omparison of Hemingway's "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 paragraphs of the third and
fourth [and last] page in our story is told to us by George (the
husband).
In his composition of "Cat In The Rain", Hemingway frees the story
from narrative interpretation and leaves it up to us, his readers, to
interpret what is going on. The story seems strangely ambiguous in its
narrative nature. This is appar...