Minimalist Story

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The minimalist story I am going to analyze is “Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Hemingway. One of the main characteristic found in minimalist pieces is an evident lack of detail. This is done through short and simple sentences. The Cat in the Rain is a story of an American couple on vacation in Italy; Hemingway’s’ story could be misconstrued as a dull literary piece, in fact it is not even close, it is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle in reverse order so that you have to take the story apart, to completely understand the underlying meaning of the text. Hemingway uses a lot of symbolism and repetition which is two of the characteristics of minimalism to emphasize specific emotions within the text and has embedded the theme of the story deep within it. I felt that the specific theme of this short story was the couples’ troubled relationship. As the reader I questioned many things, how was the mood set? What emotions were being shown through the sub-content? What did the cat represent? Who was the dominant one in the relationship and was this shown within the story?
The imagery of the firs...

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