 'villaqe' suqqests a small communal environment, a pas-
toral-like settinq. This stronq imaqe enters the reader's
mind riqht from the beqinninq of the novel. Were Heminqway to
have provided siqnposts to this scene, he would have diluted
its strenqth. True, the imaqe is vaque; however it is exactly
this freedom from a fixed perspective that allows the passaqe
its intensity. Stronq emotions are hinted at, but not
deflated by beinq stated. It is for this reason that Heming-
way chooses not to include any more details. The quality of
the iceberg or of his theory of omission, lies in what is not
said. As another example in the same novel, Frederic and
Catherine examine details of the jewellery store window in
order not to think about Frederic's departure at midniqht.
Such a focusing on the silences through a trimming of the
excess in languaqe, clears a space for the reader to think

• about the emotions suggested.

• Hemingway's Iceberg Technique
Within A Larger Context
17

Having delineated the features of Hemingway' s iceberg

technique, or theory of omission, in what follows first, I
will highlight the relation between his style and that of
Imagist and minimalist poetry. Then, I will conclude this
chapter with by situating Hemingway's style in relation to
certain Modern aesthetic theories of experience and distancia-
tion.
Hemingway's fiction shares in the specific elements of
Imagist and minimalist poetry, which Blake Morrison describes
as having a "haunting brevity pushed almost to the point of
inconsequentiality." Imagist poets sought to convey meaning
through a detailing of the concrete world. Morrison further
contends that the minimalist voice is in poetry characterized
by "intense, visual pressure ... [with] the sense of the other
words which have been warded off, and of the space and
silence ... qi ving additional force to what 1s there." 16 S imi-
larly, Hemingway's fiction focuses on precise details, and
then, in a pulse-like manner, moves back to the overall scene,
as, for example, in chapter 2 of In Our Time. The inter-
chapters are both sparse and compressed. Several readings are
required to realize the extent to which the culture and moral
condition have been captured by such a condensed sketch.

• These short passages resemble Imagist poems in that they are

'
abl~ to evoke intellectually complex material without distort-
• ing the realistic facades of the narratives.
18

Like Imagist
Poetry, the surface descriptions become filled with emotional
depth: rather than becoming still and frozen, they acquire a
flux. By combining and adapting the Imagist poetic style and
mode.rn painting techniques, Hemingway creates a deceptively
simple, but highly provocative, minimalist prose.
Besides sharing the style of Imagist and minimalist
poetry, Hemingway's iceberg technique echoes various thematic
concerns expressed in modernism. The thrust of minimalism,
for example, is to jolt the reader out of complacency, just as
Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms had to be shaken out of
his mindless wanderings. However, ironically, the reader or
character often awakens to a world of horror. Hence, what is
often criticized as minimalist spareness and lack of author-
ity, stems from the authentic uneasiness of discovering an
unresolved state of affairs. And when a character does
achieve such awareness, the problem solving often does not
include a healing. Frederic Henr·y, and most of Hemingway's
heroes, engage in a battle against Erlebnis, that is merely
living though events or superficial experience. They strive
for Erfahrunq, or events integrated with experience.
Erfahrung penetrates into the subconscious and accesses invol-
untary memory, which provides the cultural and spiritual 1 inks
necessary for an experience .of completeness and totality.
Erlebnis, on the other hand, with the loss of such memory,

• keeps shock and new experience in the conscious.

Benjamin observes that
Wal ter
• . .. the more constantly consciousness has
to be alert as a screen against st imu-
li ... the less do these impressions enter
19

experience (Erfahrung), tending to remain

in the sphere of a certain hour in one's
life (Erlebnis). Perhaps the special
achievement of shock defense may be seen
in its function of assigning to an inci-
dent a precise point in time in con-
sciousness at t~~ cost of the integrity
of its contents.

We can see an example of the role and function of Erlebnis in

Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." In this story, the
young couple's experiences are limited to a series of super-
ficial encounters and immediate responses to a variety of
given situations. Consequently, by enframing the meaning of
the character's experiences within an Erlebnis-type schema,
their actions appear as a rhapsody of simple, aimless actions
without a larger concern for, to use Heidegger's term, their
own existential being-towards-death.
It is my contention that Hemingway is able to make his
reader aware of the impoverishment of this Erlebnis "way of
being" through a process of "distanciation." In aesthetics,
a theory of distanciation between the reader and the text has
been presented by Shklovsky. Basically, for Shklovsky, and
the Formalists, distanciation consists of two moments, first,
a slowing down or a displaying of artistry and, second, a
ostranenie--i .e., a deformation of our originally received
formations: a making of what was old and familiar, new and

• strange. Shklovsky argues that

recover the sensation of life;
"art exists that one may
it exists to make one feel
• thinqs, to make the stone stony."lS Shklovsky calls for a
defamiliarization which would heiqhten the reader's percep-
20

tion. What is important here is that throuqh the process of

distanciation, Heminqway is essentially jolting the reader out
of a simple habitual stimulus-response routine in terms of
pre-ordained, or pre-established cateqories. In Heminqway's
fiction, estranqement is not the qoal, but the point of depar-
ture. Shklovsky's called for sensation would involve a sensa-
tion of movement, while makinq the stone stony would involve
motion and fluidity. Heminqway's fictions do not start with
a feeling and end with a meaning, but rather start with no-
thingness and enqage in a process of feeling .

•
• Notes
21

1 Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Struc-

ture in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell up; 1978) 48.

2 Robbe-Grillet's new theory for the novel, is explained

by Brian O'Doherty, in Brian O'Doherty, "Minus Plato," Mini-
mal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battock (New York:
Dutton, 1968) 253.

3 Gerald Graff, Literature Aaainst Itself: Literary Ideas

in Modern Society (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979) 22.

4 Ernes t Hemi ngway, A Farewell to Arms (New York:

Scribner's, 1929) 184-85. Hereafter cited in the text as FTA.

5 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York:

Scribner's, 1932) 13-14. Hereafter cited in the text as DIA.

6 Hemingway, "The Undefeated," The Short Stories of

Ernest Heminaway (New York: Scribner's, 1966) 255. Another
similar scene to compare the long quote to, can be found in
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons, 1926) 167-68. Hereafter referred to in the text
as SAR.

1 Georae Plimpton, ed., "Ernest Hemingway," Writers at

Work: The Paris Review Interviews 2 (New York: Viking, 1963}
235. .

8 Susan Snaider Lanser, The Narrative Act: Point of View

in Prose Fiction (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981) 241 ..
Numerous reader response theorists echo her sentiments.
Refer to Peter Rabinowi tz, "Assert ion and Assumption: Fic-
tional Patterns and the External World," PMLA (1981): 408-19,
p. 410 for Hemingway reference.

9 Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees

• (New York: Scribner's, 1950) 129.

as ART.
Hereafter cited in the text
• 10 Ray B. West, Jr, "The Biological Trap," Heminaway: A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert P. Weeks (Englewood
22 .

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962) 150.

11 Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants," The Short
Stories of Ernest Heminqway, 278. Hereafter cited in the text
as "Hills."

12 Frank O'Connor, "The Lonely Voice," Short Story The-

ories, ed. Charles May (Athens, ·oH: Ohio UP, 1976) 90-91.

13 Other modernist and minimal ist writers, such as Robbe-

Grillet, were also subject to countless misreadings. Wayne
Booth, for example, in Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction,
(Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961) 62, criticizes Robbe-Grillet's
JealousY by claiming that the work suffers for "never describ-
ing the person, actions or thoughts of the husband, but simply
leaving us to infer his reality through what is left out, he
locks us inside the camera-box." Booth effectively describes
Robbe-Grillet's exact technique and intent. As a minimalist
writer, he steers clear from any direction giving, forcing the
reader to think for her/himself. A parallel to Robbe-
Grillet's approach can be seen in William Carlos William's
poem "The Young Housewife," or Hemingway's stories such as
"Cat in the Rain," or "Hills Like White Elephants," where the
narrator also does not supply the reader with the characters'
direct thoughts. Booth's argument can be appreciated for
stating that Jealousy does not follow the conventions of a
realist text.

14 Hemingway, "The Killers," The Short Stories of Ernest

Heminaway, 287.

15 Eric s. Rabkin, "Spatial Form and Plot," Spatial Form

in Narrative, eds. Jeffrey R. Smitten and Ann Daghistany
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1891) 95.
16 Blake Morrison, "In Defense of Minimalism," Critical
Quarterly 18 (Summer 1976): 49.
17 Waiter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed.
and intro. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Paperback Ed.,
1969) 163.

•
18 Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," Russian
Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, trans. Lee I. Lemon and
Marion J. Reis (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965) 12.
• Chapter Two
Hemingway's Artistic Vision
23

I'm trying in all my stories to get the

feeling of the actual life across--not to
just depict life--or criticize it--but to
actually make it alive.
Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917-
1961

In this chapter, I will explore the organization of space

and its, at times, sculptural qualities in The Sun Also Rises,
the features of this perspective in the opening of A Farewell
to Arms, and the similarities in the artistic vision of Hem-
ingway and Cezanne as evidenced in "Homage to Switzerland."
The presentation of the Pamplona landscape in The Sun
Also Rises (SAR, 93-94) illustrates an interesting shifting
among foregrounds, backgrounds, and middlegrounds. In addi-
tion to creating a sense of movement, the scene is able to
alternate between specific and general details, generating a
memorable image. After they "all got in the car," Jake, Cohn
and Bill were "climbing all the time," and the road was "wind-
ing back and forth." The narrator is able to introduce some
general yet striking details during this drive, such as the
"white dusty road" and the "long brown mountains." In a
matter of two paragraphs, the scene moves a fair distance
without sacrificing important details. They drive "along the

• summit," "down out of the mountains and through an oak for-

est," to an area "down below" of "grassy plains and clear
• streams," then "throuqh a qloomy
24

1 it t le vi llaqe," and up
aqain, where there was "a whole new ranqe of mountains off to
the south." The drive continues with attention to details,
such as "a field of qrain qoinq riqht up to the walls and
shiftinq in the wind," or "a biq river off on the riqht shin-
inq in the sun from between the lines of trees." This circu-
lation provides the reader with a sense of depth and allows
for individual shapes to be focused on.
Heminqway simplifies his forms and maintains an unadorned
articulation between them, as in the Pamplona settinq, with
"the bull-rinq, hiqh and white and concrete-lookinq in the
sun." In many respects, Heminqway's use of lanquaqe parallels
Brancusi 's use of form. Just as the sculptor emphasizes
curves, ellipses and ovals, Heminqway emphasizes shapes,
lines, and planes, such as the mountain ranqe "furrowed in
stranqe shapes," or "the road slantinq up steeply and dustily
with shade trees on both sides." This affinity with Bran-
cusi's style explains why Heminqway makes the followinq com-
ment about Brancusl: "I know no modern sculpture, except
Brancusi's that is in any way the equal of the sculpture of
modern bullfiqhtinq." (DIA, 99). Hemingway's depiction of a
bullfight scene uses a common vocabulary with Brancusi:

... the bull charged and came out into the

corral, with his forefeet in the straw as
he stopped, his head up, the great hump
of muscle on his neck swollen tight, his

• body muscles quivering as he looked up at

the crowd on the stone walls (S~, 139}.
• The simplicity of the image of the bulls' forefeet along with
the curve of the head and neck muscle create a powerful image.
25

Further evidence of shapes in the landscapes is scattered

throughout the book: there are "squares of green and brown on
the hillsides" (SAR, 108); and Jake "sat on one of the squared
timbers and watched the smooth apron of water" (SAR, 119).
Both Hemingway and Brancusi emphasize contours and planes in
order to eliminate from the landscape the visual extras.
Brancusi 's images can be described as being "purified of
everything but their form." 1 Like Hemingway, Brancusi main-
tains a link with outer forms, but attempts to present their
essence. Hence, Emily Watts inaccurately describes his work
as being "highly abstract." Brancusi himself refutes that
label when he explains that "what is real is not the outer
form, but the idea, the essence of things." 2 For Brancusi,
"the idea and essence of things" is not devoid of sensual
feeling.
From the st~dy of Hemingway's careful depiction of land-
scape in terms of shapes and plains, other aspects of Heming-
way's artistic vision become evident. The entire first chap-
ter and the beginning of the second in A Farewell to Arms,
demonstrate Hemingway's disciplined use of such details. A
brief excerpt from the novel will illustrate his tight, loaded
tone:

•
In the late summer of that year we lived
in a house in a village that looked
across the river and the plain to the
mountains. In the bed of the river there
• were pebbles and boulders, dry and white
in the sun, and the water was clear and
swiftly moving and blue in the channels.
26

Troops went by the house and down the

road and the dust they raised powdered
the leaves of the trees. The trunks of
the trees too were dusty and the leaves
fell early that year and we saw the
troops marching along the road and the
dust rising and leaves, stirred by the
breeze, falling and the soldiers marching
and afterward the road bare and white
except for the leaves (FTA, 3).

This paragraph provides a good example of a restrained voice,

which creates the above mentioned tight, loaded style. In
fact, this passage reflects the style in the entire book: an
emphasis on observed details. In this excerpt, the first
person plural narrator is made notably inconspicuous. There
is no political or historical conceptualization. In this
sense, the landscape is not bound by a specific historical
'fact' and has more of a universal tone. The first person
narration is characterized by an absence of commentary and a
minimal use of metaphorical extension. The narrator withdraws
while the landscape comes forth. The observations have a
striking impact because of the narrator's implied experience:
one of practicality, experience which relies on concrete, not
abstract thought. Consequently, the narrator is able to
create a sense of immediacy, urgency and intensity.
Another element of Hemingway' s artistic vision evident in
the opening passage involves repetition. As an effective

•
stylistic device, the repetition of simple short sentences and
of the conjunction 'and' quicken the pace and heighten the
• urgency.
such as
By not using a more emotionally loaded conjunction
'but', Hemingway creates a distancing
27

effect.
Consequently, the reader is able to place her/his own emotions
in the scene.
The presentation of colours is a striking .component of
Hemingway's artistic vision. In the opening passage, the
depiction of the white boulders is memorable. Connected to
this colour is a dryness--the boulders being "dry and white in
the sun." Through this image, the narrator is able to evoke
a parched or thirsty,sensation. The colour imagery is rein-
forced through repetition, reiterating another similar sensa-
tion within the possible connotations 'of dry, that of empti-
ness and isolation. The passage, "afterward, the road bare
and white ... " adds another layer to the earlier created
effect. Now a feeling of emptiness and exposure is evoked.
The opening scene also develops through the use of con-
trasting images and colours. The boulders in the sun are set
in ironic contrast to the river, where "the water was clear
and swiftly moving": the river. a place having the traditional
connotations of birth and life, 3 is situated amongst dry and
white boulders. A further contrast develops between the
water, which is "blue in the channels" and the surrounding
dust made by the troops. At this moment, the white road
offers the only source of colour in the scene. The leaves of
the trees have been powdered with the dust raised by the

• troops. The landscape is now filled with dust, as "the trees

too were dusty," and "the dust [was] rising." The arrival of
• troops breaks the scene's naturalness.
screen, blurring the details of the picture.
28
The dust acts like a
The depiction of
a dull, unclear mass moving across the white road is an
example of Hemingway's gradations of tone and colour. The
contrasts with the bright, lucid colours such as the clear
blue river, are also later developed later in the novel in
Frederic Henry's escape from superficial experience with
Catherine's assistance. It is in the white mountains of
Switzerland that they achieve a temporary peace, before
Catherine dies in the valley where there is a "gray steel-
blue" (FTA, 289) lake, as "gray as steel" (FTA, 291).
Another important aspect of Hemingway's artistic vision
is the creation of distances. In the first paragraph of the
novel, the narrator pays close attention to the spatial qual-
ities of the scene. The initial panoramic view quickly pre-
sents the landscape of a village house overlooking a river and
plain leading up to the mountains. The focus shifts from the
horizontal line of a river bed, paralleled with the horizontal
1 ine of troop movement "down the road," to a play-off of
rising and falling lines, thus shifting the scene to a verti-
cal perspective. The "dust rising" and the leaves falling is
followed by a return to the horizontal. This time, however,
the scene is sti'll, as the troops have left. Hemingway effec-
tively plays off the lines in this scene.
From this study of the opening passage in A Farewell To

• Arms, it is now evident that Hemingway relies.on a subtle

narrator, repetition with variations of key images, gradations
• of tone and colour, and the use of plains in order to develop
his artistic vision.
29

Hemingway and Cezanne

I was learning something from the paint-
ings of Cezanne that made writing true
simple sentences far from enough to make
the stories have the dimensions that I
was trying to put in them.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

In the scope of Hemingway's artistic vision, another

important element of Hemingway's style is the similarity
between his fiction and certain painting styles, particularly
that of the painter, Cezanne. Hemingway intensifies and
charges his depicted scenes, allowing them to go beyond a mere
photographic duplication. Cezanne engages in a similar re-
focusing by means of the "lively adoption of classical rudi-
ments, whilst twisting them in the grip of an enlivening
irony." This art can be considered a "dissection of natural
appearances, reproduced pictorially with ... a tech-
nique ... [known] as primitive anatomy."4 Such language is not
inappropriate in describing Hemingway' s technique. His metho-
dology echoes that of Cezanne' s. First, Hemingway shares
Cezanne's interest in irony. While his fictional writing
fluctuated in degree of experimentation, ranging from the
innovative structures of works like '*A Natural History of the·

• Dead," or To Have and Have Not, to the creation of an alle-

gorical type of novel in The Old Man and the Sea, irony
• remains a major underlying unity for all these works.
every finale to Hemingway's fictions features a major irony,
30

Almost

whether it be Jake Barnes' "Isn't it pretty to think so," at

the end of The Sun Also Rises (SAR, 247) or Jackson's consent
to return Cantwell's belongings "through channels," in Across
the River and into the Trees. Second, the term, "primitive
anatomy" also aptly describes Hemingway's attempt to strip
texts to their bare essentials. His description of prose as
"architecture, not interior decoration," (DIA, 191) also
echoes this anatomic structure. Emily Watts provides a tho-
rough and excellent analysis of Hemingway's writing in rela-
tion to the visual arts (cited earlier). I will focus on a
story she does not discuss, the neglected and carefully
crafted story, "Homage to Switzerland," from Hemingway's
Winner Take Nothing collection. The skilful calculation of
planes and volumes clearly echoes Cezanne's innovative tech-
nique. Both artists strive to create a timid facade, beneath
which a powerful emotion remains hidden, but not unattainable.

The cafe image in "Homage to Switzerland" is so central

an image that Hemingway repeats it at the beginning of each
part of the story, each instance adding another layer of
signification. Note the third description:

In the station cafe at Territet it was a

• little too warmi the lights were bright

and the tables shiny from polishing.
There were baskets with pretzels in
glazed paper sacks on the tables and
• cardboard pads for beer glasses in order
that the moist glasses would not make
rings on the wood. The chairs were
31

carved but the wooden seats were worn and

quite comfortable. There was an old man
drinking coffee at a table under the
clock and reading the evening paper. 5

This picture, built-up from its less detailed variations in

the first two parts, employs a purity of colour and an accu-
racy of detail which afford a necessary starting point for the
proceeding emotional excursions upon which the characters
embark. The alluring sense of warmth welcomes the reader to
immerse her/himself into the scene. Specific details of the
setting, such as the baskets filled with pretzels, are effec-
tively juxtaposed with the various shapes in the scene.
All three parts of the story share the details of warmth
and light. The first scene contains more independent details,
each not as closely linked to the others as in the other two
scenes. The porters, for example, are separate from the
setting paragraph. The second scene adds more details and
breaks from the terse style of the first. Although one sen-
tence shorter, the sentences in this scene become more complex
structurally, and longer in terms of number of words. This
second scene also integrates the porters to the paragraph.
The accumulation of details enriches the text. A series of
dependent clauses is added, joined by bridge-like devices such
as semicolons and the conjunction, •and'. The images are not

• as isolated, separate, and complete in and of themselves, as

they were in the first scene. Instead, the connecting devices
• in the second and third, place the images in closer relation
to one another. These scenes shift away from the short sen-
32

tences, the staccato, declarative images of the first. The

emotion intensifies as the cafi changes from being "warm and
light," to being "a little too warm," and the light becoming
"bright;" the tables change from a passive quality of having
"shone from wiping," to being "shiny from wiping," and final-
ly, being "shiny from polishing" ("Homage", 422, 425, 430).
The third scene becomes brighter; thematically, the characters
move towards communication and connections instead of fragmen-
tation and isolation.
Very little occurs in the story, other than a few
mildly unpleasant intrusive exchanges between strangers. The
story's chance encounters, exposure of failed relations,
dialogical misunderstandings, and general lack of communica-
tion, are enhanced by the work's simple appearance. The
genuine and evident simplicity of the scenes do not, however,
imply a simplicity of mental state. The thoughts of David
Bourne in Garden of Eden help explain this two-tiered
approach, when he cautions himself: "it is all very well for
you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not
start to think so damned simple. Know how complicated it is
and then state it simply." 6 Although the station cafi in
"Homage to Switzerland" is depicted in simple sentences,
through the repetition of the "it was" or nthere were" struc-

• ture, it is not limited to being a setting for simple 'bar

room' mind-sets. It is the starting point for the examination
• of a mood of loneliness.
In addition to individual isolation; the story depicts
33

contrasts--a motif which echoes Cezanne. Wheeler's, John-

son's, and Harris' contact with the waitress are all in sharp
distinction, like cezanne's Contrasts (1869-70). Both the
painting and the story share a rhythmic style and a strong
sense of separate worlds coexisting but not interacting. The
specific detail of the "old man drinking coffee at a table
under the clock and reading the evening paper," is similar to
Cezanne's Head of an Old Man (1865). The old man adds a
humanizing element to the landscape of the station cafe. The
ski 1 ful depi et ions of the cafes themselves echo Cezanne' s
approach in works such as Still Life with Pitcher and Plate of
Apples (1895-98). In that work and others like it, Cezanne
bends the contours of tables and floors. The apparently
straight lines of the table are deliberately set against the
carved chairs which have worn seats. His mixing of such lines
with straight, even "ruler-drawn" lines establishes a con-
trast. The tension created between wavering lines and
straight 1 ines allows for a play off of emotions, such as
stability versus activity.
Another similarity between the story and Cezanne's paint-
ing can be found in the scene where the porters are "drinking
new wine at the table under the clock" ("Homage", 422, 425).
The scene evokes Cezanne's The Card Players {1890-92). The

• simple depictions in a 'primitive• setting reveal the inner

chambers of the characters and expose a part of the surround-
• ing scene's hidden structure.
is unveiled.
In poetic terms, a life rhythm
The simple, formal rhythms make it difficult for
34

the receiver to ascertain the exact cause of the mood, inten-

sity or feeling. Such hidden depth encourages the receiver to
reconsider the work of art again and again, each time encoun-
tering a new sensation. The subject becomes secondary to
Hemingway's desired aesthetic charge. Details are not alto-
gether omitted, but instead are re-arranged, subordinated, or
distorted into a hierarchy more appropriate for the conveyance
of aesthetic feeling. The innovation lies within the tech-
nique chosen to achieve this goal. Just as Hemingway careful-
ly chooses his words in order to build a landscape in which
the words disappear and the landscape takes over, with
Cizanne, "you can see the dabs of paint building up to form
the contours and planes of an object. You can sense the
picture forming with each mark." 7 Through an emphasis on
planes, angles and contours, both Hemingway and Cezanne devel-
op hidden layers of meaning .

•
• Notes
35

1 Sidney Geist, "Brancusi Sanctificatus: A Close Reading

of the New Book by c. Giedion-Welcher Reveals Much Cosmic
Appreciation and Little Detailed Analysis," Arts (Jan. 1960):
26.

2 Emily Stipes Watts, Ernest Heminqway and the Arts

{Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1971) 122.
Sidney Geist, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture (New
York: Grossman, 1968) 146.

3 Siqrnund Freud, A General Introduction to Psycho-Analy-

si~, trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Simon, 1969) 143.

4 Carra Massimo, Patrick Waldberg and Ewald Rathke,

Metaphysical Art, his t. fwd. and trans. Carol ine Ti sdall
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1971) 157.

5 Ernest Hemingway, "Homage to Switzerland," The Short

Stories, 430. Hereafter cited in the text as "Homage."

6 Ernest Heminqway, The Garden of Eden (New York: Scrib-

ner's, 1986) 37.
7 Ian Dunlop, introduction, The Complete Paintings of
Ce:zanne, notes and catalogue, Sandra Orienti (Harmondsworth,
Eng.: Penguin, 1970) 5 .

•
• Chapter Three
Oppositions and Counterpoints
36

The examination of Heminqway' s artistic vision in chapter

two reveals that landscape and setting serve as major struc-
tural elements in the formation of Hemingway's aesthetic--
components of which are outlined in chapter one. In this
chapter, I will expand on my analysis of the structure.
First,· I will explore the use of oppositions within the set-
ting, as seen in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Then I will
extrapolate from this study a vision of counterpoint, as
attempted in Across the River and into the Trees.

Light and Darkness in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"

Hemingway's landscapes often vary from snow-capped moun-

tains to dry valleys, from green fields to dusty roads. One
of the central dichotomies within the Hemingway canon is that
of liqht and darkness. Almost every work of his involves the
interplay of these two contrasting elements. Sean O'Faolain
comments that Heminqway' s "art is, in fact, a very clean,
well-1 ighted place ... l "A Clean, Well-Liqhted Place" exempli-
fies Heminqway's use of light/dark settinqs and demonstrates
the complexities of this opposition.
The story itself is straightforward. It is late at niqht

• in a Spanish cafe. An old man, who unsuccessfully attempted

suicide the previous week, is the only remaining customer. A
• girl and a soldier walk past outside.
old man. After it becomes clear that the younger and older
37

Two waiters discuss the

waiters are not really communicating, the focus shifts to the

older waiter.2 The young waiter, anxious to go home, closes
the cafe despite objections from the older waiter. The older
waiter then contemplates the differences between a bar or
bodega, and a cafe, and then the fears of living in nada. He
has a cup of coffee at the bodega but does not enjoy it
because "the bar is unpolished" ("Clean," 383). He returns
home and waits for daybreak in order to sleep.
In addition to directly stating that the setting is clean
and well-lighted, the title suggests a sense of quietness and
peacefulness. Richard K. Peterson explains that Hemingway
often uses apparently objective words to express feelings
indirectly.3 An examination of the story's landscape reveals
that, first, Heminqway introduces abstract values through
specific examples which involve light/dark imagery and second,
this imagery is complex. The cafe and the space outside are
both lit by electric lights: at the beginning of the story,
"everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the
shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light"
( "C 1ean , " 37 9 ) . Light is first described in terms of a
shadow. Hence, light and shadow are immediately linked: the
two are expressed, not in mere opposition to, but rather in
terms of one other. A variation of this relation occurs

• towards the end of the work when the 1 ight--tradi t ionall y

associated with daytime landscapes--is placed in a night
• context. The old waiter is "with all those who need a light
for the night" ("Clean," 382).
38

Again, light is not described

in a pure sense, but in relation to sleeping. As the story
progresses, the narrato~ repeats the earlier description of
the man in the shadow and then draws the reader's attention to
the street light, which is picked up by the brass number on
the collar of the passing soldier. This scene suggests a
setting from the past, that is, the lingering war imagery,.
similar to the monument which appears at the beginning of
Heminqway' s "Cat in the Rain." The descriptions of 1 ight
remain indirect, occurring through shadows or reflections.
The old waiter proceeds to turn off the electric light and
continues "the conversation with himself." Now, in a dark
landscape, the waiter thinks about a well-lighted place.
However, he qualifies his thought, indicating that the mere
presence of light in a setting is not enough: "but it is
necessary that the place be clean and pleasant" ("Clean,"
382) . Brighter light is not presented in such a positive
manner. The bar setting is described as a place where "the
light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished."
And shortly afterward, the narrator notes, "he [the older
waiter) disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe
was a very different thing" ("Clean," 383). Here, thenar-
rator repeats his earlier call to go beyond mere light.
The light imagery in the cafe setting is associated with

• the word 'and'. The use of this conjunction implies a har-

mony, a peace between the light, the shade, arid the surround-
• ing animate and inanimate objects.
39
By contrast, when describ-
ing the bodegas, Hemingway employs the loaded conjunction,
'but' ("Clean," 382, 383). Here the light does not accompany
the setting well. Later, the old waiter will return to his
home setting where, once again light is portrayed in a har-
monious relation to its surroundings. The old waiter "would
lie in bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep"
("Clean," 382}. The reversed order of sleeping in the daytime
is connected with the conjunction 'and', suggesting that the
two can be juxtaposed compatibly. The character desires
sleep; however, aware of the darkness looming behind the
light, he cannot lose consciousness until there is a light to
protect him. A further examination of the cafe landscape
reveals that the patron is twice located in the shadow of the
leaves. The older waiter explains that this is why he likes
the cafe, because "now there are shadows of leaves" ("Clean,"
379). Here the shadow has positive connotations, including
shade and protection from the glare of direct light.
Aware of the old man's despair, his "nothing" ("Clean,"
379), the old waiter acts against the nothingness surrounding
the cafe by expressing solidarity with the old patron, and by
being willing to keep the cafe open, thereby ensuring that the
lights stay on. His own intimate acquaintance with nada keeps
him up every night. Also, aware of the hollowness of relig-

·-
ious form, he parodies a prayer which causes him to smile.
Finally, conscious that the young waiter's "everything," his
"youth, confidence and a job" ("Clean," 382), are temporary,
• he survives without resortinq to romantic, qlamorized heroics,
without self-destruction or eqocentricity.
40

His acute aware-

ness, or what Annette Benert calls his hyper-consciousness,
keeps him awake at niqht. 4 His humble concludinq lines, "it
[not beinq able to sleep until dayliqhtl is probably only
insomnia. Many must have it" ("Clean," 383), situate him
within a community and release him from any messianic role.
Instead, he simply lends himself to the settinq; he "smiled
and stood before a bar with a shininq steam pressure coffee
machine" ("Clean," 383; emphasis mine).
In this story, the liqht/dark imaqery assumes a meaninq
beyond its functional role. The settinq, from the surroundinq
base-world, lifts-off and functions on a symbolic level.
Rovit and Brenner describe this shift as a loss of "a fixed
'
referential base."S This shift is not neqative. It is func-
tional, as the settinq does not qet stuck in actual confiqur-
at ions. The physical space of a clean, well-liqhted place
becomes a hiqhly intense and transportable settinq indicative
of hope, an alternative to the world which becomes increasinq-
ly dark in Heminqway's fiction.

Counterpoint in Across the River and Into the Trees

Across the River and into the Trees appears to be one of

• the least promisinq of Heminqway works. It is a story of a

dyinq ex-qeneral on a desperate journey to hunt ducks, who
• experiences some form of love with a 19 year-old Venetian
girl, all in an attempt to atone for his past life as a cold-
41

hearted officer. Its frequent autobiographical references

have prompted some critics to consider the work in the nonfic-
tional category of Death in the Afternoon, or Green Hills of
Africa: sloppy, essay-like ranting. Philip Young, for
example, contends that in Across the River and into the Trees,
Hemingway

presented himself, strictly controlled

and unthinking, in so thin a dis-
guise .... The eccentric, battered soldier
with high blood pressure,·who chases the
mannitol-hexanitrate tablets with alcohol
and stays, in Venice, gt the Gritti, was
very nearly Hemingway.

Across the River and into the Trees represents a turning

point for Hemingway. With this composition, he shifts towards
a more fable-like, abstract, allegorical form. In this new
form, the importance of the landscape and setting shifts as
well. Here we find evidence of the use of counterpoint.
Colonel Cantwell almost inevitably .expresses a sensitiv-
ity towards beauty. He rarely neglects to comment on the
pleasurable or gratifying qualities of a landscape around him.
Early in the work, he diverges from his scheduled route in
order to observe a site. He instructs Jackson to stop the car
and take a look:

• The Colonel and the driver walked over to

• the Venice side of the road and looked
across the lagoon that was whipped by the
strong, cold wind from the mountains that
42

sharpened all the outlines of buildings

so that they were geometrical! y clear
(ART 9 3- 94 ) .
I

The scene is loaded with emotion. w.w. Seward notes that

throughout the novel "there is a brooding awareness of the
tragic in every line." 7 Cantwell looks at the landscape from
a painter's perspective. Furthermore, he is aware of his
viewpoint. In the novel, each setting plays on the counter-
poising voices of Cantwell's urge to establish an order, form
and dignity to end his life, and the ever-present approaching
voice of death, a voice which lurks in the background.
The sharpened mountains and clear geometric shapes of the
buildings present a vision closer to that of Cantwell than
Jackson. While revealing Cantwell's affinity with the land-
scape, Hemingway also presents a contrasting voice in the
character of Jackson. Jackson represents the new mi 1 i tary
order taking over from the Colonel's army. For him, an undam-
aged car is more significant than the surrounding landscape,
as evidenced in the comical dialogue between Cantwell and
Jackson regarding the Colonel's car. Cantwell assures Jackson
that the low roads will be fine, stating, ''if we get stuck,
I'll haul you out with oxen." Jackson replies: "I was only
thinking about the car, sir." Later, he reminds the Colonel,

• "think about your fenders, sir" (ART, 23, 24). Cantwell is

attempting to combat his old ways and to come to peace wi'th
• himself,
fenders.
while Jackson is urging him to think about
43

his
Even though Cantwell patiently points out the land-
scapes for Jackson, Jackson still cannot see them, as he is
preoccupied with the car. Jackson, a product of the techno-
logical advances of the time, completely misses Cantwell's
intensity. The Colonel even comments directly on Jackson's
different perspective of the surrounding landscape, after
Jackson asks this provoking question: "St. Mark's Square is
where the pigeons are and where they have that big cathedral
that looks sort of like a moving picture palace, isn't it?"
Cantwell responds by stating, "Right, Jackson. You're on the
ball. If that's the way you look at it" (ART, 29). Again
Jackson perceives the surrounding landscape in terms of modern
technology. His earlier obsessive concern for the car is now
replaced by seeing a cathedral as a moving picture palace.
Cantwell cannot tolerate Jackson's lack of taste. His voice
of practicality (ART, 51), functionality, and concreteness
counters Cantwell's sensitivity to the surrounding landscape.
Cantwell is critical of modern technology and its destruction
of the natural beauty of the Italian countryside. Twice he
comments on how hydro-electric proje'cts have removed the
beauty from the Piave River. It has become a river "which no
longer contains water" {ART, 70; see also 21). The past and
.present landscapes are set in counterpoint. Jackson reflects
the militaristic side of Cantwell, of which Cantwell is trying

• to purge himself. The contrasting visions of the landscape

reveal Cantwell 's internal struggle to come to terms with
• himself, to achieve a state of peace with the world around
44

him.
Even during the Colonel's endless and tiresome rambling
about World War II (chapters 29-35), Hemingway attempts to
maintain a counter-voice, again through the setting:

The Colonel looked up at the play of the

light on the ceiling. It was reflected,
in part, from the Canal. It made strange
but steady movements, changing, as the
current of a trout stream changes, but
rema1n1ng, still changing as the sun
moved (ART, 235).

The Colonel returns to this image three times: once at the

girl's request, and twice when looking at the ceiling light
and then at the girl (see also pp. 239, 242, 247, 254). In
this passage, as in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," the light
has a dual function. It operates on a symbolic level and as
a fixed referential base. That is, in addition to providing
order and dignity, the light's place on the ceiling re-estab-
lishes the locale for the reader. As a positive symbol, it
contrasts the Colonel's war ranting. Simultaneously, by
lighting the room, it reestablishes the couple's current
spatial setting. Were Hemingway to have created additional
devices to keep the reader in the local setting, the counter-
point-would have been more effective and the reception of such
a strategy better received. As it stands now, Cantwell spends

• too long lost in tedious recollections, breaking the connec-

tion with the novel's dramatic present. The light is
• "reflected, in part, from the canal."
45

The scene prompts the

Colonel to remember the sunny day and the water of the canal.
In this scene, the waterscape of the canal is in counterpoint
to the previous imaqe where "someone, to clear the river bank
positions and the road in the hot weather, had ordered the
dead thrown into the canals" (ART, 20; emphasis mine). The
water settinq is revisited, and now, in counter-position,
"there were many ducks and qeese in the canals" (ART, 21).
The landscape constantly reminds the Colonel of his
condition. Renata tells him to take the elevator, as both of
them are aware of his heart problems (ART, 109). Cantwell
remains in constant contact with the physical settinq around
him. He wishes to face the cold north wind, to confront
death. In the Gritti Palace Hotel, he orders Arnaldo to "Open
the windows. All of them~" The narrator adds, "the waiter
opened the windows and the north wind came into the room"
{ART, 68). Later he tries to iqnore the wind but notices it
aqain and "faced into the wind and breathed deeply" (ART. 77).
In chapters 13 and 14, particular attention is qiven to the
cold wind. It is in dialoque with nature that the Colonel
chooses to deal with his inevitable death, rather than by
fiqhtinq against nature, iqnorinq it, or tryinq to qovern over
it with modern technoloqy, all thinqs which he had attempted
earlier in his army career. Cantwell approaches his final
visit to Venice throuqh the eye of a painter. It is from this

• perspective that he is able to balance his personal anxiety

with approachinq death. His attempt to end his life with an
• 46

alliance to nature is similar to Carlos Baker's description of

Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. Baker notes that
Santiago is affiliated "with the natural laws and forces,"
and that he had "a sense of solidarity with the visible uni-
verse and natural creation." 8 Cantwell attempts to achieve
such a bond .

•
• Notes
47

1 Sean O'Faolain, "A Clean, Well-Liqhted Place," Heming-

way: A Collection of C:r;itical Essays, ed. Robert P. Weeks
(Enqlewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962) 113.
Wayne Booth also comments that Heminqway determines "to
fiqht the darkness with liqht--if only the clean, well-liqhted
place of art itself." See Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fic-
tion, 299.
2 Heminqway, "A Clean, Well-Liqhted Place," The Short
Stories, 382. Hereafter cited in the text as "Clean."

3 Richard K. Peterson, Hemingway: Direct and Obl igue

(The Haque and Paris: Mouton, 1969) 26.

4 AnnetteBenert, "Survival throuqhirony: Heminqway's 'A

Clean, Well-Liqhted Place,'" Studies in Short Fiction 11.2
(Sprinq 1974): 185.

5 Earl Rovi t and Gerry Brenner, Ernest Heminaway: Revised

Edition (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986) 93.

6 Philip Younq, Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration,

(University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1966), 117.

7 w.w. Seward, Contrasts in Modern Writers (New York:

Frederic Fell, 1963) 63.

8 Carlos Baker', Heminaway: The Writer as Artist, 304 .

•
• Chapter Four
Characters and Motionscapes
48

He had seen the world change; not just

the events.
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Chapter three of this thesis demonstrates that Hemingway

utilizes opposition and counterpoint to organize his writing,
particularly his landscapes. Carlos Baker explains,

He would have liked to set down in words,

as Goya did in paint, all that he had
'seen, felt, touched, handled, smelled,
enjoyed, drunk, mounted, suffered,
spewed-up, lain-with, suspected,
observed, loved, hated, lusted, feared,
detested admired, loathed, and des-
troyed. ' 1

To capture a full array of emotions, the landscape would need

to 'come alive' or, at least, acquire a quality of movement or
motion. Harry Levin perceives such a quality in Hemingway's
settings: "When he offers this general view of a restaurant--
'It was full of smoke and drinking and singing'--he is an
impressionist if not an abstractionist. Thence to expression-
ism is an easy step: ' ... the room whirled.' " 2 Landscape
becoming motionscape is one result of Hemingway's cinematic
vision. Although occurring frequently in Hemingway's fiction,
motionscapes often remain undetected, or are considered incon-

• sequential .
In this chapter, I will examine the function and signifi-
• cance of motion in Hemingway' s landscapes.
49

Motionscapes
intertwine with a character's growth. First, I will examine
the expression of emotion through a landscape that, with time,
has undergone physical change, as in "The End of Something,"
and "The Three-Day Blow ... Then, I will give an example of an
altered landscape due to motion, from "The Snows of Kilimanja-
ro ...
In Hemingway's fiction, one noticeable quality of the
space is a sense of the world being turned upside down. It is
no longer as it was, whether it be the sudden silence of the
lumber mills in "The End of Something," or the alteration of
the African landscape in .. The Snows of Kilimanjaro." In "The
End of Something, .. the landscape changes from "a lumbering
town. No one who lived in it was out of sound of the big saws
in the mill by the lake," to a space where "there were no more
1ogs to make 1umber. " The town is set in motion, as "the
schooner moved out ... carrying ... the travelling carriage that
hurled the logs against the revolving, circular saws and all
the rollers, wheels, belts .... it moved out into the open lake,
carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and
Hortons Bay a town" (emphasis mine). With the familiar signs
gone, entire geographical spaces lose their identity. Final-
ly, "ten years later there was nothing of the mill left except
the broken white limestone of its foundations showing through
the swampy second growth." 3 What, at least to Nick, would

• have appeared to have been a fixed setting, has undergone a

massive change. As the schooner moves out into the open lake,
• Hortons Bay is radically transformed.
50

This transformation of the landscape, parallels a similar

change in Nick's love relationship. The couple engages in a
nocturnal fishing trip. They argue at a bay that is now
empty, but once, in a different possible world, seemed "more
like a castle" ("End," 108). At first Marjorie is content
with their situation, as is evident in the opening fishing
scene: "she was intent on the rod all the time they trolled,
even when she talked. She loved to fish. She loved to fish
with Nick" ("End," 108). The nocturnal fishing expedition
continues, and the couple returns to the beach. The normal
flow of events is about to be disrupted. Marjorie, aware of
Nick's state of disquietude, asks what is the matter. While
Nick has guided her through the fishing expedition, even
boastfully noting, "I taught you everything" ("End," 110).
Subtly and indirectly, Marjorie is about to teach Nick about
the affairs of the heart, ironically undermining his authori-
tative statement. At the point of Nick's unease and uncer-
tainty, indicated by his, "I don't know," motion is
reintroduced into the landscape: "the evening breeze blew the
smoke toward the point" ("End," 109). The couple sits with
the light of the fire behind them. Here the landscape has a
darkening effect: behind them, the "close second-growth tim-
ber," an area without light, and in front of them, two steel
rods "over the dark water." The setting correlates to the

• increased tension:
darkness.
the couple is surrounded by planes of
• ion.
Heminqway deliberately sacrifices precision for express-
The frequent omission of pronouns in relation to space,
51

such as the.description, "and in front was the bay," empha-

sizes the spatial settinq of beinq in front. What is in
front, is implied and becomes secondary information. Another
example of this technique can be found in the second paraqraph
of "The Three-Day Blow": "in back was the qaraqe." Aqain, the
information that the qaraqe is in back of the 'cottage' is
withheld and the spatial positioninq of beinq 'in back of' is
emphasized. The precedinq sentence reads, "There was the
cottaqe," the 'there' referrinq to the top of the hill. 4
This deceptively simple style focuses attention on plains in
the landscape. After carefully developinq the space in "The
End of Somethinq," the narrator locates some specific details
of the settinq, such as the two steel rods and even the fire
qlintinq on the reels. The couple sits and watches the appro-
achinq darkness. For the moment, their relationship is not
quite dark. After sharinq a silent meal, Nick initiates an
a·rqument, mentioninq the landscape in order to actualize the
quarrel. His statement, "there's qoinq to be a moon toniqht"
("End," 110), siqnals a chanqe in the "not quite dark" ("End,"
109) landscape. Just as the cause of Nick's disquietude
beqins to emerqe, the hills beqin "to sharpen aqainst the sky"
("End," 110). Marjorie's skilful manipulation of the scene
makes it appear that Nick is controlling the situation.5

• Nick asks, "what don't you know anyway?" ("End,'' 110).

brief exchanqe is bracketed by references to the landscape.
The
• Although Nick initiates the dialogue by talking about the
moon, Marjorie ends it by telling him to shut up and then
52

drawing his attention to the forthcoming moon. After watching

the moon rise, Marjorie opens the conversation again. Her
timing is deliberate, as she is aware that the previous argu-
ment has drained Nick's emotions. Marjorie directs the final
action and goes to the boat. The last image of Marjorie is in
relation to the moon,r as "she was afloat in the boat on the
water with the moonlight on it" ("End," 111). 6 In this
subtle inversion, Marjorie recognizes, steers, and concludes
an argument that Nick will proceed to ponder in "The Three-Day
Blow." At the end of the story, Nick encounters Bill, who has
emerged from the woods. It is with him that he will face the
results of his break-up.
"The Three-Day Blow" begins by echoing Nick's mood after
his break-up with Marjorie: "The rain stopped .... The fruit had
been picked and the fall wind blew through the bare trees"
("Three-Day," 115). The wind indicates a movement sweeping
across the landscape. Nick, furthermore, is not in a station-
ary setting, but on a road: he moves through the orchard and
then across an open field.
The settings in these two stories, like most in In Our
Time, establish unfixed and relative landscapes, heavily
dependent on motion. A framework develops where the story is
encased in movement, interrupted by shots of ·the landscape,

• similar to Cantwell's pauses to gaze at the Venetian landscape

in Across the River and into the Trees. In "The Three-Day
• Blow," descriptive passaqes qo beyond the immediate flow of
the story and create a pulse-like effect, from specific char-
53

acter movement to panoramic views. For example, after pre-

sentinq precise details of Nick pickinq up a "Waqner apple"
and placinq it in the pocket of his "Mackinaw coat," the
narrator switches to a qeneral survey of the landscape:

The road came out of the orchard on to

the top of the hill. There was the cot-
taqe, the porch bare, smoke cominq from
the chimney. In back was the qaraqe, the
chicken coop and the second-qrowth timber
like a hedqe aqainst the woods behind.
The biq trees swayed far over in the wind
as he watched. It was the first of the
autumn storms ("Three-Day," 115).

The settinq is presented in planes. The narrator follows the

vertical movement from the road to the hill top and then the
smoke from the chimney. In the second plane, the reader moves
from the second-qrowth timber to a forest with biq trees
swayinq far over in the wind. Shortly after this pause, Nick
stands on the porch and scans the landscape with Bill, "look-
inq out across the country, down over the orchard, beyond the
road, across the lower fields and the woods to the point of
the lake. The wind was blowing straiqht down the lake"
("Three-Day," 115i emphasis mine). In one sentence, the
reader is carried back throuqh the first twelve sentences, to
the settinq at the end of "The End of Somethinq." The repeti-

• tion of adverbial phrases of motion flinqs the reader down the

planes that, alonq with Nick, she/he had just climbed. The
• wind blowing down creates an additional vertical movement
which confers closure on the scene. Unlike the previously
54

depicted planes, the emphasis shifts from particular spatial

representation to capturing a fluidity, a sense of motion.
The reader glides from the first plane of the orchard, past
the second plane of the road, fields and woods, and down to
the third plane, the lake. Hence, after carefully viewing the
landscape on the way to the cottage, the reader then experi-
ences motion, separated from the depicted space.
Later in the story, as the distract ions of drinking,
baseball and literary discussions fade away, Nick begins to
recognize the absence of Mar j or i e in his 1andscape. He under-
stands that she has been basically stripped from his land-
scape, as he notes, "All of a sudden everything was
over .... Just like when the three-day blows come now and rip
all the leaves off the trees" ("Three-Day," 123). Nick begins
to see his new landscape--a place of bare trees.· The wind
serves as a spatial representation for the passing of time.
As will be shown in A Farewell to Arms, the wind is an agent
of motion in the landscape which complements the changes in
characters' lives. In "The Three-Day Blow," Nick recognizes
the fact that he and Marjorie will no longer be in various
settings together: "He had talked to her about how they would
go to Italy together and the fun they would have. Places they
would be together. It was all gone now" ("Three-Day," 123-

• 24}. Nick discovers that places are qone and worlds are now
closed to him. Just as Bill emerges from the woods, Nick is
• now entering an empty, unknown space.
As Nick begins to confront his new spatial setting, a
55

place filled with wind, he contemplates going into town three

times. He realizes, however, that were he to go, it would be
on Saturday, and that today is still only Thursday. Further-
more, the town-setting option is not definite, as each time it
is expressed in a conditional tense: "he might go," then a bi.t
more assuredly, "he would go," and finally less confidently,
"he could always go" ("Three-Day," 124-25). The town remains
a possible alternative landscape though an unlikely one since
it is not viewed with overwhelming optimism and would not be
realized in the immediate future.
While in "The End of Something," and "The Three-Day
Blow," minor changes to the landscape occur as a result of
motion, in other stories such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro,"
the intensity of motion at the end of the story alters the
landscape dramatically, allowing for the reevaluation of the
real landscape. With the movement across and above several
plains, a motionscape is created. Accordingly, even though
the final scene is non-actual, as the plane moves upward
across the plain, over the hills, through the stormy mountain
top, and then east towards the square top of Kilimanjaro, it
has been sufficiently grounded in the African setting so that
the final merging of the actual and non-actual does not dis-
tract the reader. The narrator describes Harry's final

• ascent:
• . .. he saw them [Helen, Compton, the boys]
all standing below, waving, and the camp
beside the hill, flattening now, and the
56

plain spreading, clumps of trees, and the

bush flattening, while the game trails
ran now smoothly .... The zebra, small
rounded backs now, and the wildebeeste,
big-headed dots seeming to climb as they
moved in long fingers across the
plain ... they were tiny now ... then they
were over mountains with sudden depths of
green-rising forest and the solid bamboo
slopes, and then the heavy forest again,
sculptured into peaks and hollows until
they crossed, and hills sloped down and
then another plain, hot n9w, and purple-
brown, bumpy with heat ...

Here, the change in perspective creates a flattening effect.

With an emphasis on motion, the landscape has a different
volume. The forms and shapes of the landscape are altered.
Dimensions are distorted. Perspectives are stretched. The
world changes , becoming f 1at t er . Certain new shapes are
created, such as round images of zebras' backs, or big-headed
wildebeeste dots, fingers in the plain, peaks and hollows and
even a plain which looks bumpy in the heat. The forest has
become sculpture-like, solidified and moulded into form. The

reader moves from the details of the African landscape to its

new order, finally reaching a white space which takes over the
setting, where "all he could see, as wide as all the world,
great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun was the square
top of Kilimanjaro" ("Snows," 76). It is here, at the highest
mountain in Africa, that Harry ends his inner quest .

•
• Notes
57

1 Carlos Baker, Ernest Heminqway: A Life Story (New York:

Scribner's, 1969) 224.

2 Harry Levin, "Observations on the Style· of Ernest

Heminqway," Hemingway and His Critics: An International Antho-
lQgy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961) 106.

3 Hemingway, "The End of Something," The Short Stories of

Ernest Hemingway, 107. Hereafter cited in the text as "End."

4 Hemingway, "The Three-Day Blow," The Short Stories of

Ernest Hemingway, 115. Hereafter cited in the text as "Three-
Day."

5 Dennis Welland outlines the expression's central impor-

tance in the story and how it demonstrates Marjorie's aware-
ness that the time has come to end the relationship. Her
skilful manipulation of the scene makes it appear that Nick is
controlling the situation. Refer to, Dennis Welland, "Idiom
in Hemingway: A Footnote," Journal of American Studies 18.3
(1984}: 449-51.

6 Mar jorie' s close association with the moon ("End", 110,

111), reminds the reader of Renata's bond with the moon in
Across the River and into the Trees. Interpreted as 1 i fe
becoming art, Renata is devoted to the moon which, according
to Harrison, in Jane Harrison, Mythology (Boston: Marshal!
Jones eo. , 1924) , 120-22, is the symbol of the "huntress-
maiden" Artemis in her brightness and Hecate, the death god-
dess in her "dark spectral side." Renata's choosing to be the
moon (ART, 99), and later Cantwell explaining that a lobster
is best "with the moon," (ART, 117), that is when being fed
and consumed in the presence of the moon, the female at the
height of her power, along with his reference to her wanting
to be the moon CART, 118), enforce this mythological relation.

7 Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," The Short

Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 75-76. Hereafter cited in the
text as "Snows."

•
• Chapter Five
Time in Motionscapes
58

Chapter four focuses on the prominence of motion in

Hemingway's artistic vision. The previous chapter's example
of "The Snows of Ki 1 imanjaro," shows how Hemingway uses motion
to physically alter a landscape. Another aspect of the
described scene involves the creation of a sense of frozen
time. Having studied the spatial qualities, I will now shift
to the temporal aspect of Hemingway's settings and landscapes
in order to provide a more detailed analysis of motion within
the settings and landscapes. The repetition of words like
'now', give the example in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" a time-
less quality. In this chapter, I will examine in more detail
the relation of time in the motionscapes of A Farewell to
Arms, "Homage to Switzerland," and Across the River and into
the Trees. First I will consider how the temporal setting
becomes a vital agent in developing character in A Farewell to
Here the landscapes are altered when Frederic Henry
acquires a new temporal perspective; motion becomes a dominant
quality of the landscape. Then, I will briefly review "Homage
to Switzerland" and, finally, I will consider Across the Riyer
and into the Trees in light of its temporal distortion.

A Farewell to Arms

• A Farewell to Arms maintains an emphasis on new spaces,

possible alternative landscapes and motion. Just as Nick
• realizes that he and Marjorie will no lonqer share settinqs,
in "The Three-Day Blow," Henry qoes one step further and
59

imaqines a trip with Catherine Barkley. Henry includes a

dininq scene. Shared meals in Heminqway's fiction often
represent a bond between people. His imaqined space is also
characterized by motion. They would "walk down the Via Man-
zoni in the hot eveninq and cross over and turn off along the
canal and go to the hotel ... " (FTA, 37; emphasis mine). The
content and movement depicted in this and many other scenes is
cartoqraphic (see also FTA, 113). Dimension is considered in
terms of a mappinq of movement. From the openinq scene of the
leaves beinq "stirred by the breeze" (FTA, 3), to Frederic
Henry's out of body experience which oriqinates "in a rushinq
wind" (FTA, 198-99), the landscape is a transitory space.
After Henry deserts at the end of Book III, his thouqhts
indicate his new relation to landscapes: "Probably have to g.Q.

damned quickly. She would g.Q.. I knew she would g.Q.. When
would we g.Q.? That was somethinq to think about. It was
qettinq dark. I lay and thouqht where we would gQ. There
were many places" (FTA, 233; emphasis mine). At the end,
Henry confirms the possibility of several places, but they
seem less important than the act .of qoinq, a word repeated
five times in seven short sentences, four of the five occur-
rinq at the end of the sentence.
In A Farewell to Arms, a shift occurs from the early

• aloof relation Frederic Henry maintains with the landscape to

a more direct interaction. The openinq of the book features
• a few quick war scene sketches.
sense of detachment.
Within these, there is a
The reporter-! ike tone features
60

the
simple subject/verb syntactic structure: "the plain
was ... there was fighting ... it was like ... " (FTA, eh. 1-2).
The ironic ending of the first chapter depicts, through under-
statement, the horror of war: "At the start of the winter came
the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it
was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in
the army" ( FTA, 4). The impersonality of the description
creates a distancing-effect. Not feeling the narrat~' s
presence allows the reader to remain aloof as well.
In the next chapter of the novel, the impersonality is
maintained. Henry's body is camouflaged in the warscape of
the officer's mess. Even though there some interaction among
the characters, Henry still remains uninvolved. Then, while
Henry is on leave, Catherine arrives in town. Details are
emphasized more. Henry's leave, however, is that of a typical
soldier. At this early point, Henry still maintains a care-
free relation with the setting: when the head nurse asks him
why he is in the Italian army, he responds, "I was in Italy"
(FTA, 22), suggesting an almost coincidental relation to the
world around him. And the settings of his time-off are those
of any soldier: cafes and women. Even though he had wanted to
spend the time skiing and hunting in the mountains with the
priest's family, he indulges in pleasures that he could buy,

• experiences that require little effort on his part.

down the landscape "where the roads were frozen and hard as
He turns
• iron, where it was clear and cold and dry and the snow was dry
and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow." The setting he does
61

stay in, to this point of the story, is an unfulfilled and

imaginative space. He recalls his landscape of "the world all
unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again
unknowing and not caring." It is a landscape filled with "the
smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed
to look at the wall to make it stop ... " (FTA, 13; also seep.
31) . Time goes by quickly in the beginning of the novel.
According to Michael Reynolds, the first seven pages cover
almost two years: the summer of 1915 to the spring of 1917; 1
the rest of the novel slows down considerably. Coinciding
with his involvement with Catherine, Henry shifts away from
drifting through life. Henry realizes that "when I [Henry]
saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside
me" (FTA, 95), and to a declaration of loving her always (FTA,
125}. In contrast to the warscape, Henry does not have to
wait until it is light to sleep (compare p.301, to p.88).
Catherine replaces the function of 1 ight for Hemingway' s
characters, as shown in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."
At first, however, Henry has a reaction to Catherine in
the style of a carefree soldier. He views her simply in terms
of a commodity, someone who might be useful for a soldier's-
type of pleasure. His meetings with her are depicted in game
terminology (chess, p. 26; bridge, p.28, 32), further empha-

• sizing the unreality of his setting, as he observes, "I knew

I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have
• anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me
myself than war in the movies" (FTA, 38).
62

As an ambulance
driver volunteer, Henry lives a detached life from the world
around him. But suddenly his illusion explodes. He finds
himself among the torn-off limbs of dying men. His own leg is
badly smashed. Ironically the injury does not occur during a
heroic battle, but instead while in a dug-out, eating macaroni
and cheese. From this point on, Henry's relation to the
landscape changes. His physical wound triggers an awakening:

--then there was a flash, as when a

blast-furnace door is swung open, and a
roar that started white and went red and
on and in a rushing wind .... I felt myself
rush bodily out of myself and out and out
and out and all the time bodily in the
wind. I went out swiftly, all of myself,
and I knew I was dead and that it had all
been a mistake to think you just died.
Then I floated, and instead of going on I
felt myself slide back. I breathed and I
was back. The ground was torn up and in
front of my head was a splintered beam of
wood ( FTA, 54) . 2

Henry experiences the tearing-up of the landscape. After his

out of body experience, Henry returns with a new perspective
to his surroundings. His physical jarring results in an
emotional shake-up.
Later, Henry cites Marvel!' s poem, "To His Coy Mistress,"
demonstrating his new awareness of time in his life: "'But at
my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near'"

• (FTA, 154). 3 The speaker's concern with having to.o little

time, and the consequences of being trapped by time and the
•
63

world, are themes that Hemingway develops vis-a-vis the set-

ting in A Farewell to Arms. The time and action imagery
throughout the poem express the speaker's desire to engage in
intense sensual stimulation, especially sexual interaction,
reminding the reader of the early Frederic Henry. In the
poem, counterpoint undermines the speaker's argumentation to
his coy mistress. The references to the flood, the conversion
of the Jews, and the last age suggest an alternative setting
and time, which provide an alternative voice to the contention
that the sole provider of meaning in life is gratification of
the senses. The earlier references to love, in terms of
walking, passing and growing (11. 4,11), that is, in relation
to the earth, are contrasted to the later sheer passion, the
tearing of pleasures "with rough stride. /Through the Iron
gates of Life" (11. 43-44}. The man's previously expressed
fondness and tenderness lose their attractiveness, becoming a
lustful rage, much like in Henry's world, "that you must
resume again unknowing and not caring in the night" (FTA, 13).
The poem's call to make the most of time, ironically is not a
call to an awareness of time and experience, but merely is a
call for indulgence in superficial experience. The speaker
later turns into a savage-like creature, much like the life of
a soldier on leave. "To His Coy Mistress," having the passion
of a love poem and being an argument against mere sexual
indulgence, is similar to Frederic's appropriation of

• Catherine as someone more than a mere love-object, as an agent

who creates the potential for metaphysical awareness.
• Hemingway is able to concentrate on the relation intro-
duced by the counter-voice in the poem and its parallel to
64

Frederic and Catherine, for whom time is running out. While,

the poem's counter voice is external to the speaker, in A
Farewell to Arms, the counter voice emerges from within Fred-
eric. In the novel, the transiency of the spat iotemporal
world is the dominant voice while the characters play-off
against it.
Frederic and Catherine are set in relation to the pre-
sented seasonal cycles. Movement in the novel occurs in
relation to the naming of seasons instead of the results of
specific actions. Reynolds (cited earlier) details how the
seasonal cycles interpenetrate with the action of the novel.
In the spring, Henry meets Catherine; in the summer their
romance intensifies while he recuperates in Milan; in Septem-
ber Catherine is pregnant; in October they retreat to beyond
Udine; in the second winter Catherine labours in Switzerland;
and in the final spring, ironically, two deaths occur.
William Adair suggests the landscape in A Farewell to Arms is
dominated by "linear-geometric imagery" and links this to
Frederic Henry's strategy "to slow down and order the passage
of time and flux of circumstances, to 'control' Time and
instability with thought ... " He adds that this approach
appears to "impose design on memory," placing the novel into
a "temporal realm of geometric form."4 This reshaping of the

• landscape coincides with a Cezannian and Cubist influence,

that is the making of linear abstractions. If Henry does
• indeed engage in a process of reshaping the landscape around
him through the gradual shift into an existentially rich
65

experience, then he goes beyond Lukacs' description of the

hero in modern literature who engages in a conscious negation
of history:

First, the hero is strictly confined

within the limits of his own experience.
There is not for him ... any preexistent
reality beyond his own self, acting upon
him or being acted upon by him. Second-
ly, the hero himself is without personal
history. He is 'thrown-into-the world':
meaninglessly, unfathomably. He does not
develop contact with the world; he
neither forms nor is formed by it. The
only 'development' in this literature is
the gradual revelation of the human con-
dition. Man is now whas: he has always
been and always will be.

Because of his wound and interact ion with Catherine, Henry

goes beyond his former condition and begins to recognize a
reality outside of his own self. As the novel progresses, the
slowed down temporal presentation further demonstrates Henry's
increasing sensitivity to the world around him, unt11 finally,
while in the rain, he achieves a level of acceptance through
meaningful interaction with the world. Catherine's death has
affected him to the point where he will not return to a mean-
ingless interaction with the warscape like that of a movie-
goer.
Returning to Book III of the novel; the retreat to Capor-

• etto, Henry attempts to flee from the suffocating chaos of the

war. This book illustrates Henry's desire to escape the
•
66
meaningless words and actions in the landscape around him.
But this clean~ well-lighted place, as Henry discovers, has
been affected by the war: Henry notes that "It did not feel
like a homecoming." He recalls Caporetto as "a little white
town with a campanile in a valley. It was a clean little town
and there was a fine fountain in the square" (FTA, 163,164).
War has rampaged through this "clean little town" and shat-
tered Henry's "picturesque front" into a land of destruction.
The retreat itself is characterized by confusion and anarchy.

It is here that Henry experiences his second major direct

interaction with the surrounding landscape. Malcolm Cowley
designates this experience as his baptism. He observes that
when "Henry dives into the flooded Tagliamento ... he is per-
forming a rite of baptism that prepares us for the new life he
is about to lead .... " 6 John w. Aldridge refers to Henry's
act as one "of purgation symbolizing the death of the war and
the beginning of a new life tif love." 7 Feeling the rules are
no longer relevant (FTA, 248), Henry removes himself from the
front, a setting no longer subject to the tradition of honour-
able warfare seeking the "fruits of victory" (FTA, 239). The
plunge into the river is Henry's attempt to remove himself
from the warscape: it is a deliberate act, a conscious move
away, a struggle (FTA, 233).
The plunge, however, is more of an initiation. Whereas

• in a traditional religious baptism, the candidate accepts

certain obligations, here Henry now is free to deny military
• rules. Having learnt about the disorder of the warscape, he
considers words such as "sacred," "glorious," and "sacrifice,"
67

{FTA, 184-85) as meaningless. Furthermore, Hemingway does not

allow Henry's contact with the landscape to be viewed in
heroic terms. Just as he down plays Henry's wound, so too
does he diminish Henry's act by having him trip at the edge of
the river. Nevertheless, some critics have been quick to
criticize this escape, comparing it to the attempted desertion
of the two sergeants. Francis Hackett, for example, observes,
"though he does not hesitate to kill a deserter he himself
deserts when offered the same dose of medicine .... "8 A close
examination of the two episodes, however, reveals a vast
difference between the two acts. Although the result--shoot-
ing deserters--is the same, the cause is not. The sergeants
violate a code of communal i ty by eating without sharing.
Henry carries food to his men during a bombardment. The
sergeants benefit from the ride but refuse to push the ambu-
lance once stuck in the mud. The killing represents a turning
point in the novel: individual protect ion takes over; the
reasons for fighting, or the call of the military loses its
precedence. After the shooting scene, when approaching a
bridge, Bonello suggests that Henry cross first, as it might
be mined (FTA, 209). Personal survival takes over.
Frederic and Catherine quickly discover that they cannot
escape the warscape around them. Hemingway presents a wars-

• cape which apparently is without bounds. Henry's suggestion

to "drop the war," is met with the reply, "it's very hard.
• There's no place to drop it" (FTA, 26).
68

Before meetinq Meyers

and his wife returninq from the races, Henry contemplates the
war: "The West front did not sound so qood. It looked as
thouqh the war was qoinq on for a lonq time." Both the siqht
and sound of war are presented. The term 'West front' while
denoting the political side, also connotes a large geographic-
al space, that the war is occupying. Later Henry adds, "per-
haps wars weren't won any more. Maybe they went on forever"
(FTA, 118), indicating a shift, where the war becomes a perma-
nent part of the landscape and, accordingly, people's mind-
sets.
A parallel exists between the inevitability of death in
warscapes and death's ultimate call in Henry's own attempted
relationship. Catherine and Frederic's harmonious growth
together, contrasts with the spatiotemporal reality of the war
which pushes them apart. Just as Cantwell must face the cold
wind in Venice, Catherine and Frederic encounter harsh rains
and constant reminders of their time coming to a close. At
first, Catherine vainly suggests, "But get well quickly dar-
ling, and we will qo somewhere" (FTA, 103), knowing that in
the long run they will not be able to escape the war. Later
in the novel, Catherine and Henry's final evening in the hotel
in Milan is set aqainst the noise of the passing traffic,
thereby linking their sensual romantic space with the reality
of time. Cars driving past are a spatial representation of

• the movement of time. Henry tries to block out the war, as he

notes, "the war was a lonq way away. Maybe there wasn't any
• war. There was no war here. " Yet at the Grand-Hotel in
Stresa he realizes that his new landscape does not separate
69

him from the reality of the war. The war was what he came
from and, no matter where he went, he could not remove himself
from it: he states: "But I did not have the feeling that it
was really over. I had the feeling of a boy who thinks of
what is happening at a certain hour at the school house from
which he has played truant" (FTA, 245). While he has escaped
physically, he is unable to separate his mind from the set-
ting. He feels like a masquerader in his civilian clothes.
His constant awareness of time is further evident when
the baby is about due. Henry observes: "it gave us both a
feeling as though something were hurrying us and we could not
lose any time together" (FTA, 311). The love which trans-
ported them out of the warscape into the "grand country" of
Switzerland, the setting where they eat pretzels, drink beer,
and enjoy the weather (Book IV, eh. 38-40), is also the agent
which returns them to the world. Catherine knows she is going
to die; Henry senses it but does not accept it, as he repeats
his incantation, "please don't let her die" {FTA, 353).
Contemplating the baby's death, Henry wonders: "Maybe he was
chocked all the time," a condition which accurately reflects
his and Catherine's own inability to break free from the
warscape, a reality where "you never had time to learn" (FTA,
327). At the end, Henry sees Catherine as a statue: death has

• imposed its limits on lifei Catherine's discourse early in the

novel about her English lover who was killed in France, her
• emphatic "that's the end of it," (FTA, 19), foreshadows the
reality of death. Just as he had died in the war, now Henry
70

and Catherine must confront the passage of time in their own

relationship. At this point, Henry's initiation into a world
of feeling is complete. The value in the deaths are not
religious or heroic: these are dismissed earlier in the novel.
Instead, it lies within Henry's recognition of experience.
Ironically he learns about death, not on the battlefields of
war, but on the peaceful landscape of the mountains in Swit-
zerland.
While Switzerland is Henry's and Catherine's clean, well-
lighted place, one should be careful to keep in mind the
complexity of Hemingway's landscapes. Carlos Baker has pro-
vided us with an important first step in reading them. He
considers A Farewell to Arms to be ruled by two master sym-
bols, the Mountain and the Plain, correlating to a Home, Not-
Home concept. He writes, "the controlling symbolism [is] the
deep central antithesis between the image of life and home
(the mountain) and the image of war and death (the plain)." 9
E.M. Halliday, however, reveals that the landscape is more
complex than this direct polarity allows. He shows that the
river in the opening scene of the novel belongs to the moun-
tain (the Home-concept), instead of the plain (the Not-Home-
concept). Furthermore, images of fertility and fruit ion in
this plain are not correlatable to the rain, fog, disease,

• suffering and war images with which Baker links the Not-Home-
concept. Other examples which demonstrate this analysis to be
• lacking occur in the section of the novel set in Milan.
and Catherine have a wonderful time in this lowland.
71
Henry
Cat her-
ine's death, in fact, occurs in a mountain city. Halliday
notes that Baker's obsession with his "symbolic apparatus"
causes him "to see the topography of Switzerland in a light
,that will not darken his thesis." 10 Another critic, John
Killinger, demonstrates that rain need not always be seen
exclusively in terms of Baker's symbol of destruction, but as
a symbol of fertility. He notes, "rain as an omen of death,
at the same time predicts rebirth." 11 However, by the same
token, Baker's point that the mountain is a natural setting
corrupted by man's war, is valid and central to an understand-
ing of Hemingway's landscape imagery in wartime settings.

"Homage to Switzerland"
Temporal distortion becomes more blatant in "Homage to
Switzerland." In each scene, the station cafe is depicted;
the characters dialogue unsuccessful! y with the waitress; snow
is shown to be falling. In the last two scenes, the characters
have another dialogue with an individual or a group in the
cafe; in the first two scenes, the characters stand on the
platform outside where the snow is falling; in the first and
third scenes, there is a direct statement that the characters
are going to Paris, while in the second, Johnson occasionally
speaks in French. Through such repetition and slight vari-

• ations, the landscape becomes reproducible and postcard-like.

Ironically the title suggests a tribute to the scope of Swit-
• zerland; however, it is a strange homage, as the three charac-
ters are leaving Switzerland and each is lost, to a· degree, in
72

isolation and separation. The only communication that does

occur is with an old man who tries to establish a bond through
the superficial 1 ink of a membership to the National Geo-
graphic Society in Washington.
Time has become frozen. At each station, a porter enters
and informs the passengers that the "Simplon-Orient Express
was an hour late at Saint Maurice." Each time, the waitress
immediately reiterates the porter's announcement, noting "The
Express is an hour late" ("Homage", 422, 425, 430). Each
time, the waitress seems to be the same character. The shift
from diachronic to synchronic presentation is complemented by
a distortion of spatial order, as the sequence should be
Territet, Montreux and Vevey: in the story, the landscape is
altered to Montreux, Vevey and then Territet. Another example
of the differentiation between the real and fictional space is
that the actual Simplon-Orient Express stops neither at Vevey
nor Territet, both beingminor stations. In reality, Territet
is less than a mile away from Montreux. Montreux, in turn, is
only about five miles from Vevey. The actual Express only
stops at Montreux, which i.s the only station in the story
where a train is actually arriving. Additional temporal
confusion arises in the dating of the story, which, from the
publication date of "The Sahara Desert" article in the Nation-

• al Geographic of 1911, would make it 1926 ("Homage", 433).

However, the reference to T.E. Lawrence's book dates the story
• as 1932. Thus, time is shown to be relative. Along with the
spatial di start ions and parallel configurations, the story
73

functions on a level perhaps as Hemingway himself had hoped

when he stated it "is supposed to represent Switzerland meta-
physically." 12

Across the River and into the Trees

Such altered space--a direct result of temporal manipula-
tion--is also a central component of Across the River and into
the Trees, Confusion arises with the opening chapter and last
six chapters which frame the novel in a synchronic swamp land.
In the swamp scene, time elapses to allow "the ice that had
been broken" to be "re-frozen.lightly" (ART, 282). The novel
begins "two hours before daylight" (ART, 1) on Sunday morning.
During this time, Cantwell, in flashback, recalls his four
heart attacks. His last one kills him on Sunday evening. The
majority of the novel is set in Cantwell's memory, including
his final farewell to Renata on Saturday afternoon. The
setting of Venice which dominates the novel is depicted
through Cantwell' s imagination, and hence is an imagined
space. The actual physical setting is the duck's blinds in
the marshes at the mouth of a river. Like the setting in "Big
Two-Hearted River," the swampy land is a site of interaction.
The swamp land, an area of transition, is a space shared by
the land and the water. It is a place from which all life

• emerges, a place to which all life returns.

Cantwell chooses to confront death.
It is here that
His trip back to Venice
•
74
is one where he plunges back into the spatial and temporal
reality where he had attained a significant portion of his
knowledge. In this landscape, he attempts to come to terms
with this acquired knowledge and to enter into an unknowable
horizon of human knowledge: that is, to die.
Swamps play a major role in Hemingway's landscapes: It
is in the swamp that the mysterious "thud of a shotgun"
occurs, in "The Three-Day Blow." Perhaps this is a suicide
shot, since Nick notes that "the birds will lie right down in
the grass with this [wind]," and then Bill states, "You can't
shoot in this wind" ("Three-Day," 125). Whatever the part icu-
lar reference is to, the shot nonetheless maintains its sig-
nificance as a representation of an agent which, in the least,
terminates or changes the surrounding order. If it is Bill's
father committing suicide, it could be an ironic twist in the
story, especially to Nick's optimism where "there was not
anything that was irrevocable" {"Three-Day," 124).
Swamp or swamp-like land is often associated with
frozen time. An example of going beyond conventional measured
time occurs with Jake Barnes' fishing trip in Burguete with
Harris in The Sun Also Rises. Neither of them is sure as to
what day it is. Harris notes that it is "wonderful how one
loses track of the days up here in the mountains" (SAR, 127).
The characters are in a suspended reality where they can
better explore other realities, such as metaphysical ones .

• Cantwell, in Across the River and into the Trees, selec-

tively remembers details of his life. These details are
•
75
intimately linked with the landscape, as it is this physical,
visible, touchable, perceivable reality that allows him to
feel and to face death. Cantwell places himself in a physical
landscape where he will be able to deal with his inner-most
quest. The past perfect verb tense in chapter 2, indicates
that his physical had occurred before the final duck hunt.
The start of chapter 3 places the examination on Friday, while
Saturday would be "yesterday" (ART, 12). Chapters 3-15 make
up "yesterday": the trip from Trieste to Venice and the late
afternoon and night at the Gritti. Chapters 16-19 comprise
the "today"· of the novel: Cantwell spends morning and midday
in Venice and leaves in the afternoon. There are reminders of
Cantwell 's heart condition scattered throughout the book (ART,
77-79, 91, 138, 160, 196, 228). Finally, he dies in the
afternoon, chapter 45, on the road back to Trieste. The swamp
which opened the novel, .closes it, encasing the central land-
scape of Venice and its canals.
Near the end of the flashback, Cantwell imagines life
with Renata in the States. The creation of the alternative
landscape involves a description of the trees in Wyoming CART,
265). This setting contrasts with Venice, which is without
trees. Later, his farewell to Renata occurs under trees, like
those in "The Three-Day Blow," that "were black and moved in
the wind and there were no leaves on them" (ART, 276). Final-
ly, the Colonel's last dialogue includes instructions to

• "'cross over the river and

trees,'" quoting Stonewall Jackson.
rest under the shade of
Hemingway goes further
the
•
76

than Jackson as the title indicates: Cantwell is looking to go

into the trees, into a dark, vast unknown landscape. He wants
death neither as a soldier on the battlefield, nor as an
artist with an aesthete's death in Venice. He wants death in
the trees. The novel ends ironically, where the life-giving
waters of the Venetian canals are now contaminated as a result
of the highly mechanized modern society. Like the mountains
in A Farewell to Arms which, filled with the war, serve as the
unnatural site for Catherine's death, now the waters have been
contaminated: Renata' s portrait wi 11 have to go through a
stream of administrative channels .

•
•
77
Notes

1 Michael s. Reynolds, Hemingwav's First War: The Making

of 'A Farewell to Arms' (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976) 263.

2 Another similar out of body experience occurs in "Now

I LayMe" from Men Without Women, where the narrator notes,
had been blown up at niqht and felt it [my soul] qo out
'" ... I
of me and qo off and then come back." Like Henry (FTA, 88),
Siqnor Tenente also doesn't sleep niqhts. See, Heminqway,
"Now I Lay Me," The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 363,
368.

3 A more complete,
contextual quotation from Marvell's
"To His Coy Mistress" reads as follows:
Had we but World enouqh, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our lonq Loves day .
... An Aqe at least to every part,
And the last Aqe should show your Heart .
... But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winqed Charriot hurryinq near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of Vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My echoinq Sonq: then Worms shall try
That lonq preserv'd Virqinity:
And your quaint Honor turn to dust;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace .
.. . Now let us sport us while we may;
... Rather at once our Time devour,
... Thus, thouqh we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
See, Andrew Marvel!, The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvel!,
ed. H.M. Marqoliouth, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford UP, 1971), 2
Vo 1 s . , pp . 2 7-2 8 , 11 . 1- 4 , 1 7 -18 , 21- 3 2 , 3 7 , 3 9 4 5-4 6 .
1

4 Wi 11 iam Adair "Time and Structure in A Farewell to

1

Arms," South Dakota Review 13 (1975): 169-171.

•
• 5 Georg Lukacs, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism,
trans. John and Necke Mander {London: Merlin P, 1962) 21.
78

6 Malcolm Cowley, introduction, Hemingway, xvii.

7 John w. Aldridge, After the Lost Generation: A Critical

Study of the Writers of Two Wars (New York: McGraw, 1951) 9.

8 Francis Hackett, "Hemingway: 'A Farewell to Arms,'"

Saturday Review of Literature 32 (Aug. 6, 1949): 33.

9 Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 109.

lO E.M. Halliday, "Hemingway's Ambiguity: Symbolism and

Irony," American Literature, 28.1 (Jan. 1956): 13.

11 John Ki 11 inger, Hemingway and the Dead Gods: A Study

in Existentialism (Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1960): 48.

12 Carlos Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters,

1917-1961 {New York: Scribner's, 1981) 367 .

•
• Chapter Six
Transforming Settings
79

In the previous two chapters, I focus on the results of

characters changing their perspective on their surrounding
environment. In this chapter, I will explore when the altered
setting is cause for a radical transformation of character.
Specifically, I will consider "A Pursuit Race" and "The Capi-
tal of the World," in terms of the effects of this space on
character development. I wi 11 consider whether or not an
illusory landscape can effectively serve as a space in which
characters can achieve an internal experience, or if there is
a need to maintain a stronger degree of linkage to the empiri-
cal world and its landscapes.
"A Pursuit Race," an often ignored but important work in
the clean, well-lighted genre short story, from the Men With-
out Women collection, features a motionscape as the dominant
setting. Like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," "The Killers,"
"Now I Lay Me," and "A Canary For One," "A Pursuit Race"
explores the theme of waiting. However, as will be shown in
"The Capital of the World," this story provides an alternate
white-sheeted bed setting which fails to establish a clean,
well-lighted place.
Cri tic ism of "A Pursuit Race" has been virtually non-
existent. A few critics have linked it to Hemingway's suppos-

• ed study of homosexuality. Richard Hovey, for example, inad-

equately suggests that this story should be placed with others
•
80

dealing "with homosexuality, a phenomenon he [Hemingway] was

drawn to in anxious, puzzling loathing."l Carlos Baker wise-
ly chooses to view the story within the larger dimensions of
"a whole, widespread human predicament, deep in the grain of
. .... ..2
h uman a ff a1rs
In terms of the physical setting, the story makes refer-
ence to two specific American cities, a rarity in Heminqway's
fiction. Other than the Nick Adams stories, most of his
stories are set outside of America. And those set in the
States are usually limited to the Michigan area. At the
opening of the story, the narrator provides the background
information for the scene, stating, "William Campbell had been
in a pursuit race with a burlesque show ever since Pitts-
burgh." The narrator employs an expository/journalistic
style, similar to the first part of "A Natural History of the
Dead." The narrator proceeds to explain how a pursuit race
functions and then concludes by stating, "the burlesque show
caught Wi 11 lam Campbell at Kansas City." The second paragraph
maintains the same expository style. It includes a specific
setting reference to the "the Pacific coast," and another
couple of references to Kansas City. This time, however, a
brief description and subjective interpretation is added: "It
was very cold in Kansas City and he was in no hurry to get
out. He did not like Kansas City." 3 At this point, the work
shifts to a narrative level, focusing on Carnpbell's specific

• locale, where he was "lying in the bed completely covered by

the bed-clothes" ("Pursuit", 351).
• The beginning of the story conveys a sense of distance.
First, the opening paragraph is enframed by references to two
81

cities, moving the reader from the East Coast to Central

United States. Even though the story details specific geo-
graphical points, it covers a vast distance in a very short
space. Second, a close examination of the choice of words in
the opening scene reveals the story's concern with movement.
The following example highlights some of the motion vocabu-
lary:

Wi 11 iam Campbell had been in a pursuit

race with a burlesque show ever since
Pittsburgh. In a pursuit race, in
bicycle racing, riders start at equal
intervals to ride after one another.
They ride very fast because the race is
usually limited to a short distance and
if they slow their riding another rider
who maintains his pace will make up the
space that separated them equally at the
start. As soon as a rider is caught and
passed he is out of the race and must get
down from his bicycle and leave the
track. If none of the riders are caught
the winner of the race is the one who has
gained the most distance ("Pursuit,"
350) •

The repetition of key words such as 'race' , 'pursuit' , and

'ride', and the structure of the sentences, allow the reader
to focus on the sense of motion. "The Pursuit Race" is a
miniature and more intense version of the cycle that the
characters in The Sun Also Rises engage in, moving from France

• to Spain and then back to France again . In "A Pursuit Race,"

Hemingway explores the lives of two men who are caught in the
 82

middle of the race of life. Their lives are like those of a

cyclist's: they are on a never ending track. Their setting is
not constant: it fluctuates from one place to another and soon
becomes cyclic.
In terms of the story's relation to'Hemingway's clean,
well-lighted places, one must examine the central role of the
bed, the space where the rest of the story takes place.
Unable to stay ahead of the burlesque show, William Campbell
is lying in bed where "it was warm and white and close under
the covers" ("Pursuit," 351). Campbell internalizes the
bicycle race, echoing the narrator's statement in the first
paragraph, "As soon as a rider is caught and passed he is out
of the race and must leave the track" ("Pursuit," 350). The
world has "caught" Campbell, who no longer wishes to or is
able to participate in life's endless race track. Hence, like
Ole Anderson in "The Killers," Campbell is left in a setting
where he simply waits.
Although it would appear that Campbell is attempting to
stop running and maintain some order and dignity in his life,
like Anderson or the old waiter in· "A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place," it quickly becomes evident that Campbell's world does
not have the potential for such dignity. His landscape of
"clothing on a chair, an open suitcase, the bottle on a chair
beside the bed" is not a clean, well-lighted place. His prior
use of alcohol and current use of drugs reflect a disorder and

• inability to create or live in an alternate space.

the pursuit race, Campbell
Lost in
is not like the old man in "A
• Clean, Well-Lighted Place" who is "careful to drink without
spilling" ("Clean," 381). Nor is he like Anderson in "The
83

Killers" who lies fully dressed and neat in bed. The sheets
suffocate and prevent him from addressing or confronting his
uneasiness directly. Campbell uses the sheets as a divider
between him and Turner. He repeated! y talks through the
sheets, a gesture which often provides an element of humour to
the story. It is a humour laced with irony or tragedy. 4 The
sheets also expose Campbell's problem: he prefers to hide.
Once, he pulls back the sheet and states that he knows enough
so that he does not mind looking at Turner, but then takes
back that statement by commenting, " ... really I don't know
anything at all. I was just talking" ("Pursuit," 351). In
the story Campbell never reaches a point where he actually
does know enough. The next time he emerges from the sheets is
only to show Turner his arm, another masking effect, as it is
covered with needle marks. Then, when Turner sits on the bed,
Campbell advises him to "be careful of my sheet" ("Pursuit,"
353}. He presumably uncovers himself to have a drink and then
concludes the conversation with a sexual gesture, stroking his
nose against the sheet. The sheets here, then, are not indic-
ative of a clean, ordered place, but of messiness, disorder
and i 11 us ion.
The more Turner is revealed, the more he resembles
Campbell. In certain respects, their relation is similar to

• that of the waiters in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

the young waiter, Turner is caught in the i 11 us ion of the
Like
•
84

race; unlike him, however, Turner shows signs of understanding

the situation he is in. In "A Pursuit Race," Turner and
Campbell, at first, seem to be enemies: Turner states, "You're
a fool" ("Pursuit," 351). Later, as the story focuses more on
Turner, the reader discovers that Turner "was very fond of
William Campbell; he did not wish to leave him. He was very
sorry for him and he felt a cure might help" ("Pursuit," 353).
At the same time, however, the narrator reveals that Turner is
feeling the pressures of the race. Just like Campbell had
been, Turner is still caught in the middle of this endless
pursuit. The narrator notes that Turner "had many things to
do .... he had to go. He stood up" ("Pursuit," 353), and later
Turner adds, "I have to go .... ! got a lot to do .... ! better
go" ("Pursuit," 354). The call "to go" still controls Turner.
An even closer relation between the characters becomes appar-
ent when Campbell reveals that they have the same first name.
He knows that Turner can go on with the race because he has
the quality of motion within him, that he is "Sliding Bill"
("Pursuit," 353). Campbell, however, "never could slide";
with him, "it just catches." Although Campbell is aware of
his own condition, as he notes, "it's awful when you can't
slide" ("Pursuit," 354), he nevertheless decides to "stick to
sheets" ("Pursuit," 354) and remain within an illusion. The
story's eerie other-worldliness is emphasized by the ghost-
like setting, where Turner is talking with a character con-

• stantly under the sheets. Turner is aware that if he does not

continue moving, he will be just like Campbell. At the end of
• the story, Campbell, like many Hemingway characters, is sleep-
ing during the day. Turner demonstrates a further level of
85

awareness of Campbell's condition by knowing "what things in

life were very valuable" and by not waking him ("Pursuit,"
355).

Campbell resembles another character, Paco in "The Capi-

tal of the World," who is also caught up in an illusionary
setting. "The Capital of the World" presents a character who
cannot penetrate beyond the surface of an experience since his
setting is too far removed from the actual one. Often, how-
ever, critics do not pay as close attention to the landscape
as the story invites them to. As a result, interpretations
arise such as Sheldon Norman Grebstein's, which suggests that
Pace's failed initiation into manhood is due to an insuffi-
cient amount of technical skill. He has courage but lacks
craft. In noting that "the cause of [Paco'sJ death is the
excess of courage and illusion,"5 Grebstein focuses on the
story's theme of initiation into the dark realities of life,
the need to acquire di si 11 usionment. Should the story be
reduced to the level of a simple dichotomy between Paco's
youthful illusions and the other characters' learned disil--
lusion? On the one hand, the theme of illusions is present
in the story, as revealed in the following characterization of
Pace: Pace "would like to be a good Catholic, a revolutionary,
and have a steady job like this, while, at the same time,

• being a bullfighter." 6 On the other hand, a study of the

setting would reveal a more complex and correct relation than
•
86

that suggested by Grebstein.

When considering the story, it is vital to consider
Paco s mock bullfight within the context of the entire story.
1

The story shifts its focus from the three matadors, to the
three waiters, and finally to Paco and Enrique. In each of
these shifts, the setting proves an essential element. First,
the Pension Luarca is described as an inexpensive lodging for
second-rate bull fighters. The narrator adds, "s~cond-rate

bull fighters never became first rate." But there is the

illusion, the all important "appearance, if not of prosperity,
at least of respectability, since decorum and dignity rank
above courage as the virtues most highly prized in Spain." It
is the surface that counts, the facade. The matadors will
stay at the Luarca "until their last pesetas were gone" ("Cap-
ital," 39) in order to maintain their cover.
The setting does not coincide with the traditionally
associated virtues of honour, courage and self-respect of the
bull fighter. In the fictional story, bullfighting is not
given the idealizations of bravery, "honour, probity, courage,
self-respect and pride," words Hemingway uses to define pundo-
nor in his non-fictional work, Death in the Afternoon (p. 91).
Whereas in Death in the Afternoon, bullfighting is depicted as
a tragedy, in "The Capital of the World," it is absurd. For
example, one of the three matadors is shown to have become a
coward after receiving a horn wound in his lower abdomen. His

• cowardliness has spilled over from the bullring into his life,
as he fails to seduce one o.f Pace's sisters. The chambermaid
• responds by noting, "A failed bull-fighter.
load of fear" ("Capital," 43).
With your ton-
The setting has lost its pres-
87

tige, like Garbo's film-world, a setting all of Madrid is dis-

appointed in because "they had been accustomed to see her sur-
rounded by great luxury" and not "in miserable low surround~

ings" ("Capital," 50).

Unlike Nick Adams, Paco does not have an opportunity to
reflect on his experiences. In stories like "Indian Camp,"
"The Killers," or even in Across the River and into the Trees,
the protagonists all confront and react to their violent
world. Paco is unable _to attain this state because he never
enters into a world stripped of its glittery facade. Greb-
stein contends that Paco's death is "different only in detail
from the hundreds of deaths ... in provincial towns staging
their own informal town-square bullfights (capeas), when local
men and youths faced the bull under the most hazardous condi-
tions."7 However, herein lies precisely the difference
between the bullfights in The Sun Also Rises or "The Un-
defeated" and "The Capital of the World." Paco is killed, but
not by a real bull in a bullring, but with a chair in a kit-
chen. What Grebstein considers only to be a "detail" is the
key to the text. It allows the ritual and tradition of the
bullfight to be turned into a parody. It also prevents an
oversimplification of the Hemingway code, by demonstrating a
need for more than the mere appearance of the setting and,

• within the given setting, a need for human interaction within

it. Paco does not face a violent world, but a violent illu-
•
88
sion of the world. Unlike Francis Macomber in "The Short
Happy Life of Francis Macomber," who develops a real courage
to face the charging bull by first truly experiencing fear-
{i.e.: his running from the lion), Paco does not undergo a
real initiation and never experiences the real fear of a bull-
fighter. Paco's final thoughts imprison himwithin his imagi-
nary bullr ing landscape. The kitchen setting provides him
only with the opportunity to demonstrate his courage, which he
does by ignoring Enquire's warning that "it's [the chair]
heavy," and "it is very dangerous" ("Capital," 48}. Paco's
authentic courage is bound to its spaciality, an illusionary
world.
Hemingway quickly counterpoints this setting with an
alternative landscape--the actual world and its events occur-
ring "at this time." Here Paco's sisters are off to see the
Greta Garbo film and a priest with his breviary. The scene
shifts, catching a glimpse of the Cafe Fornos, and then cap-
turing a grey-headed picador staring at the cowardly matador
with a former matador and some older prostitutes. The camera-
eye moves from the street corner to another cafe, and back to
the woman who owns the Luarca and the sick matador face down
on his bed. This dismal and pathetic setting provides a stark
contrast to the illusory bullring and its courageous matador,
Paco. He is too simple to be aware of the desperate nature of
the lives around him. As the narrator notes earlier, Paco

• "did not yet understand politics but it always gave him a

thrill to hear ... of the necessity for killing the priests and
•
89

the Guardia civil. .. revolution also was romantic" ("Capital,"

42). Paco remains in an idyllic state of being, filled with
youthful enthusiasm. Ironically, it is a priest who describes
the Madrid landscape as a place "where one learns to under-
stand. Madrid kills Spain" ("Capital," 45). Paco fails to
experience the cowardliness or illness that matadors in Madrid
experience. Indeed he faces the chairs courageously and
exemplifies all the bravery necessary for facing a chair with
knives attached to it. In this sense, he fulfils a code and
truly is in the capital of the world. The irony of course is
that it is not much of a world: a place where life leaves "as
dirty water empties from a bathtub when the plug is drawn"
("Capital," 50). The Pension Luarca is a setting where he is
not afraid ("Capital," 46,47), but should have been .

•
• Notes
90

1 Richard Hovey, Ernest Heminqway: The Inward Terrain

(Seattle: U of Washington P, 1968) 17.

2 Carlos Baker, Ernest Heminqway: The Writer as Artist,

123.

3 Hemingway, "A Pursuit Race," The Short Stories of

Ernest Heminqway, 350. Hereafter cited in the text as "Pur-
suit."

4 She1don Grebstein, although missing Turner's important

role, effectively details some of the story's humour and
suggests that certain scenes be read aloud to experience their
full comic effects. Refer to, Sheldon Norman Grebstein,
Heminqway's Craft (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1973)
187.

5 Sheldon Norman Grebstein, "Hemingway's Dark and Bloody

Capital," The Thirties: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, ed. Warren
French (Deland: Everett Edwards, 1967) 23.

6 Hemingway, "The Capital of the World," The Short

Stories of Ernest HeminQWay, 42-43. Hereafter cited in the
text as "Capital."

7 Grebstein, "Hemingway's Dark and Bloody Capital," The

Thirties: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, 24 .

•
• Chapter Seven
Human Bodies and the Body of the Earth
91

In the final chapter of this thesis, I will explore the

relation Hemingway establishes between setting and the indivi-
dual's striving for a communality, defined as a break from the
individual fragmentation and isolation tendencies of the
modernist age. I will explore how Hemingway uses setting in
To Have and Have Not to present a vision of community. Then
I will reconsider The Sun Also Rises in more detail, in order
to determine the level of dialogue between the characters and
the landscapes and also to focus on the nature of the communal
spirit within Hemingway's works. Finally I will reconsider
Across the River and into the Trees to establish the correla-
tion between the human body and the earth.

To Have and Have Not

The landscape in To Have and Have Not reveals a quest for
unity, a masculine and feminine harmony set within a world
attempting to. separate and isolate the individual. In !!:
Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry, through the help of
Catherine Barkley, transcends his Erlebnis-type of experience.
In comparison, the hero of To Have and Have Not already has
this state of awareness. In the novel, Harry Morgan strives
to enhance his home, a setting for communal growth. His

• actions away from his home reflect his primary interest of

supporting his family. He states: "But I was damned if I was
• going home broke .... Besides I've got a family. " 1
captured by the bank robber, he wonders about Marie: "I guess
92

Later,

she's too worried to eat" (HHN, 164). Other references to the

priority of his family life can be found on pp. 21, 174.
Harry anticipates a disruption of their communal life through
the interruption of meals, an activity traditionally express-
ing a bond between people.
The landscape in To Have and Have Not reflects a reversal
of the wandering male-dominated vision in stories like "Hills
Like White Elephants," or "Cat in the Rain." In these
stories, the women's urges to develop beyond the cliches that
the man's world traps them in, are overruled by the wandering
male desires to merely "look at things and try new drinks"
("Hills," 274). Here the women suffer an all too acute aware-
ness of the fact that their men like the girl who looks like
a boy. 2 It is therefore not at all surprising that their
landscapes consist of hotels ("Cat," 167) and bags with
"labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent
nights" ("Hills," 277). In cbntrast, the structure of To Have
and Have Not reveals a domestic world, where home and stabil-
ity are of primary importance. As a result, more of a poly-
phonic voice emerges, where certain characteristics of the
masculine and the feminine interact. This world is set in
opposition to the male world of crime and deceit, a world
dominated by a singular point of view. Several sections of

• the novel end with domestic landscapes. Part

example, after 63 pages of action and intrigue, emphatically
One, for
• ends, not in the midst of some high strung adventure, but with
a home setting:
93

That night I was sitting in the living

room smoking a cigar and drinking a whis-
key and water and listening to Grace
Alien on the radio. The girls had gone
to the show and sitting here I felt
sleepy and I felt good. There was some-
body at the front door and Marie, my
wife, got up from where she was sitting
and went to it .... She came back in and
sat down and looking out the window where
I was sitting with my feet up I could see
Eddy going along the road under arc
light. .. (HHN, 64).

Hemingway situates Harry comfortably in his home landscape.

He is much more relaxed than in the preceding adventure.
Eddy, a remnant of the earlier affairs, is not permitted into
Harry's home scene. The window separates the two worlds and,
given the opportunity to return to the former one, Harry
deliberately chooses the home setting. His former law-break-
ing actions are now seen in the light of a domestic environ-
ment. Although he functions in the dark landscape of the
streets, he does so in order to survive in his clean, well-
lighted home.
Hemingway, however, is careful not to reduce the
home/street dichotomy to a good/bad relationship. Albert's
relation to his home, for example, is evidence of a more
complicated dichotomy. Albert notes, "I go on in and I

• haven't got the door open before my old woman is giving me

hell .... The kids are all gone to the diamond ball game and I
• sit there at the table and she brings me supper and won't
speak to me" (HHN, 104). Later, Mrs. Tracy's hysterical
94

response to Albert's death seems to be the appropriate end for

a woman who was constantly nagging and criticizing her hus-
band. In addition, Hemingway addresses the complex issue of
Harry's survival, an individual attempting to maintain a
communal element in his life at a time when alternative and
conflicting ideologies are gaining force. Furthermore, he
exposes how the workers live in the Cuban poverty-stricken
landscape and how the carefree upper class from Florida dis-
rupt the local setting.
Harry's domestic world is contrasted with Richard
Gordon' s superficial, homeless male-type of world. While
Harry becomes more intimate with Marie, Richard distances
himself from his wife. His environments vary from "the Brad-
ley's big winter house" (HHN, 150), to Freddy's bar (HHN,
176). There, on veteran's night, in this mirror setting (HHN,
209), where men look at endless surface reflections of them-
selves, no one shares Harry's landscape. His family life is
contrasted to a fantastic slave vision of marriage. The
question, "only where is she?" {HHN, 211) is a sobering slap
in the face to such codes of drunkenness, brutality and chaos.
Harry is not part of this setting where "you go ashore in the
evening up under Riverside Drive there's old guys with long
beards ... and you can piss in their beards for a dollar" (HHN,

• 206-07).
setting.
With Richard, there are no references to a domestic
Hel~ne's vision of the cupids only as a "cake-frost-
• ing modelling" CHHN, 189), reveals the lack of intimacy in her
sex life with Richard. The isolated cupids further illustrate
95

a lack of a home setting when contrasted with Harry, who sees

a picture of cupids synthesized as part of a domestic land-
scape (HHN, 127). Here intimacy and love are set in accord
with the home. Harry is able to connect the erotic and domes-
tic, while Richard's act is mere! y decorative or fun, 1 ike
eating cake. Gordon is more at home in Freddy's Bar, where
he cannot see women like Marie as they really are--icons of a
full-grown, fertile, sexual, forceful and dignified womanhood.
This is a woman Harry can embrace. Richard Gordon, in con-
trast, is lost in a male fantasy of a "young firm-breasted,
full-lipped little Jewess" (HHN, 176-77). Finally, Richard is
"lurching down the street until he was out of sight in the
shadow from the big trees whose branches dipped down to grow
into the ground like robots" (HHN, 221). The description of
the estranged setting aptly reflects Richard's world--an
inverted landscape. He cannot return home. Harry, however,
fights for his life, and is on a boat returning home. Ironi-
cally, that boat will be his funeral bier.
The end of the novel depicts the Richard Gordons of the
world, wandering aimlessly, living in rented houses or on
yachts, while Marie confronts the loss of her husband and
learns what it feels like to "go dead inside" (HHN, 261). She
finds herself "empty like a_ empty house" (HHN, 257). Ironi-

• cally, the Morgans' union ends in death, while the Gordons are
still alive, each in their own separate worlds. Yet within
•
96

this setting of loss, Hemingway manages to express a potential

for hope, describing the landscape of palm branches,

sawing in the light north wind. Some

winter people rode by the house on
bicycles. They were laughing. In the
big yard of the house across the street a
peacock squawked (HHN, 262).

Hemingway chooses to end the work with a domestic setting

and its counterpoint (the white yacht} to further emphasize
the potential for survival. In the final scene, where the
tanker (the Harry Morgans of the world) hugs the reef "to keep
from wasting fuel against the stream" (HHN, 262), Hemingway
iterates the sea's potential for purging. It serves as count-
erpoint to the disorder and violence transported onto it by
man. For example, even though the boat Harry is on is riddled
with bullets, the sea nevertheless transports him back to
shore. The life of the sea swallows up the death around it.
The fish feed from the drops of blood from the boat (HHN,
179). Life emerges from death. The natural feeds and grows
from an unnatural event. Order is restored. Whereas in The
Sun Also Rises, it is the earth which is the hero, here it is
the sea which abideth forever.

The Sense of Community in

The Sun Also Rises and Across the River and into the Trees

• Having shown the propagation of the family as one form of

community in To Have and Have Not, I will devote the second
• half of this chapter to analyzing two other aspects of commu-
nal life developed through landscapes.
97

First I will consider

The Sun Also Rises, where Hemingway creates a strong link
between the characters and the landscape by employing a carni-
val scene. Then I will examine Across the River and into the
Trees, where Hemingway develops the notion of the grotesque
through the representation of landscape as a union with human
beings.
The land in The Sun Also Rises, functions as a constant
in relation to people's wandering and unsettled lives. At
times characters successfully dialogue with the earth and
attain a level of peace, while at other times, they ignore it
and suffer an inquietude as a result. Some characters, for
example, perceive space as a gigantic playground, a fantasy
land. Jake's friends engage in mindless wandering from cab-
aret to cabaret in Paris, then from France to Spain and final-
ly back to France again. Count Mipipopolous, in contrast, is
shown to have a learning relation with the land: he is a
positive figure who has experienced life and gained awareness
from the events in his life. He explains to Brett that he has
"been around very much ... around a very great deal." He then
adds, "I have been in seven wars and four revolutions" (SAR,
59-60). The Count goes beyond Bi 11 Gorton' s compromise of
accepting a landscape of stuffed animals; he wants his ani-
mals to be alive. Bill, though living a life of immediate

• gratification, is aware that he has chosen to avoid personal

risk. He knowingly accepts the nothingness of his life, as is
•• exemplified in his drunken journeys. Space, for him, is an
98

area for the "simple exchange of values" (SAR, 72-73), empty

values. He does however fair better than the Woolseys and the
Krums who do not even achieve superficial experience. Their
desire to "live it out in the country and have a little car"
(SAR, 36), suggests a total non-dialogue with the land. They
know not what they do. Robert Cohn, by contrast, is not
interested in the meaningless pleasure seeking around him.
But un 1 i ke the Count, he has not "been there. " He 1oses
himself in self-deception and illusion-creating. His relation
with the earth involves a refusal to accept the land as it is,
as revealed when Jake responds to his proposal for a trip to
South America: "going to another country doesn't make any
difference .... You can't get away from yourself by moving from
one place to another" (SAR, 11). Jake explains that merely
dashing from one setting to another and experiencing all the
surface glitter of each place will not alter his personality.
Any change of character must come from within. Cohn wants a
superficial participation without any significant insight.
The fact that Robert merely sleeps through the drive to
Pamplona, while Bill just nods his head, further confirms that
these two characters are lost in their own mindscapes, and are
totally unaware of what the surrounding landscape has to offer
( SAR, 93) .
Finally, Jake himself learns that he must break away from

• useless and impossible illusions. His idyllic pleasures at

Burguete and the misery of Parnplona show him that there are
•
99.

times and places where he can get, and realize that he has
got, his money's worth, and times and places where he must
step aside (SAR, 148, 232). Brett, with a white garlic wreath
around her neck, drinking from the wine skins and surrounded
by dancers (SAR, 156), is a fiesta Jake can neither afford nor
even participate in. Hence, at the end of the journey, he
stops and reflects back:

It felt strange to be in France again.

There was a safe, suburban feeling. I
wished I had gone up to Paris with Bill,
except that Paris would have meant more
fiesta-:-ing. I was through with fiestas
for a while" (SAR, 232).

Jake chooses a physical landscape less agitating than San

Fermin. Having participated in its fiesta and having observed
the actual death of Girones, Jake now learns to stay away from
impossible illusions. He chooses a landscape he can handle.
His relation to the land at San Sebastian, for example, had
been more authentic: there he gained a limited enjoyment from
swimming, walking, reading, and eating, echoing his controlled
pleasure of fishing in Burguete. His increasing awareness of
the termination of the illusion Brett represents for himself
occurs when he travels to Madrid, to the Norte Station which
is "the end of the line. All trains finish there. They don't
go on anywhere" (SAR, 239-40). The ironic dialogue at the end

•
of the novel expresses Jake's realization of his own cross-
roads, his acceptance of himself as he is, and his determina-
• tion to live within his powers and not to go out too far.
"The earth abideth forever," Hemingway• s quotation from Eccle-
100

siastes, echoes his own comments on the book: "the real hero
was the earth and you get the sense of its triumph in abiding
forever." 3
Jake, Cohn, Brett and all the major characters in the
novel assemble at an important communal event, the carnival
scene. The carnivalesque, as explained by M.M. Bakhtin,
focuses on the "material" and the "body," not in terms of an
isolated individual experience, but as a collective, holistic
assemblage. The body is seen in terms of its social surround-
ings, as a construct of its environment. This framework for
Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque is based on popular
culture and the folk tradition. As Bakhtin states, "carnival
is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and
everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the
people." 4 In The Sun Also Rises, at the end of the seven day
fiesta, a time of drinking and dancing, a time where "every-
thing became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though
nothing could have any consequences'' (SAR, 154), Hemingway
depicts a carnival scene which certainly has consequences for
the people at Pamplona. He depicts the death of Vincente
Girones, the 28 year-old farmer who came every year to the
fiesta at Pamplona. He had been participating in the
encierro, the running of the bulls through the streets to the

• bullring. The farmer is tossed and gored in a swirl of carni-

val people who trample past him in their mad rush. This
• single death at the fiesta landscape overrides the shallow
bickering, the pretentiousness, and the unfaithfulness of the
101

characters: "The man who had been gored lay face down in the
trampled mud" (SAR, 197), is the one real, physical act which
becomes significant in the work. Even Romero's heroic per-
formances in the ring remain merely theatrical gestures when
compared to the finality and absurdity of death. The waiter
comments on the absurdity of the death, repeating, "All for
fun. Just for fun .... Fun, you understand .... No fun in that
for me" (SAR, 197-98). The reality of the farmer's death
shatters the illusion of the fiesta. It, like the mud Girones
lies in, is touchable and real. Girones risked exposure to
being gored or trampled, all in the name of fun. In this part
of the novel, the setting plays one of its most important
roles. In a mad frenzy, the people have trampled a farmer, a
man of the earth. Even a human life is less important than
the fun of the fiesta, supposedly a celebration of the earth.
The lack of a reaction from Bill and the others reveals the
extent to which they themselves are full of illusions, lost in
their own fiesta. The actual death represents their living
deaths, their attempts to get their money's worth from life
without considering the prices they pay.
The fiesta scene hints at an interconnection between the
body and the landscape. Bakhtin defines the "grotesque body"
as "a body in the act of becoming .... it is continually built,

• created, and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the

body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world"
• (Rabelais, 317).
Colonel, in
In Across the River and into the Trees, the
an almost embarrassing description, portrays
102

Renata in terms of military, tactical land formations. What

is important is the correlation Cantwell establishes between
Renata and the physical landscape. His inability to describe
her in terms other than military language is an ironic commen-
tary on the state of his mind. With his ruined hand, he
"searched for the island in the great river with the high
steep banks .... He kissed her then and he searched for the
island, finding it and losing it, and then finding it for
good." Renata asks him to, with his good hand, to "hold the
high ground" of her breasts (ART, 153). Cantwell, in an
attempt at becoming intimate, goes beyond mere sensual stimu-
lation. On one level, Cantwell expresses a gender cliche,
something one would expect from an ex-general, while on a
metaphysical level, the Colonel is trying to express a love of
the earth, a body he abused for most of his life. Later
Renata correlates herself to "the u~known country," and
invites Cantwell to come to her with the same military mind as
before (ART, 155). Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls, also
thinks of his lover's body in terms of the landscape, as "he
felt the long smoothness of her thighs against his and her
breasts like two small hills that rise out of the long plain
where there is a well, and the far country beyond the hills
was the valley of her throat where his lips were."S

• El Sordo, in his final fight, thinks of the hill he is on

in terms of a chancre (FWBT, 307). Shortly thereafter, Sordo
• accepts death, but like Frederic Henry, hates it.
swallowing some wine, he contemplates dying and living:
103

After

Dying was nothing and he had no picture

of it nor fear of it in his mind. But
living was a field of grain blowing in
the wind on the side of a hill. Living
was a hawk in the sky. Living was an
earthen jar of water in the dust of the
threshing with the grain flailed out and
the chaff blowing. Living was a horse
between your legs and a carbine under one
leg and a hill and a valley and a stream
with trees along it and the far side of
the valley and the hills beyond (FWBT,
312-313).

All his images of life link its energy, its vitality with
the earth. The images transcend Sordo's specific setting, as
he contemplates an imaginary landscape, a space filled with
grain, hawks and an earthen jar. Sordo at tempts to deal with
the abstract expression, 'life', by correlating it to specific
landscape imagery. It is most interesting to note what Sordo
does not include in h.is statements. Living is not filled with
other abstractions, such as the political or socio-economic
jargon that surrounds the war.
Cantwell tries to live in the spirit of the grotesque
over the classical, non-touching, ascetic body. The grotesque
body is an open body of which the lower stratum is not
ignored. Hence, along with love-making and creative acts,
Cantwell will also engage in various bodily functions. In an

• early scene, the Colonel "squatted low, and looking across the
river from the bank ... relieved himself" (ART, 18). Later,
• when talking about death, Cantwell explains that one must
journey to death alone, "like going to the bathroom"
104

(ART,
228), further developing the notion of the grotesque in the
novel and establishing a possible link with the aforementioned
death scene.
Intimacy with the landscape involves all aspects of the
body. Cantwell does not try to separate himself from Venice.
In a similar spirit of unity, Bakht in explains that for
Rabelais, "the biological element could not be separated from
the social, historic, and cultural element" (Rabelais, 406).
Cantwell attempts to live Venice to the fullest, experiencing
the social, historic and cultural elements as much as pos-
sible. Bakhtin outlines that the function of the grotesque is

to consecrate inventive freedom, to per-

mit the combination of a variety of dif-
ferent elements and their rapprochement,
to liberate from the prevailing point of
view the world, from conventions and es-
tablished truths, from cliches, from all
that is humdrum and universally accepted
(Rabelais, 34).

And it is precisely in this spirit that Cantwell engages on

his journey to Venice. He wishes to go beyond the conven-
tions, truths and cliches of his army life, which he now
discovers are empty and meaningless. He attempts one last

• fruitful dialogue with the landscape he knows and for which he

needs no map.
•
105

Another major aspect of the community between the land-

scape and its people lies in the market-place, which repre-
sents a coming together of people and the fruits of the earth.
The Colonel appreciates the market and describes the smells
and sights with great enthusiasm (ART, eh. 22). Food and
drink and market-places establish a collective atmosphere.
Feasts are related to meaningful and artistically creative
lives {Rabelais, 282). At the market scene, the Col one 1
partakes of the world instead of being devoured by it. In
addition, Cantwell clearly loves good food and wine. This is
especially evident in the setting of the Gritti Palace Hotel
where he and Renata dine (ART, eh. 12). A connection is made
between the food and the natural landscape: the Colonel notes,
"a lobster fills with the moon." Here Hemingway also brings
in his well developed light imagery, as Cantwell adds, "when
the moon is dark he is not worth eating" (ART, 117).
On his last trip, Cantwell wishes to enjoy his friends,
his girl, his food and drink, his hunting, and his landscapes.
When pondering his death, he intensifies the thematic link
with the landscape by contemplating a burial in Venice:

The stinking, putrefying part doesn't

last very long, really, he thought, and
anyway you are just sort of mulch, and
even the bones will be of some use final-
ly. I'd like to be buried way out at the
edge of the grounds, but in sight of the
old graceful house and the tall, great

• trees .... I could be a part of the ground

where the children play in the evenings,
and in the mornings, maybe, they would
still be training jumping horses and
• their hoofs would make the thudding on
the turf, and trout would rise in he pool
when there was a hatch of fly (ART,
106

35).

Cantwell does not ignore any part of his body in his relation
to the earth. He is even willing to contemplate his body's
use value when it is decomposing. His deathscape is sur-
rounded by symbols of life and fertility. Later in the novel,
he expresses a desire to be buried "on the dead angle of any
shell-pocked slope it they would graze cattle over me in the
summertime" (ART, 228), linking his body with the body of the
earth. Life for Cantwell is linked to motion. He attempts to
understand within the limits of knowledge in his own time.
Death is a release from these bindings, a different type of
movement, an entering into a frozen time where the earth
abideth forever .

•
• Notes
107

1 Ernest Heminqway, To Have and Have Not (New York:

Scribner's, 1937) 28. Hereafter cited in the text as HHN.
2 Heminqway, "Cat in the Rain," The Short Stories, 169.
Hereafter cited in the text as "Cat."

3 A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (New

York: Random House, 1966) 50.

4 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene

Iswolsky {Bloominqton: Indiana UP, 1984) 7. Hereafter cited
in the text as Rabelais.

5 Ernest Heminqway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York:

Scribner's, 1940) 341. Hereafter cited in the text as FWBT .

•
• Conclusion
To feel and feel not
108

It may be that men ceaselessly re-inject

into narrative what they have known, what
they have experienced; but if they do, at
least it is in a form which has van-
quished repetition and instituted the
model of a process of becoming. Roland
Barthes, Imaqe--Music--Text

The painting is finished when the idea

has disappeared.
Georges Braque in Josipovici, The World
and the Book

Hemingway's artistic style.allows him to veer away from

merely descriptive language to dialogical language which
serves as an effective tool for the creation of landscapes and
settings where motion comes to the forefront.
Through the iceberg approach, Hemingway creates the
ingenious interdependence and the interaction between land-
scape details and characters' emotions. He is able to
increase the intensity of the landscape, which, in turn,
provokes the reader to reconsider the scene and acquire a new
understanding of it. Hemingway communicates with the reader·
by conveying felt experience indirectly, yet forcefully, in an
attempt not to create heroic visions, but to charge or jolt
the reader into the process being depicted through the motion-
scapes.

• One of the qualities of the

natural appearance.
iceberg technique is its
Hemingway's 'fiction immerses itself in
• the mundane, the daily life.
109
Concrete reality is used as a
space where awareness can be attained. Surfaces such as
polished clean bar tops and well-lighted cafes offer a medium
to transform the world. Paulo Freire notes that it is from
"concreteness, from common sense" that people "reach a rigor-
ous understanding of real.ity." 1 By concentrating on the
concrete, a great deal of action occurs, not from accumulated
details of the past, but from a quiet flow of small movements,
focusing on character perceptions and situations.
Instead of bombarding the reader with new images, Heming-
way employs a minimal amount of landscapes. Aware that too
much information and detail prevents the reader from assimi-
lating the presented material, Hemingway uses a style of
simple sentences and pronouns, and avoids adjectives and
adverbs. As well, Hemingway does not rush to get to the end.
Often he develops variations of an image or landscape within
the text. Accordingly, he shares ce.rtain stylistic devices
with modernist artists such as Cezanne and the sculptor Bran-
cusi, in terms of transcending mere description.
Repetition and subtle variations of details play a large
role in heightening the prominence of the landscapes and
settings. The consideration of a structure of contrasts,
parallels, counterpoints and dichotomies within the settings
and landscapes reveal a vision integrated with Hemingway's
thematic concerns. It further demonstrates the depth of the

• scene and provides evidence against simplistic,· surface tex-

tual reading. Hemingway's imagistic units, although sparse--
• often no longer than a couple of paragraphs--still develop
into dominate structural components.
110

Intricate movements from

light to dark, for example, reveal a complex characterization
beyond cliched code words such as dignity and honour.
In addition, a link or dialogue with the surrounding
world is established, in that characters are given the chance
to benefit and gain experience from their interaction with the
. earth, if they can see their opportunity. This relation
between landscape and character is expanded upon in order to
confront the crisis of the individual and her/his experience
of nada, his/her isolation from other humans, from a commun-
i ty. Hemingway develops a dialogue between clarity and
mystery, between clearly defined well-lighted areas and moun-
tain, swamp or dark, mysterious and unknown areas. The ice-
berg technique does not involve a number of preconceived
ideals or predetermined goals that the author has hidden in
hope that the reader will discover them beneath the surface.
Quite the opposite, it is a technique where--as this thesis
has demonstrated--through motion within the landscapes and
settings, an emphasis is placed on process. Paulo Freire
describes such a perspective:

We are becoming something more because we

are learning, are knowing, because more
than observing, we change . ... Then, the
more I approach critically the object of
my observation,· the more I am able to

• perceive that the object of my observa-

tion is not yet because it is becoming.
Then, more and more, I begin to note in
my observation that the object is not in-
• itself but it is being related dialectic-
ally with others which co~stitute a
totality (emphasis Freire's).
111

Cantwell's recognition of death as part of a state of becom-

ing, in Across the River and into the Trees, or the discovery

of the earth abiding forever in The Sun Also Rises, indicate

Hemingway's emphasis on learned "change," on dialectical de-
velopment. Places like clean, well-lighted cafes become
signposts in the setting around which certain intensities and
feelings can develop, as Hemingway's iceberg technique entails
exploration, not limitation .

•
• Notes
112

1 Paulo Freire and Ira Shor, A Pedaaoay for Liberation:

Dialogues on Transforming Education (Massacheset ts: Berqin
and Garvey, 1987) 196.
2 Paulo Freire and Ira Shor, 82 .

•
•
113
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