Question for you American Lit. experts - particularly Hemingway

[W1GUH]

This is a question I wish I would've asked in class a billion years ago....

In a college class in American Lit. we were discussing the Hemingway short story with the cat. I think it was a couple talking over tea or something and they saw a cat outside and talked about it.

The Prof. talked about symbols and then stated that the cat in that story is a symbol for a baby. In other words, the lady of the story talked about it because she wanted to have a baby.

The question is....how is/was this known? The Prof. offered it as a stated fact and, I believe that I've read that somewhere else, too. So...how would somebody who never heard this "fact" that's "generally known" come up with the fact that the cat is a symbol for a baby?

Thanks....

[kc7jty]

Sigmund Freud

[W1GUH]

IMHO, not a facetious reply. I think along the same lines.

[NQ6U]

I always thought of it as professors justifying their jobs by "finding" things in literature whether or not the authors ever intended them to be there. Then again, I'm an uneducated Philistine so what do I know?

[W3MIV]

Learn to do simple research:

From Wikipedia:


"Cat in the Rain" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway), written while the author was living in France. It was first published in 1925 in the short story collection In Our Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Our_Time_%28book%29).
It is about an American couple on vacation in Italy. While at their hotel the woman sees a cat and the story progresses from there. During the story it is made obvious that the couple's relationship is going sour. Hemingway uses the cat stuck in the rain with nobody to care for it to symbolize the wife who longs to be loved. Hemingway claims in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald) that the story was not about his marriage to his first wife, which was falling apart at the same time the story was written.



You're welcome.

[W1GUH]

Learn to do simple research:

From Wikipedia:



You're welcome.

And that says something different, that the cat symbolizes the "wife who longs to be loved." "wife who longs to be loved" is not quite the same as "a cat", is it? The question is about how that Prof. "knew" the cat was a baby.

I'm with 'BSO on this one when he said...


I always thought of it as professors justifying their jobs by "finding" things in literature whether or not the authors ever intended to be there.

[n2ize]

And that says something different, that the cat symbolizes the "wife who longs to be loved." "wife who longs to be loved" is not quite the same as "a cat", is it? The question is about how that Prof. "knew" the cat was a baby.

I'm with 'BSO on this one when he said...

Perhaps that is the reason he was the professor and you were the student. Perhaps he has done more research ? The correct way to approach this would be to propose a more obvious meaning for the cat in the rain and justify that proposition. For example, what do you think it represents and how might that be more closely related to the story.

[K7SGJ]

This is a question I wish I would've asked in class a billion years ago....

In a college class in American Lit. we were discussing the Hemingway short story with the cat. I think it was a couple talking over tea or something and they saw a cat outside and talked about it.

The Prof. talked about symbols and then stated that the cat in that story is a symbol for a baby. In other words, the lady of the story talked about it because she wanted to have a baby.

The question is....how is/was this known? The Prof. offered it as a stated fact and, I believe that I've read that somewhere else, too. So...how would somebody who never heard this "fact" that's "generally known" come up with the fact that the cat is a symbol for a baby?

Thanks....

Sorry I can't help you out. The closest thing to American Lit I ever got was DC Comics. If you want to know about Superman, JLA, Green Lantern, Batman, etc. well, you know......maybe.

[W3MIV]

This thread is reminiscent of Holmes's comment about the "dog that did not bark in the night."

Nowhere has it been suggested to read the story itself and analyze it to come to your own conclusion about the symbolism of the cat.

Does this not suggest something about the nature and quality of the education now being hawked?

[KK4AMI]

This thread is reminiscent of Holmes's comment about the "dog that did not bark in the night."

Nowhere has it been suggested to read the story itself and analyze it to come to your own conclusion about the symbolism of the cat.

Does this not suggest something about the nature and quality of the education now being hawked?

Waa? Are you saying "Schaum's Outline" and "Cliff Notes" are wrong?:-D

[W1GUH]

This thread is reminiscent of Holmes's comment about the "dog that did not bark in the night."

Nowhere has it been suggested to read the story itself and analyze it to come to your own conclusion about the symbolism of the cat.

Does this not suggest something about the nature and quality of the education now being hawked?

This wasn't "now" this was 40+ years ago. But in the vein you're thinking there....it would have been a good excercise for the Prof. to have suggested what you did. But he didn't. Just stated the fact and let it lie there.


Heard a related anecdote.....

A guy was taking a lit. course and the prof. kept asserting that author X meant Y when he said Z. One of his students was actually a personal friend of author X and knew that author X did NOT mean Y when he said Z. So he wrote a paper outlining what it DID mean and cited as his source author X.

He got an F for not regurgitating properly.

Academicians can be just as lazy and defensive and closed-minded as anyone else.

[n2ize]

This thread is reminiscent of Holmes's comment about the "dog that did not bark in the night."

Nowhere has it been suggested to read the story itself and analyze it to come to your own conclusion about the symbolism of the cat.

Does this not suggest something about the nature and quality of the education now being hawked?

Actually most litt courses that I took, required us to do just as you suggest. For example when I took Medieval English Litt the entire course was about reading a work, analyzing, and giving our interpretations. The prof had his own interpretations but never did he insist that our interpretations were wrong and his were 100% correct.