Loneliness and Symbolism in Hemingway 's Short Stories ''Clean, Well-lighted Place'' and ''Cat in the Rain''

Abstract

     Ernest Hemingway's stories, most of which were centered on the character Nick Adams, were powerful representations of his personal struggles and recurring themes. Nick Adams is a recurring figure in Hemingway's short stories and is considered a fictionalized embodiment of the author himself. These stories, written in turbulent periods in Hemingway's life, trace Adams' melancholy journeys back to the very theme of loneliness over and over again. It emerges through strained friendships, love relationships that have gone sour, or just the human reality of some kind of loss waiting ahead. Nurtured by emotional intensity and poignant solitude, other short stories fully representative of this motif would be "Father and Son," "The Three-Day Blow," and "The End of Something." In "Father and Son," Hemingway dramatizes an emotionally complex parental disconnection, which prepares a background for a repeated motive of loneliness. "The End of Something" is the pain of disintegration of a relationship, therefore reinforcing that feeling of lonely continuity in Adams' narrative arc. Emotionally powerful moments in these stories not only stress the theme but also point out Hemingway's ability to channel his personal struggles into his literary creation while making Nick Adams a vessel in order to represent the human condition.