Lunes, Oktubre 17, 2011

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

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