Monday, September 6

Three Day Blow (Hemingway)

Anyone familiar with Hemingway's style of writing usually point to his usage of dialogue to drive the story. We see short bursts of full-on paragraphs to conceptualize the setting, and get a general feel of the atmosphere in the story, but the main content is found in the conversation between two friends, Nick and Bill.

Another aspect we see with Hemingway's style is that the narrative voice is aloof. The narrative voice does not try to intrude the story, if not that much; it does not try to be omniscient. While Bill comforts Nick by telling him that he's better off, Nick just gives distant one word responses. Even then the narrator does not relay, "Well, this is what Nick really thinks: blahblahblah..." Instead, we are just given only what the narrator sees. In other words, the narrator is simply there to report. This is a style reminiscent of the journalistic approach of newspapers.

One last interesting note to Hemingway's style (at least in this story) is how he uses the every day normal moments to overlay a deeper issue. This is often one of the key signifier for Modern writers like Joyce or Woolf. What is the every day normal event? Two bros having a couple of whiskeys and scotch shots, talking about literature, baseball, and fishing. What is the underlying issue? Broken relationships, and how to drink yourself to happiness. Or perhaps how a broken relationship does not mean it is the end of the world, but a start of a new one.

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