Comparison of Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants and...

Comparison of Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants and Cat In The Rain Cat In The Rain is set in an Italian hotel where we meet an American couple. Outside a cat is trapped in the rain, and the wife wants to save it. When she goes to get it, it is gone but the maid later brings her one. The point of view in the story is a third person narrator, but the perspective changes going from the wife to the husband and an objective narrator who tells it like it is. The story is told retrospectively in the past tense. The narrator is omniscient - that is he knows all but judges nothing. On the first page it seems it is the waiter objectively telling us what is going on whereas the second page is told by the wife and the last†¦show more content†¦Her looking out the window is a way for her to signal her want and need for community - or more so, the desperate need of someone to love. His reading a book is a substitute for community and even more a remedy for boredom. He is bored by his wife, he is bored with his life. She is a joyous person and he is constantly bored and longing for something exciting to happen. She seems to be a harmonious union of nature and culture, but when she is with her husband she is disharmonious i.e. bored which Hemingway sneakingly implies w hen he has her (when she is with her husband) looking out on the empty square in heavy rain. Their activity together is him reading and her looking, signaling the loss or failure of love and communication. The cat to her is the symbol of her desperation to have a child - someone to care for. Her husband is not interested in her want or need to have a child but she does not - in any way - keep her desire under wraps. Over and over again she tells him what she wants but he does not listen but clings rather desperately to his book that maybe to him, seems the only way to not have to listen to his wifes demands. So, in conclusion, the theme of this story is, as before mentioned, the loss or failure of love. In comparison to Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants, Cat In The Rain seems to be a prelude. That is to say that Hills could be argued toShow MoreRelatedANALIZ TEXT INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS28843 Words   |  116 Pagesinternal, in which case the issue to be resolved is one within the protagonist’s psyche or personality. External conflict may reflect a basic opposition between man and nature (such as in Jack London’s famous short story â€Å"To Build a Fire† or Ernest Hemingway’s â€Å"The Old Man and the Sea†) or between man and society (as in Richard Wright’s â€Å"The Man Who Was Almost a Man†). It may also take the form of an opposition between man and man (between the protagonist and a human adversary, the antagonist), as, for