Nick Adams is the name that Hemingway gave to the fictional persona, largely autobiographical, whom he often wrote about. Like Hemingway himself, Nick is the son of a doctor (“The Indian Camp”; “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”); he relishes fishing and hunting in the northern peninsula of Michigan (“Big […]
Read more Character Analysis Nick AdamsSummary and Analysis Sonnet 14
Summary Sonnet 13 depends on an intimate relationship between the poet and the young man that is symbolized in the use of the more affectionate “you”; Sonnet 14 discards — at least temporarily — this intimate “you” and focuses on the poet’s own stake in the relationship between the two […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 14Summary and Analysis The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Summary Harry, a writer, and his wife, Helen, are stranded while on safari in Africa. A bearing burned out on their truck, and Harry is talking about the gangrene that has infected his leg when he did not apply iodine after he scratched it. As they wait for a rescue […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Snows of KilimanjaroSummary and Analysis Waverly Jong: Four Directions
Waverly Jong takes her mother out to lunch, planning to break the news that she and Rich Schields are getting married. The lunch goes badly, however, and Waverly does not tell her mother about the upcoming marriage. Waverly is afraid of her mother’s disappointment and censure. When Waverly’s friend Marlene […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Waverly Jong: Four DirectionsSummary and Analysis Sonnet 13
Summary Sonnet 13 furthers Sonnet 12’s theme of death by again stating that death will forever vanquish the young man’s beauty if he dies without leaving a child. Some significance may lie in the fact that the poet refers to the youth as “you” in Sonnet 13 for the first […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 13Summary and Analysis A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Summary Late in the early morning hours, in a Spanish cafe, an old man drinks brandy. A young waiter is angry; he wishes that the old man would leave so that he and an older waiter could close the cafe and go home. He insults the deaf old man and […]
Read more Summary and Analysis A Clean, Well-Lighted PlaceSummary and Analysis Lena St. Clair: Rice Husband
Lena believes that her mother has an uncanny ability for predicting bad things that will befall the family. For example, she predicted the failure of a bank and her own husband’s death. Lena worries what she will say about the house that Lena and her husband, Harold, have bought in […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Lena St. Clair: Rice HusbandSummary and Analysis Sonnet 12
Summary Sonnet 12 again speaks of the sterility of bachelorhood and recommends marriage and children as a means of immortality. Additionally, the sonnet gathers the themes of Sonnets 5, 6, and 7 in a restatement of the idea of using procreation to defeat time. Sonnet 12 establishes a parallel way […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 12Summary and Analysis Hills Like White Elephants
Summary In the early 1920s, an American man and a girl, probably nineteen or twenty years old, are waiting at a Spanish railway station for the express train that will take them to Madrid. They drink beer as well as two licorice-tasting anis drinks, and finally more beer, sitting in […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Hills Like White ElephantsSummary and Analysis Part III: American Translation
A mother is horrified when she discovers that her married daughter has placed a mirrored armoire at the foot of the bed. She is certain that the mirror will deflect all happiness from her daughter’s marriage, so she remedies the situation by giving her daughter a mirror to hang above […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part III: American Translation