"Cat in the rain": A Symbolic and Narrative Prelude in Ernest Hemingway's Work

Abstract

«Cat in the Rain» is one of the earliest Hemingway's short stories included in In Our Time (1925). Its study and analysis must be taken into account as very outstanding to understand the relationships between men and women in his following fiction.The plot, with certainty based partly on real facts, contains the most striking and literary symbols used by this author along his careen Nearly all these symbols are gathered together in this work, so we find the typical American couple in problems, the hotel and the room standing for a claustrophobic living space, the window focusing the action on the landscape or on the person to stand out, the symbolic animals in this case represented by the cat, the rain always in scene meaning grief and inner storm, the short hair emphasizing the weakness of the woman and her lack of feminity, the mirror facing hidden wishes with the surrounding reality and, at last, big hands symbolizing manliness and sometimes sexual encounter or its desire.