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The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway is a collection of
quirky anecdotes by Ernest Hemingway. Some are sad. Some are bizarre, and
some don't leave the reader with any concrete emotion. What they all have in
common is Hemingway's stream-of-consciousness style and his conciseness.
The realism that Hemingway achieves with his stream-of-consciousness
is evident through his stories of everyday life, including the awful parts.
He writes of a man dying and thinking about how much he doesn't love his
wife. He writes about a boy who breaks up with his fiancé for no real
reason at all, just because he's not having fun anymore. The lack of
melodrama and plot twists feeds each of these stories as a taste of other
human's realities. They are amazing works of art.
There is a theme of "the soldier" throughout the stories. Hemingway
was in the Spanish war, and one wonders to what degree these are
autobiographical. The war stories, except for a few, are focused on the side
effects of war. Now I Lay Me, for example, is a story about a
soldier that cannot sleep. It discusses all the things he thinks about
instead of sleeping. There is calmness and a reality to avoiding the drama
of war that Hemingway achieves. It draws the reader in, placing them next to
the insomniac, and thinking of all the fish that they, too, could catch.
Hemingway's understanding of the female, as he explores it, is that
of a boy. His observations are minimal, but very telling of the way that
females act around men. This deliberates how concise he can be, as well. For
example, in his Up in Michigan, the female protagonist eagerly
awaits her crush to return. When they arrive, "Liz hadn't known just what
would happen when Jim got back, but she was sure it would be something.
Nothing had happened. The men were just home, that was all. (Hemingway,
p.83)" Hemingway was able to capture very true human traits in very few
words.
The war stories that actually gave pictures of the war were focused
on the death. He even wrote a story called A Natural History of The
Dead, which scientifically explains what happens to a body on the
battlefield. It's disgusting. He describes "a half-pint of maggots working
where their mouths have been (Hemingway, p.444)." The Quay at Smyrna
is also terribly disturbing and confronts the reader with what happens to
infants during war… dead infants. Confronting readers with imagery like
this shows the truth of war. These are not battle plans, or body counts. This
is what it was like for Hemingway to be in the war, on the fields. I think it
is truly effective, however unpleasant to read.
Hemingway does a remarkable job of interesting the reader and
writing about everyday things that are painful, rather than needing to create
them. This man deserves the credit he's been given.
Bibliography:
Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories of
Ernest Hemingway
1927, New York. Charles Scribner's Sons
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