The Cat In The Rain Essay, Research Paper
The Cat in The Rain
In the short narrative the “ The Cat in the Rain ” by Ernest Hemingway, the cat is a symbol around which the narrative revolves. As a cardinal symbol, the cat reveals the psychological province and emotional desires of the American married woman.
When the cat is foremost observed it is “ crouched under one of the dripping green tabular arraies. The cat was seeking to do herself so compact that she would non be dripped on. “ ( 56 ) Even though the married woman is standing to far from the cat to find its gender, it is described as “ she. ” This pick of words helps to do a connexion for the reader between the married woman and the cat. The adult female sees the cat in a unreliable enviorment seeking to do it through a storm without submerging, and decides to travel and deliver it. From the minute she leaves the room to acquire the cat, she is told repeatedly non to acquire wet, but she doesn? T attention. Her lone concern is to acquire the cat out of rain. Geting this cat is of import to her because she empathizes with the it. “ It isn? t any merriment to be a hapless pool out in the rain. “ ( 57 ) Before she even has a opportunity to step into the rain, the hotel keeper has sent out the amah with an umbrella to screen her from acquiring moisture, demoing the reader he cares. As she walks with the amah keeping the umbrella over them, she is all of a sudden defeated to see the cat is gone. When the amah finds out what she was looking for she laughs. The married woman is non at all amused, “ Oh I wanted it so much. I wanted a pool. “ ( 57 ) She is experiencing so sad and depressed doing us inquire why this cat is so of import for her to hold. “ We must travel back indoors, you will be wet. ”
“ I suppose so ” says the American miss, as if her emotions are non submerging in convulsion with the life she is presently taking. It shortly becomes clear to the reader why the adult female likely feels like a cat drowning in the rain.
Her hubby is the beginning of her emotional desperation. He leaves her drowning in a storm of indifference and deficiency of fondness. When she goes back to the room she begins to look at herself in the mirror analyzing her profile experiencing unwomanly with short hair. She feels this causes the deficiency of physical and emotional attending from her hubby. When she tells him of all the things she desires, he simply tells her to “ close up. ” He truly doesn? T attention about her concerns. She doesn? t defend herself from her hubby? s verbal maltreatment but instead begins to sulk like a small miss stating, “ I want a cat, I want a cat now. If I cant have long hair or any merriment, I can hold a cat. “ ( pg57 ) Proposing that her hubby will non let her to hold long hair or any merriment. She wants this cat so bad, in order to keep it, pet it, and love it, typifying what she wants physically, to be held and touched, and emotionally, to be loved and cared for.
When she eventually gets the cat, it is the hotel keeper who has responded to her demands, instead than her hubby. The hotel keeper causes her “ a fleeting feeling of supreme importance ” ( pg.57 ) in which she admires the manner he wants to function her. The hotel keeper has provided both symbolic and actual cats from the rain. Without the presence of the cat much of the narrative would lose it? s significance. The hotel keeper has provided the adult female with the attending she is non acquiring from her hubby, at least in the emotional sense.
