StylisticPresentationof“CatintheRain”

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【Abstract】“Cat in the Rain” is Hemingway’s short story. In this thesis， stylistic knowledge will be used in the analysis of its form and content. Through analysis， we can see the perfect union of form and content in this story.

【Key words】Hemingway； stylistics； Cat in the Rain

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

Ernest Miller Hemingway is an American novelist who relates a story in the form of straight journalism. In this paper， the stylistic features of “Cat in the Rain” will be examined. This short story in Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time was written in 1925. It is one of his representative short stories that can present his unique writing style.

PART TWO

STYLISTIC FEATURES

1. The Third Person Point of View

The story mainly uses the third person limited point of view which acts as a camera and reports the events objectively while there are four times of shifts of perspective focalization in the story.

The first shift occurs when the narrator uses （“her” husband）. The second occurs when she is going to find the cat： “The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves.”（Hemingway 24）. The third shift presents as the inner feeling of the heroine. “Something felt very small and tight inside the girl.”（26） Only from her perspective can the subtle feelings be observed. The last shift happens when George describes “a big tortoise-shell”， which is from the perspective of the husband.

These shifts of focalization act as the supplement of the third person narrative could make the reader understand better the needs and emotions of the characters.

2. Language Features

2.1 Lexical Features

The most striking lexical features are the concise nominal and verbal structure. “The preponderance of the definite article ‘The’ occurs twenty-seven times in the relatively short paragraph” （Zeng 86）. It occurs， too， in nominal groups where there is little between the definite article and norm. For example， “The motor-cars were gone from the square by the war-monument”（22） in which “the motor-cars”， “the square” and “the war-monument” are all concise nominal groups.

Besides， verbs are employed with little modified adverbial ingredients. “The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office”（22）. The description of action is a mechanized and monotonous one from which the reader can see what is truly happening there.