The short story Cat in the rain by Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite pieces of short fiction written by an American writer. I read the story for the first time in my second year at the university and, ever since then, whenever I met people who shared my passion for literature, I bring up Cat in the rain. What puzzles me most is the uncertainty that I have regarding the cat. Is the cat that the American woman saw in the rain the same one with the cat that the innkeeper gave her at the end of the short story?
Synopsis
The short story Cat in the Rain was written in the 1920’s. It is about an American couple who spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, She seems to be like a girl of about fourteen, still a child but one who slowly discovers the woman inside her.
The crisis of the short story is when the woman realizes that the cat is gone. What follows next is the falling action. She comes back to the hotel room without the cat, where her husband is still reading. She tells her husband that she does not know why she wanted that cat so much, but the reader understands why: she feels the need for something to care for, to be responsible for. George does not need all that anymore, because he already is a grown-up man, shown in his more serious behaviour. George does not understand his wife’s problem and therefore the problem of their relationship: when she tells him about her desire to let her hair grow (to become more feminine), he just tells her with disinterest that he likes it the way it is.
But her wish for longer hair is only the beginning. She tells him that she wants her own silver to eat with, candles, and that cat. Without really realizing it herself, these wishes correspond with her desire to be, at last, an adult. And that is why she is now referred to as “wife”.
The fact that she wants it to be spring again stands for her huge desire for a new spring in her relationship. In the end she gets a cat, given to her by the maid at the padrone’s instruction. Maybe it is not important if it is the same cat she saw in the street, what matters most is that she finally gets
