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The Motif of Luck in Hemingway
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
Hemingway's convictions and beliefs about the larger scheme of the world are generally informed by the tendency to see human action and the human predicament in terms of a circle, a convenient way of affirming his persistent conviction that one cannot consciously order or direct one's life in a chosen manner, chiefly because of the ironic and virtually constant discrepancy between one's expectations and accomplishments. This helpless plight is accurately described by Robert Jordan as a forced ride on an unusual merry-go-round:
It is a vast wheel set at an angle, and each time it goes around and then is back where it starts. One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either, he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical rising and falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are back again now, he thought, and nothing is settled.
The rider has no choice in making this circular trip; neither does he accomplish anything worthwhile. There is no aim, no purpose, and no meaning discernible in this whirl. This image of the wheel seems to be central to Hemingway's view of man's place in the world as it is revealed in his fiction and non-fiction.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979
References
1 “Circularity” in Hemingway is briefly mentioned by Philip Young in his discussion of The Sun Also Rises. See Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952), pp. 86–87Google Scholar. Sylvester, Bickford in his “Hemingway's Extended Vision: The Old Man and the Sea,” PMLA, 71 (03 1966), 130–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cochran, Robert W. in his “Circularity in The Sun Also Rises,” Modern Fiction Studies, 14 (Autumn 1968), 297–305Google Scholar, also refer to circularity. Young and Cochran are concerned with circularity in a single novel. Sylvester discusses the “circular voyage” of Santiago and mentions, in passing, “the circular experiences of all Hemingway's major heroes” (p. 133).
2 Carlos Baker discusses the “wheel” image and suggests that For Whom the Bell Tolls has “an architectural plan comparable to that of a Spanish bullring, which is constructed in a series of concentric circles.” See Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 260Google Scholar.
3 Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Scribner's, 1940), p. 225Google Scholar. Further citations are included in my text accompanied by the designation FWBT.
4 Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises (New York: Scribner's, 1926), p. 115Google Scholar. Further citations are included in my text accompanied by the designation SAR.
5 Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Scribner's, 1929), p. 320Google Scholar. Further citations are included in my text accompanied by the designation FTA.
6 Even sex and marriage are considered hazardous by several of Hemingway's principal characters. Bill says to Nick in “The Three-Day Blow”: “Once a man's married he's absolutely bitched,” The Short Stories (New York: Scribner's, 1955), p. 122Google Scholar. Further citations are included in my text accompanied by the designation SS.
Frederic Henry feels “trapped biologically” when he learns that Catherine is carrying his child. See FTA, p. 139. Robert Jordan thinks that Maria has “no place in his life” (FWBT, p. 267) after the incident of the cavalryman which heralds swift action. Bullfighters frequently contract social diseases because they lead “irregular sexual lives.” Just as they are exposed to the charging bull in the ring, their physical health is exposed to the hazards of sex. See Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner's, 1932), p. 101Google Scholar. Further citations are included in my text accompanied by the designation DIA.
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