Tracing What Lies Beneath

Tracing What Lies Beneath

(Approach: Formalism)

Introduction

     In the world of literary analysis and criticism, one which is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and on the “artfulness” is formalism. It advocated the “scientific” method for studying literary arts without giving much attention to traditional psychological and cultural-historical approaches. As Erich postulates, “It was intent upon delimiting literary scholarship from contiguous disciplines such as psychology, sociology, intellectual history, and the list of theoreticians focused on the ‘distinguishing features’ of literature, on the artistic devices peculiar to imaginative writing.” (The New Princeton Encycopedia 1101).

    

    

Summary

     “The Sea Change,” “The Three-Day Blow,” and “Fifty Grand” demonstrate how the renowned author Ernest Hemingway makes use of the exponent of dialogue and of implicit disclosure of ideas in writing. Hemingway, apart from making use of the power of dialogue in relating his stories, also exploits the effect of point of view in stimulating the readers’ interpretative and analytic skills to deduce logical conclusions.

In “The Sea Change,” a couple sits in an almost empty bar. The woman wants to ask forgiveness in the deed which the man called “vice” and “perversion” (304). She wants to leave the guy, but also says she will come back. The man was at first showing wrath upon saying he will kill the “her” of his lady. However, the man then lets the girl go and talks to the barman, and the bartender comments on how tanned and healthy the young man has become over the summer.

     In the story “The Three-Day Blow”, a bachelor Nick Adams visits his best friend, Bill. Then, Nick and Bill stand together on the porch, discussing the weather. They predict that the wind will blow hard for three days. Bill says that his father is out with his gun and the two get inside. They decide to drink whiskey and water. The two talk about baseball and their team, the Cardinals. Then, they talk about books. They also talk about their fathers' drinking habits--Bill's drinks regularly, Nick's never. The boys start drinking Scotch because they do not want to open another bottle of whiskey.

     They drink for fishing the next day, for they decide it is better than baseball. Bill tells Nick that he is glad that Marjorie is gone. He did not yet want to see Nick married. Yet, this conversation makes Nick sad. But, as Nick says, it was suddenly over, like the three-day blow taking the leaves off the trees. Still, they plan to do many things together, like travel. Marjorie's mother even told people they were engaged. Bill says that Nick might always get back into the relationship. This idea comforts Nick somewhat, because he had not realized that nothing is irreversible. Cheered, the boys decide to go outside and find Bill's father. Nick reminds himself that he can always go into town on Saturday night and find Marjorie again.

     “Fifty grand” is about a boxer, Jack Brennan, aged 37, trained by Jerry Doyle, the narrator, at Hogan's health ranch. Dwelling momentarily for his training in his friend’s place, he is overcome by insomnia and nostalgia for his wife, and so he decides to fight for the last time. The day before the fight, he is visited by his manager, John, and two strangers—Steinfelt and Morgan, referred to as "wise boys" and "sharpshooters." John asks Jerry to leave the room, so the reader does not know for sure what John, Steinfelt, Morgan, and Jack talk about. After the meeting, Jack gets drunk and tells Jerry that he is going to bet $50,000 against himself. Jack says that since he knows he cannot win against a younger, stronger fighter, he may as well make some money on the deal: losing intentionally will be easy. He tells Jerry to bet on Walcott, his challenger. This secret meeting is assumed that Steinfelt and Morgan conspire with John to bribe Jack to fix the fight. Following this interpretation, the reader can grasp that Jack almost loses his bet when Walcott throws him a low blow. (This suggests that Walcott is convinced to fix the fight.) Walcott would have been disqualified, making Jack the winner of the fight and loser of his bet. However, Jack throws Walcott a low blow, making himself the loser of the fight, but eventually the winner of his bet. John apologizes for asking Jack to lose intentionally.

Analysis

After taking a closer look at the stories from a formalistic perspective, the reader will notice the underlying theme of homosexuality in “The Sea Change.” This theme of homosexuality is conveyed to the reader through Hemingway’s use of irony in the dialogue. Irony is used in several parts and in several ways throughout the story. It is ironic that the man, who spends much of the story denouncing vice, actually has embraced vice, not the woman. This becomes apparent when the man says “Vice is a monster of so frightful mein, that to be something or other needs but to be seen. Then we something, something, then embrace” (304). This line suggests that in the end “we embrace,” which would imply forgiveness of another’s misdemeanor. The implication is even more ironic because the man, as he attempted to say the line, did not intend to be so.

The man refers to the woman’s attraction to other women as “vice” (304) and as “perversion” (304). The irony again comes when the woman tells the man “we’re made up of all sorts of things. You know that. You’ve used it well enough,” (304) enlightening him to the fact that he too has perverse tendencies. When the woman says this to the man, he realizes she is telling the truth. This is when the “sea change” occurs within the man, and he agrees to let the woman leave, asking her to tell him “all about it” (304) when she returns. As the woman exits the café, the man recognizes the great change within himself and says to the bartender, “‘I’m a different man, James. . . . You see in me quite a different man’” (305). Ironically, the bartender sees only the physical changes of the “brown young man” (305). Ironically, the change that has occurred within the man, that seems to be of so much importance to him, is of no importance to the barman. The barman could care less about the ending of the young couple’s relationship, and the irony is notable as he absently says to the man, “You look very well, sir. . . . You must have had a very nice summer” (305).

In addition, Hemingway makes use of metaphor and exploits mostly the force of dialogue in relating to the readers the story of a woman who has a “change” in her sexual preferences and a man’s “change” in his perspective on that issue. The title exhibits metaphor in that “The Sea Change” can be looked at as a comparison to the feeling of the characters, meaning a big change that is occurring within the man and woman. Further, the title can be looked at as expressing the physical changes that have happened to the couple as a result of spending the entire summer at the beach. Of most importance to the reader in understanding the theme are the changes occurring within the couple.

     In the story “The Three-Day Blow,” Hemingway again utilizes primarily the power of dialogue as a means of conveying the theme and the conflict of the story. The story exposes internal conflict the protagonist, Nick, experiences. He has a problem as regards his lady’s mother. Bill describes her as a “sore hell” (91). More so, Nick says “he’s sorry as hell about her” and continues that Bill knows what the “mother was like” (92). The lines spoken by the characters themselves suggest that there is an issue relating to Marjorie’s family. This can also be justified when Bill tells Nick the lines: “If you’d have married her, you would have had to marry the whole family. Remember her mother and the guy she married” (90) and “Now she can marry somebody of her own sort and settle down and be happy. You can’t mix oil and water…” (91). The latter implies, then, that Bill emphasizes the difference of social status Nick and Marjorie belong to.

     As the story progresses, it can be deduced further that Nick has another internal problem that deals with his sexuality. When he was asked by Bill what’s the difference between “engaged” and “going to get married,” Nick says “I don’t know. There’s a difference” (91). His answer reveals his feminine side despite the male bonding he and Bill have. He could not decide as to his leaving of Marjorie is appropriate or not for he is unsure if he has made the right decision.

     The three-day blow is a symbol to Nick’s life. It signifies the stage of his life, during which he has to think of what kind of person to become.

     Hemingway wrote “The Sea Change” and “The Three-Day Blow” with an objective third person point of view, thereby limiting the narrator to tell only facts as they happen. However, in the story “Fift Grand,” he gives the twist as he made the narrator himself a participant in the story. Apart from that, Hemingway removes the narrator from the company of Jack, his manager, and the two gamblers a day before the fight.  This literary device paves the way for the readers to speculate much whether Jerry, the protagonist, agrees or not in fixing the bout between him and Walcott, that is, to lose intentionally. This device also leads the readers to two possible interpretations: (a) Jerry consents to fix the fight; or (b) he refuses it and bets against himself. Following the former, the reader can infer that it coincides with the fact that Jerry gives a low blow at the later part of the fight, causing him to lose the fight and earn $25,000, though. However, the second interpretation, proposed by James Tackach in his article "Whose Fix Is It Anyway?: A Closer Look at Hemingway's 'Fifty Grand,” posits that Jack genuinely tries his best but is absolutely sure he would not win, so decides to bet on Walcott and make some money. Jack gives his best as he controls the beginning of the fight, but eventually gets tired. Walcott hits Jack below the belt, but as he gets exhausted, he finally resorted to losing himself. He fouls Walcott by hitting him below the belt, gets disqualified but wins his bet. John apologizes because Jack is so beaten and it is the end of his career.

     In either scenario, what is clear is that there is a “double-crosss” (249). This means that the two gamblers, who take a visit to Jack, tried to convince Walcott to lose the bout intentionally. His low blow to Jack might be the evidence that he intended to fix the fight.

     Among the dialogues in the story, the most notable one is “You ain’t got an idea what it is like…,” (240-250) which is repeated by Jack eighth times. This suggests that Jack, while drunk, pours out how deeply he misses his wife. This creates effect to the extent that the reader will think that that is the way this person talks in real life.

Conclusion

     What dominates in how “The Sea Change” and “The Three-Day Blow” were written is the elemental use of dialogues to convey the concepts and conflicts in the story. In “The Sea Change” when the story opens, two characters — a man and a woman — are sitting at a table. The readers finally learn that the girl's nickname is "Jig." Eventually it can be learnt that they are in the cafe of a train station in Spain. But Hemingway tells the readers nothing about them — or about their past or about their future. There is no description of them even their ages. The only information that can be known about them is what can be gotten from their dialogue; Phil and the unnamed girl refer to their disagreement only as "it." The same is true in “The Three-Day Blow” in which the central problem was disclosed mainly through dialogue. In the “Fift Grand,” what was the domineering style used is the momentary removal of contact of the narrator from the central character of the story. However, the common thing there among the three stories was the indirect exposure of what really Hemingway wanted to carry through. His stories, indeed, demand careful inference of what they are all about, for he doesn’t give “it” all.

Works Cited

Scribners/Macmillan Publishing Company. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The Finca Vigia Ed. New York, 1987.

Tackach, Jame. Whose Fix Is It Anyway?: A Closer Look at Hemingway's 'Fifty Grand’. Feinstein College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Papers. 5 June 2000. retrieved on August, 30, 2011 from http://flightline.highline.edu/tkim/Files/Lit100_SS2.pdf

The Power from Within: Taking a Closer Look at Gamugamong Talim

How should women be treated? Should they be treated a degree lower than men? Timothy John Tolentino’s “Gamugamong Talim” relates to us the fate of a woman under a reprobate husband. The story discloses primarily how a woman, a wife in particular, is maltreated and overpowered in her own domicile.

     The story opens with the narrator’s reminiscence of her past under her mother’s afflicting hands. When Flora was on her eighth years of existence, she was not only repeatedly reminded by her mother how to be physically ready and emotionally strong but was also subjected to physical training. She was made to kneel on a saucer of salt for one hour. Then she was even pierced with ten needles in the different parts of her body for about 30 minutes. Such are the things that Flora kept on inquiring about for seven years. She just couldn’t get the point why she had to suffer in that way, for only to find out that one day she would be seeing her mother hanged herself.

     After recollecting her unpleasant memorable past, Flora faces her current state, during which she overcooked rice, which causes her to taste the bitterness of her husband’s fists. Before the affliction, Flora always bids her daughter to hide under a bed. That was always the case to keep her daughter safe. Then, Flora was again brought to the world of physical distress and excessive maltreatment. At first she kneels and then eventually thinks how utile her past sufferings were with her mother. After releasing his wrath, her husband, Victor, asks apology and just demands “sorry” from Flora. In that night, Flora dreams of her mother who, dressed in black, was poked with ten spears at her back. Flora sees her mother blow with “gamugamong may talim”

     The next day, Flora goes to town to pay bills and buys a sharpening stone for the blunt knife in the house. Upon getting home, Flora proceeds to the kitchen for cooking and prepares the knife for sharpening. While doing it, she also tells her daughter, Kristina, to bring down the family’s used clothes to wash for the next day. However, on her way down, Kristina calls her mother and shows her a letter addressed to Victor. It is from Victor’s praised student, Josefa, who disruptively informs and blatantly blames Victor of her being pregnant.

     When Victor gets home, Flora deceivingly creates a story about Josefa’s parents’ claims against him. Subsequently, Victor climbs upstairs and, after a while, goes down bursting with wrath. He suddenly gets the knife and attacks Flora, but Kristina covers her mother and intercepts the stab. Victor runs away and Kristina is admitted to a hospital. For a span of days, Kristina gets herself back to normal while Victor gets caught and is subjected to stay inside a rectangle of iron bars.

     One night, Flora again dreams of her aghast-looking mother who was bringing with a knife. Her mother insists to perform that the ritual she did to Flora be done to Kristina. On her defense, Flora confronted her mother that such a thing is not the real sort for shaping one’s braveness. Flora fights with her mother and eventually wins over her. The story ends with Flora’s dreaming that she transforms into a “gamugamo” without “talim.” 

     To take a closer look at the story through feminist approach, one must consider (a) patriarchal premises and resulting prejudices, (b) sexism, and (c) social roles of women the text manifests.

     The reader will notice the salient issue in the story, the domination of men in the world where both women and men are supposedly equal. In the case of Flora, despite the fact that she admits “…binubugbog ako ni Victor dahil nagpapabugbog ako,” (177) it is still not a reasonable ground that she has to be inhumanely treated. She is still worthy of respect from others, most especially from a closely and legally direct person to her life, her husband. Moreover, Flora is not only an object of direct physical harassment but also verbal abuse. She is even told by Victor as “walang kwenta” (181), which invokes defiance of the laws of mankind and of the divinity. 

     As for Flora’s mother, it could be deduced that she imposes peculiar physical training to Flora for the reason that she herself was once, most likely, a victim of assault whether it be physical and/or emotional. No sane mother would willingly inflict pain to her own child without any cause at all.

     Another form of injustice, depicting improper tagging and branding of social roles of women, is Victor’s deception to a student named Josefa for his iniquitous mundane desire. He falsely told Josefa that she would not reach the point of provoking social disdain, that is, getting pregnant at an unexpected time. Thus, Josefa was portrayed as an object of torrential sexual desire, thereby resembling young ladies as sexual subordinates of males.

     In general, “Gamugamong Talim” exposes how women are regarded in the society as metaphorically symbolized by Flora’s family. Thus, the story just vividly unveils the issue regarding patriarchal supremacy, which has been taking place yesterday, today, and hopefully not “tomorrow.”

Reference

Meneses, Danilo, ed. 30 Piling Kuwento 2003. Taytay, Rizal: Photto News Publishing House, 2004.

                                                      -charlad