English 350: Hemingway in Spain

Here some prompts for the Hemingway story “Under the Ridge.”  Like always, you can respond to anything in the story that interested you:

• What do you think Hemingway is saying about cowardice and our perceptions of cowardice in the story?
• Does Hemingway suggest that films and official reports can or cannot tell the real story of war?  What incidents from the story shaped your response?
• What does this story show about some of the nearly insurmountable divisions facing the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War?

Please respond to one or both of the Hemingway stories on the syllabus for today.  While you’re always free to write about anything that interested you, here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

“The Denunciation”

• How do you think readers are meant to react to the narrator’s assertion to the waiter that “It is thy problem” (92)?  Should we admire the narrator for taking this stance or should we blame him?  Do you think the narrator is cowardly?  What do you think about his decision to call the Security office at the very end?  How does Hemingway want us to view this?

“The Butterfly and the Tank”

• One issue that this story addresses is the moral responsibility of writers and artists during wartime.  Really, all four of the stories we’re reading this week comment on this theme.  What do you think about the morality of the narrator writing this story? How does his view of the “flit king” change over the course of the story?  What about the bar manager’s interpretation of the incident at the end?  Are we to see it as meaningful or overly grandiose?  What do you think Hemingway is saying in this story? (By the way, a “flit gun” is used to spray insecticide on flies and mosquitos).

Please respond to anything that interested you in the end of Death in the Afternoon.  Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

• Discuss the beginning of Chapter 16 (p. 183).  What does Hemingway seem to be saying about nostalgia here?  Is he poking fun, for instance, at the natural human tendency toward nostalgia?  How does this paragraph fit into his treatise on bullfighting?
• Look at pp. 191-192 and discuss what Hemingway says about writing–how is inventing characters different from writing about people?  Which is better?  What do you think he means by this quote:  “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration”?
• Discuss what Hemingway seems to say about homosexuality in the book.  He tells a story about two homosexual men on pp. 180-182, for instance, and then later, on p. 205, he discusses homosexuality and El Greco.  How did you react to all of this?  What is Hemingway’s attitude toward homosexuality?  Do you think it’s typical of his times or not?
• On p. 213, Hemingway writes that a good bullfighter “gives you the feeling of his immortality, and, as you watch it, it becomes yours.”  Discuss what you think he means here.
• Talk about the way Hemingway concludes the book, perhaps beginning with the line on p. 270: “If I could have made this enough of a book, it would have had everything in it.”  What comes next?  What did you think of this section?  What are we finally left with at the very end?

For today’s discussion, please respond to Chapters 10-15 of  Death in the Afternoon.  Here are a few questions you might want to consider:

• What purpose do you think the character of the Old Lady serves in the text?  Why does Hemingway invent her?  Do you think he makes fun of the Old Lady or does he treat her seriously?
• Why do you think Hemingway included the section in Chapter Twelve, called “A Natural History of Death,” in a book that is supposedly all about bullfighting?
• Another odd section in today’s reading is the story of the two homosexual men in Chapter Fifteen that the narrator tells the Old Lady.  What do you make of this?  What does it have to do with the book as a whole?

For today’s blog, please respond to anything that particularly interested you in the first 9 chapters of Death in the Afternoon.

• What do you think of the book so far?  Do you find it interesting or boring?  You might consider what Hemingway wants to accomplish in the book–how he depicts the bullfight and the matadors; what he says about morality or about ritual, etc.
• Why do you think Hemingway starts by talking about what happens to the horses? Why is it not tragic when bad things happen to the horses? This topic came up in The Sun Also Rises as well as being a recurring theme in this book.  You might look at some of the reactions to the bullfights Hemingway notes at the end of the book (pp. 465-471) and discuss these as well.
• The first pages of the book contain a famous Hemingway line about writing:  “I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action.” Comment on this statement.
• Or perhaps comment on some other statement Hemingway makes about writing, such as when he talks about “erectile writing” on pp. 53-54.  What does he mean when he says on p. 54 that “If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes”?  How is writing similar to bullfighting in this respect?
• For Hemingway, why is bullfighting not a sport int he Anglo-Saxon sense of the word?  What, in his view, is bullfighting all about?
• What do you think about the character of the “old lady” that Hemingway introduces in Chapter Seven?  What role does she seem to serve in the book?

Since there’s no new reading for today, there’s not an opportunity for a blog comment.

For today’s discussion, I’m including some prompts that we didn’t get a chance to discuss before our field trip, plus some new ones about the end of the book.  Like always, feel free to respond to these or to comment on anything that interested you in the day’s reading:

For today’s discussion, choose one or more of the following questions to answer, or else write about anything in the novel that interested you:

• Talk about Robert Jordan’s father and grandfather.  How do his memories of these men affect his life?
• Talk about Hemingway’s depiction of the fascists.  Are they presented as monsters or are they humanized?
• Discuss the attack on El Sordo’s geurilla band.  Why do you think this is an important event in the novel?  How does it affect Jordan and his group?  How did you react to it?
• How does the relationship between Maria and Robert continue to unfold?  What do you think about this relationship?
• Discuss the theme of loneliness vs. community.  Why does Pablo return to the group, for instance?  How do other characters think about or manage loneliness?  How do they imagine a strong community?  What does the idea of a Republic mean to these characters?

Like always, talk about anything you found interesting in the reading for today.  Here are some specific prompts to get you started thinking:

• Talk about “superstition” in the book.  For example, in the beginning, Pilar, who is part gypsy, reads Robert Jordan’s palm, then refuses to tell him what she saw.  In a later chapter, Pilar insists that she can smell death on people while Robert Jordan believes this idea is nonsense.  Why do you think Hemingway includes these beliefs?  What are we to think of them?
• What about the Catholic religion in the book?  What do the characters say about God and religion?  Why don’t the peasants have God anymore?  What do they have instead?
• Choose one of the characters to discuss and analyze in more detail.  You might examine Rafael the gypsy or the old man Anselmo or Pablo.  What are these men like; what role do they play in the book?  Or you might choose to discuss Maria or Pilar or Robert Jordan himself.  What about the relationship between these 3?  Who is Pilar jealous of when they go on the walk to El Sordo’s?
• Discuss Gaylord’s Hotel and the Russian influence in the war.  What happens at Gaylord’s?  Do you think Gaylord’s is a corrupting influence on Robert Jordan as he himself sometimes worries?   Why does Hemingway choose to include this background in the novel?

How did you react to the opening 10 chapters of For Whom The Bell Tolls?  Did you like it?  Did you dislike it?  What do you think accounts for your particular reaction?  Here are some more specific prompts you might want to respond to:

• Discuss Hemingway’s use of language in the novel.  Are there things you noticed that seem strange or unusual about the way the characters speak to each other?  Why do you think Hemingway made these language choices?  What do you believe he’s trying to accomplish with them?
• Talk about the differing attitudes toward killing expressed by the American Robert Jordan and the old Spanish man, Anselmo.  Why do you think this conversation is important in the book?  (This question will continue to reverberate throughout the novel).
• Talk about the women in the novel: Maria and Pilar.  What are we to think of them?  Later in the semester, one of the presentations will be about these two women, but I’m curious about your initial reactions to them.
• Think about Robert Jordan’s role as an outsider in this group.  What are some of the clashes we see him between him and the guerilla fighters, especially Pablo?  Why are these important?
• Discuss the horrifying scene in which Pilar tells a story about the killing of the fascists.