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Cat in The Rain Explained

Ernest Hemingway wrote the short story "Cat in the Rain" in the 1920s. It follows an unnamed American wife vacationing in Italy with her husband George. She sees a cat sheltering from the rain and wants to rescue it, but cannot find it later. This mirrors her own feelings of vulnerability and desire for attention from her indifferent husband. The story explores themes of discontent and struggle in their relationship as the wife feels confined and seeks more freedom and fulfillment.

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218 views4 pages

Cat in The Rain Explained

Ernest Hemingway wrote the short story "Cat in the Rain" in the 1920s. It follows an unnamed American wife vacationing in Italy with her husband George. She sees a cat sheltering from the rain and wants to rescue it, but cannot find it later. This mirrors her own feelings of vulnerability and desire for attention from her indifferent husband. The story explores themes of discontent and struggle in their relationship as the wife feels confined and seeks more freedom and fulfillment.

Uploaded by

lalyita
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Author: Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)

• An American novelist and short story writer and part of the 1920s expatriate community in

Paris, known as "The Lost Generation”.

• Leading a turbulent social life, Hemingway married four times.

• Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, seven years before his death by

suicide in 1961.

• Hemingway’s works are characterized by terse minimalism and understatement.

• He compared his short stories to icebergs: nine tenths of the story lies under the surface of

the text.

Story

• The short story "Cat in the Rain" was first published by Boni & Liveright in 1925 in the short

story collection In Our Time.

• It written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920´s.

• It is about an American couple on vacation in an Italian hotel.

• According to the book Hemingway's Cats, Hemingway wrote the story as a tribute to his wife

Hadley. The couple had only been married a few years, and lived in Paris where she was left

alone for hours at a time while her husband worked. She asked for a cat but he told her they

were too poor.

Setting

• Time: 1920s

• Place: A hotel in Italy that faces the sea, a public garden, and a war monument.

Plot & Structure

• Conventional

– Exposition: The arrival of the American couple and the description of the scene

around the hotel.


– Rising action: The American wife, from her window, notices a cat underneath a table

in the midst of rain. She decides to go out and fetch her.

– Climax: She goes out into the garden looking for the cat with the help of a maid (sent

from the hotel-keeper); but doesn’t find the cat.

– Falling action: The American wife complains of a need for a new life.

– Resolution: The maid shows up at the hotel room door with a cat different from the

one the American wife was looking for.

• Conflict: -

• External: Between the American wife and her husband. The wife is looking for attention from

her husband (not for a cat).

• Internal: Within the American woman. She feels confined and restricted. She wants freedom,

choice and independence.

• Characters

• The Unnamed American Wife:

– Just as the reader never knows her name likewise the American wife never really

knows who she is till later in the story when she lists the things she would like. Which

in many ways goes to define or identify her.

• George:

– He treats his wife with a lack of affection and attention.

– He thinks his wife is acting like a child, but actually he doesn’t understand her and

makes no efforts to make her feels loved, wanted or makes her feels like a real

woman.

– He is a selfish husband that he ignores his wife’s feelings.

• Hotel Keeper:

– His attitude differs from the husband’s attitude towards the American wife.
– She admires his will to serve her, he gives her the attention she needs and that she is

not getting from her husband.

– He is friendly and responsibl .

– He is very caring.

• Theme

• The problems that a relationship has, when one partner becomes dominant and the other is

trying to change and improve the situation.

– discontent, struggle, selfishness, helplessness, loneliness, conflict and insecurity

• POV

• The story is told by a third person omniscient narrator.

• It does seem that we have a bit more intimate connection with what's going on in the wife.

– Our view of the hotel owner in particular is filtered through the wife's mind.

– Hemingway's perspective is more focused on what she feels and thinks about him

than it is on the padrone himself.

– By staying in third person, Hemingway can also convey things about her that she

might not be aware of in herself, like her feelings, which are described in a deeper

way than she could articulate in speech.

• The narrator shifts from calling the wife, the American wife to then calling her the girl.

– to highlight the insecurity that the American wife feels.

• Symbols

• In many ways the cat that the American wife sees underneath the table in the rain mirrors

the American wife herself.

– She too feels helpless, trapped, and vulnerable as the cat in the rain reliant on her

husband to provide for her.

• It may also be important that Hemingway on three separate occasions mentions the war

monument in the square.


– By so doing, he may be using the monument to not only highlight the conflict that

existed in WWI but also the internal conflict that exists for the American wife.

• Irony

• Situational: The cat they finally find for her is not the one she went out to look for.

• By introducing another cat into the story, he allows for the American wife to be happy or to

move forward.

• She now has one of the things that she has been looking for which may suggest she is moving

forward.

• Unlike George who throughout the story has remained lying on the bed. In many ways his life

has not changed but his wife’s life may be about to change.

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