Foregrounding technique in Hemingway's fiction : structural readings of five Nick Adams stories
Date
1988
Authors
Narbeshuber, Lisa
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Abstract
The thesis provides a structuralist prolegomenon to a study of the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway. The first chapter introduces the methodology of this study and outlines Hemingway's approach to literature, emphasizing his awareness of technique in the paintings of Cezanne. The three chapters that follow structurally analyze three Nick stories: "Nick sat against the wall," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," and "The End of Something." The final chapter considers "Big Two-Hearted River" structurally from the perspective of "On Writing," which was originally a part of it. A structuralist reading is particularly useful for these stories because they are "proto-fictions," as much about the process of writing as they are "about" Nick's adventures or the experiences of their author. Some left unfinished, others distributed variously in Hemingway's In our Time and The Nick Adams Stories, they mediate between Hemingway's personal experiences and his more formal fictions, as the character of Nick is a partial projection of Ernest Hemingway on his way to the creation of Jake Barnes and Frederic Henry.
In concluding the thesis with "On Writing," and by referring to Hemingway's theories throughout, I examine how the author explicitly desires to do~ than write about actual events. Contrary to the opinion of many critics, the concern of each story is not as much with plot or the recording of events as with the devising and building of forms and patterns. By searching out the patterns and structures within these stories, we can discover structural relationships among many of Hemingway' s works.
One of these structures is Hemingway's technique of omission. It encourages the reader to locate the omitted idea, character or scene and thus become involved in the active "construction" of the story. The story's structure leaves gaps which the reader must fill in, while at the same time it guides and controls the reader's response to, and construction of, the text. Within the thesis, I argue that a certain intimacy or closeness is felt by the reader who deciphers the codes or structures or gaps within the text. The seemingly straightforward story becomes evocative; the seemingly simple scene becomes profound.