Extended exposition.

The author underlines the idea of dissatisfaction using repetition. In importunate repetition of the construction "I want" the reader can see the girl's emotional state. This stylistic device discloses her excitement, she is on the verge of hysterics. The emotional tension increases. "And I want to eat at a table with my own silver, and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush up my hair out in front of the mirror and I want the kitty and I want some new clothes ". Here is an example of polysyndeton. The abundant use of the conjunction and makes the members of enumeration more conspicuous and also serves to emphasize the girl's state of confusion. The syntax also contributes to the effect of extreme agitation of the girl. The writer deliberately avoids the use of commas in the girl's speech to show uninterrupted, without any pauses flow of speech which testifies to her emotional excitement. This abstract may be regarded as the climax of the story. Here the emotional tension reaches its highest degree. The girl throws out all her discontent, all her negative emotions which she accumulated during her joint life with her husband. Then the peak of the climax comes: "Oh, shut up and get something to read" says her husband. Estrangement grows between two people. The girl feels insulted and stays looking out of the window. It is still raining. The rain is present during the whole narration. It is the silent witness of the running high drama. The rain pierces(пронзает) the plot of the story and has a symbolic meaning. It symbolizes their unfortunate family life.

The author deliberately postpones the denoument (Hemingway’s fictional story does have a surprising ending when the maid brings the “American wife” a “big tortoise-shell cat”) keeping the reader in pressing anticipation. Hemingway's wonderful mastery of the language permits him to keep the reader tense till the denoument. Although everything seems to lie on the surface, but indeed the reader should make a great effort to derive the unspoken reference from the description of the facts.

System of images.

The main hero (protagonist)of the story is the American girl. She noticed a cat in the rain (a parallel character) through her window “crouched under one of the dripping green tables,” and immediately feels the need to rescue it. But she couldn’t find him. Suddenly the girl felt unhappy. Through her sad monologue the writer shows all her dissatisfaction with the life, beginning with the absence of the cat and ending with her short clipped hair. The cat represents what she wants in her marriage, affection and compassion, and the rain signifies the struggles she is willing to go through to better her marriage. The cat in her dreams is a symbol of refuge (убежище). The woman is struggling because her marriage can't meet her expectations. The woman wants a stable home where she is loved and respected by her husband (the cat is a symbol of it). But her husband doesn't share the same idea and is content with their current life style. He treats her with a lack of affection, apathy and indifference.

The husband, George, is the antagonist in the story. From the very beginning he doesn’t seem to care of his wife, his speech is very laconic while his wife is explicit in the expression of her feelings (dialogue). When the girl decided to go down and get this cat, the reader gets acquainted with the husband. He is lying on the bed and reading and he has no desire to go out in such a weather for the cat his wife wants so much. Although he proposed it but sooner out of politeness and he did not insist. “Dont get wet”- he said, but it wasn't a care - he said it just to say something. But in the end we understand, that he is not indifferent, he loves her. For example, George starts the conversation in the dialog. Some elements of the text make us understand that not everything is so bad, namely George changes his position and seems to demonstrate his interest. But the American wife wants the demonstration of love, she is tired of routine, she needs a lot, but at the same time she cannot get what she wants even her little poor kitty that shows the repetition of the words “want”, “like”and “new”. The only way that the woman finds in relieving herself from this situation is through making reveries or complaining. The reveries are those of possessing a child. She wants to be a woman (“I get so tired of looking like a boy”).

The opposing character to the husband is the hotel owner. The author describes the relation between the wife and the hotel-keeper as an indication of her relations with the husband. The poetic details “old heavy face” and “big hands” are full of situational connotation and imply the lack of protection, support, tenderness and care. The syntactical parallel structures which are reinforced by the anaphoric repetition of the verb “like” and show the qualities she lacks in her husband. She feels inconvenient, no umbrella in the rain, no care, just the wall of misunderstanding, and the hotel owner provides her with that protection and attention, she feels “very small and at the same time very important”. This unusual opposition of the epithets “small” and “important” helps to understand the needs of this particular woman and women in general.

Emphasizing the girl's attitude to the hotel-keeper the author resorts to repetition: "She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands ". Unconsciously comparing him with her indifferent husband she liked him because he displayed a kind of attention to her.

Another secondary character who is parallel to the wife is the maid. Her actions (“umbrella opened”, “holding the umbrella”) and speech mannerisms (“you must not get wet”) make the contrast between the wife and her husband evident. And that gives us the idea of the conflict between them, which is the minor, external conflict of the story.

Narrative method

3-rd person narration, observer-author, reliable, literary language. Advantages: he lets the reader see, hear, and judge the characters in their actions. Story is presenting in a dramatic form – characters act and speak as in drama. The narrative method affects the sequencing of literary representational forms: descriptions (nature (rain), the room in the hotel), direct speech (dialogues), reasoning (the main heroine felt upset because of not finding the cat).

Tonal system

The story "Cat in the rain" reflects the writer's approach to life in general. It is about an American couple who are spending their vacations in Italy. The writer leaves the surface comparatively bare: the meaning is plain and simple.

The author gives an exhaustive picture of one of the melancholic rainy evenings when time goes by so slowly. It is also the syntax that serves for this purpose. The author resorts to parallel constructions consisting of short simple sentences to create a downcast atmosphere of dull, monotonous evening and at the same time presentiment and alarming anticipation of something that is likely to happen in the nearest time. In such deadly boring evening the american girl saw a cat in the rain.

The author resorts to the help of stylistic device known as alliteration, namely the repetition of the sounds -r-and -l-: "Rain dripped from the palm trees, the sea broke in a long line in the rain" which brings the necessary measured rhythm into the utterance. The story is written in familiar tone (“yes”, “come”, “yeah”).

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 717