Is Hemingway's style effective in the short stories of In Our Time?
Hemingway certainly does not make it easy for readers. With his sparse sentences and lack of internal descriptions, we are forced to consider the subtext of every interaction just to make sense of the words on the page. Most of the stories in In Our Time, when taken at face-level, seems to be missing something vital, like a very pale person. If I should skim through one beginning to end, I have no further curiosity, contemplation, or empathy.
It is only after some reflection is done can we sift out the emotions that Hemingway is attempting to highlight. Iceberg Theory, Hemingway's style, doesn't reflect on events below the surface. It creates a narrative distance that readers must bridge themselves.
I can see how this makes Hemingway's work thoughtful and literary. But while achieving artistic elevation, he sacrifices as much of his accessibility as does a writer using overly long sentences and words. I've read somewhere that Hemingway is comprehensible by fifth graders, and there's even a writing tool called Hemingway that deletes extraneous words. I've also read a quote that Hemingway's sentences began as spindly things, and he gradually had to build them up to full strength.
Take this example, from the story The End of Something:
"There's going to be a moon tonight," said Nick. He looked across the bay to the hills that were beginning to sharpen against the sky. Beyond the hills he knew the moon was coming up.
"I know it," Marjorie said happily.
"You know everything," Nick said.
"Oh, Nick, please cut it out! Please, please don't be that way!"
Presumably, readers should deduce that Nick and Marjorie have some kind of long-running "knowledge" conflict that somehow triggers an outburst from Marjorie. Iceberg Theory at work: we only see the iceberg of Nick and Marjorie's relationship. I don't feel any satisfaction from trying to deduce the details of their relationship with Hemingway's clues throughout the End of Something, though. By forcing me to bridge the narrative distance, I've lost empathy for the characters along the way. If he had given just a little bit about why I should care if either of these characters, or Bill, should live die or be happy, I would like this story more.
From this story, I've come to realize how Hemingway's style, which depends on Iceberg Theory, the theory of omission, never really grabbed my interest.
If I could describe narrative quality with temperature, I would say that it's cold. Icebergs are cold, after all. In Our Time is a cold book, in this way. It starts cold and stays cold. The Things They Carried, which took influence from Hemingway, also utilizes sparse descriptions. But it sometimes dives into the minds of characters or even the author. It is a cold and hot book, it has variety.
The description of these stories as "cold" makes a lot of sense--in the way that this whole book has a "postwar" feel, with a lot of disconnected characters seemingly stuck in arbitrary lives without clearly defined passions or desires. This isn't necessarily an accident, in other words. But I do think it is possible, as a reader, to feel something for a character who seems to have lost some of his or her ability to feel--take Nick later in "The End of Something," face down on the sand and refusing to match Bill's rather jaunty attitude toward his breakup with Marjorie. Nick seems like a "cold" character who is aware that he's cold and is upset about the fact but has no idea what to do about it, and so compensates with half-hearted efforts at "manly" (or 'grown-up') behavior. He seems like a character who is having trouble empathizing--and I can view that with empathy.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in some cases, the quote you choose being a great example, Hemingway's prose style can come off as callous and uninterested. However, I think that other stories, like "Cat in the Rain," or "The Elliots," might make the reader, if not sympathetic, then certainly interested. The kind of universal conflict that underlies these situations means that anyone can relate to them, even if not in the emotional style of, say, The Things they Carried.
ReplyDeleteI agree what you're saying here. I found that after discussing it, I was better able to make sense of what was really being said and these emotions that were hidden -- after it was "sifted" out. I felt like if I hadn't had those discussions, I wouldn't have been able to get everything out of it that I would have if I had just read it once and never thought about it again. At least with O'Brien, I was able to put the book down and understand so much and have felt the emotion without having to have gone hunting for it. I also feel like cold fits this book well, it seems like mostly facts are given and we have to reason how people are feeling by their actions or words.
ReplyDeleteYour insights are very interesting. I especially like your description of his style as "cold." For me, the Iceberg Theory worked really well in "Hills Like White Elephants" but not for many of the stories in In Our Time. I also had trouble developing sympathy for characters (especially Nick) and though discussing the stories in class helped me understand them better, I still felt very detached from them.
ReplyDelete