Choose a short story by Hemingway and write an appreciation of its style, drawing attention to voice, tone, pace and the management of information.
...ing paragraphs of a story. In ‘The Killers’ practically all of the information we are given is conveyed to us in simple naturalistic dialogue, with the narrator being an omnipresence. We are never told directly much information outside of the immediate situation yet we become aware of the fact that Max and Al are gangsters before we even know the specific nature of their mission. This is accomplished through a few significant details; such as the fact that “Both men ate with their gloves on” which is playing with the notion that gangsters would leave their gloves on to avoid leaving fingerprints, and the fact that they keep their eyes on the mirror behind the bar. Already as a reader we have drawn a conclusion about these characters without having the certainty of the text confirming this fact in a finite sentence and here through this technique Hemingway has already caught the interest and imagination of his reader. The characters of Max and Al serve two functions apart from that of their narrative role, firstly they interject some black humour into the piece, picking up the pace with their quick banter and secondly they act as a catalyst for the other characters Nick, George and Sam who are in the course of this story forced to become conscious of their own beliefs and examine those beliefs in light of what has happened. Max and Al have a comical element about them. Hemingway plays them off each other to create a double act which is in fact a lot more sinister than the language may have us believe. “…they were dressed like twins. Both wore overcoats too tight for them.” Indeed Hemingway himself stresses the vaudevillian aspects of these characters “…under the arc-light and cross the street. In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team.” Indeed they themselves seem aware of the stereotype that they are and suggest to George to attend the movies so that he’ll know what to expect from ‘mobsters’, although this remark also emphasises Hemingway’s view that sometimes the unreal clichés have a reality, and a solid place in society. The dialogue between them “…has the sleazy quality of mechanized gag and wisecrack, a king of inflexible and stereotyped banter that is always a priori to the situation and overrides the situation.” One point which is repeated by Max and Al throughout the story is that they don’t like ‘bright boys’. This phrase is reminiscent of the vaudeville idea that knowledge is pitted against ignorance, with the straight man always being right. The reason for this dislike of intelligence could be both the fact that they do not like being rivalled and feel inferior around men of mental capability and the other stronger reason being that they don’t like having their codes of conduct questioned. They seem offended by others ignorance “They find a laughable disparity between mind and material reality. They suggest that Nick and George may not be bright – but that they remain boys. Like most straight men, they are adults in a world of children.” And so should not try and understand the issues that remain outside their realm – we can actually expand this theory to include the questions that society dwells on such “what’s it all about” and “What’s the idea” (These questions are also asked throughout the book, Hemingway wants us to take these questions outside of the domain of the story though and is actually making a statement about man’s preoccupation with these unanswerable questions). This occasional “reiteration of key phrases [was] for thematic emphasis” The dialogue between these two men gives a quick steady rhythm to the story but when analysed more closely we find that this language has a darker side to it as well. Most disturbing is the fact that they are able to joke around like this while waiting to murder someone, they seem to be trying to quell their boredom. This also heightens the contrast between them and the other characters (most importantly that of Nick Adams) as the others are shocked at the professional casualness with which these two men have accepted the situation. The reason we have to segregate Nick Adams in order to discuss him is because unlike the two other characters, with whom we can sense an almost acceptance at the realities of the world, for Nick this story can be seen as his discovery of evil. This was most famously argued by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in their book ‘Understanding Fiction’ yet since then many other critics have also argued this, stating Nick’s own journey as one of the central themes within ‘The Killers’. The two gangsters seem to accept their mission without questioning it, in fact they even seem proud of the code of their work, the morals that they live by. When discussing the reasons for killing Ole Anderson they seem nonchalant that “He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us” and then continue “We’re killing him for a friend. Just to oblige a friend, bright boy” It is this casual demeanour that Nick finds difficult. “This code, which has suddenly been transferred from the artificial world of the thriller and movie into reality, is shocking enough, but even more shocking to Nick is the fact that Ole Anderson, the hunted man, accepts the code too." As when Nick goes to see Ole Anderson, he realises that Anderson follows his own stoical code and refuses to denounce his assailants. As he too made a decision to get involved in that kind of lifestyle and so knows that, he has to accept the consequences of that. Morally he is in no position to reject the code that he has lived his life by just as it is now acting against him. Nick has to be analysed and recognised as such an important character within the book as Hemingway used the character of Nick Adams in many of his short stories, and it can be argued that Adams is used as a thinly disguised semi-autobiographical character, who Hemingway uses to let his own socio-political views be apparent within his stories without having to lay personal claim to them (Though it should be made clear that it is widely discredited to count Nick Adams as a fully autobiographical character as the links between the character and Hemingway himself are tempestuous, and Hemingway himself made no strong claims to these links.) Within ‘The Killers’ Nick is also the only character who undergoes an emotional and mental journey. The realities of the world have been made clear to him and so with this knowledge he must now change, or at least consider the, previous sets of moral conduct that he has lived his life by. This journey is mirrored by the way in which we can break up the story in four parts; one long scene and three short scenes. The first scene is where Nick encounters the gangsters and so has the realisation of evil, and then comes the processing of this information when he is untied and decided on the course of action he will take, subsequently trying to solve the problem, he has become involved in by telling Anderson in the third scene, and ultimately the final progression is the realisation that...