In “Hemingway’s ‘Cat In The Rain’: George’s Winter Death-Bed, “Adair Williams examines the comments in Hemingway’s “Cat In The Rain” that George, the husband, from the story is a convolute character. In Hemingway’s short story “Cat In The Rain,” George is considered as a lilie-in, boring, and inan sensitive husband who does not pay attention to his wife.
In the short story, George’s personality was not the main focus or the most pleasant, but Adair reveals that George’s character may have had an important role in the story after all. Adair also compares the similar traits that George and his wife were facing next to Hemingway’s own life with his wife Hadley.
Adair suggests that George could be going through his trials and tribulations which may link to why he is so distanced from his wife.
Adair discusses that “George is, temporarily, sexually impotent,” (73). George could feel hopeless because there is no type of intimacy between him and his wife. There could be a possibility that George and his wife wanted to plan a family but became unsuccessful. Having a high-stress level, George coped with the situation by isolating himself from others, especially his wife, and used books, newspapers, and lying around to help him get over the situation. Adair points out that George faced a sense of failure “George who we may suspect is a newspaperman and would-be writer, like Hemingway then (Gertrude Stein was suggesting to Hemingway that he try for an autobiographical realism in his fiction) has suffered something “tragic,” and in a sense, violent: the previous fall his wife lost this story manuscript,” (74). This could represent a miscarriage that George and his wife had to face. George’s sense of manhood or fatherhood has been disregarded because of the countless times for lost another.
George's Role in Cat in the Rain. (2022, Aug 16). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/the-important-role-of-the-character-of-george-in-cat-in-the-rain-a-short-story-by-ernest-hemingway/
