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GLOSSARY

WORD

MEANING

Green benches

Bangku hijau

Easel

Kuda-kuda

Glistened

Berkilau

Stood

Berdiri

Gravel paths

Jalan kerikil

Crouched

Berjongkok

Dripping

Menetes

Dignity

Bermartabat

Eaves

Bagian atap

The Padrone

Majikan hotel

Supreme importance

Paling penting

Purr

Mendengkur

SUMMARY:

Cat in the Rain


The story takes place in a hotel on the Italian coast on a rainy day. We are
introduced to an American couple waiting out the rain in their room above the
town square. He is reading. She is looking out the window. The wife spots a cat
outside, huddling under a table in the rain, and decides to go out to rescue it. Her
husband, with no great concern, tells her not to get wet and goes back to his
reading.
Downstairs, the owner or "padrone" of the hotel bows to the wife and
Hemingway lingers for a moment on all the reasons why the wife likes him so
much. She goes outside, followed by the maid with an umbrella, but doesn't find
the cat and returns to her room. The husband, George, is still reading as the wife
sits down before her mirror and starts listing the array of things she wants and
wants to change. Frustrated, George quickly tells her to "shut up" and returns to
his book. The wife complains that if she can't have any of the other things on her
list, she at least wants a cat.

Just then, there's a knock at the door. It's the hotel maid, holding a large
cata gift for the "Signora," she tells them, from the padrone.

ANALYSIS:
Title

: Cat in the Rain

Author

: Ernest Hemingway (1925)

Genre

: Epitome
It is slim, thoughtfully written, and full of more suggestions
than it has words. You might think of it like a sculpture, where each
sentence is three-dimensionalit carries has multiple meanings.
There is nothing wasted in Hemingway's descriptions or his
dialogue.

Character & Characterization


a. Major character

The American Wife


Protagonist: There are a few reasons that explain why the
American Wife/American Girl the protagonist of this
story. The main one is how predominant her perspective is
in the narrative. We see the view from the hotel window
from her eyes and we see the padrone and the maid
through her interpretive lens. In a way, everything that
happens (even though always told from a third-person
perspective) is told in relation to how it affects the wife
you'd think the world revolved around her or something;
no wonder she's so self-centered. Her movements and
interactions also align with the general arc of the plot. The
narration follows her in her movements downstairs,
outside, upstairs. It even follows the turns of her head and
attitudes of her body in a way that it doesn't with any other
character. The wife is the center of change and
significance, conflict and resolution.

George (The husband).


Antagonist: The husband and wife never get into an actual
argument. They aren't really pitted against one another and
the narrator never overtly opposes them, but Hemingway
isn't really the type of author to do that. His characters
rarely articulate their feelings toward each other in very
direct ways. In "Cat in the Rain," the animosity and
frustration between this couple is right under the surface
just think of the frustration you might start to feel towards
anyone you've been cooped up with in a room all day. Part
of you doesn't want to voice it because you know that
you're still going to be isolated with them after any
eruptionit's better to at least maintain an air of
friendliness between the two of you. George is his wife's
antagonist because his sedentary, intellectual state of being
is directly opposed to the kind of active, material life that
the wife desires. This discrepancy is what gives us the
marital conflict and the inevitable "'shut up.'" She's
threatening much more than his peace and quiet with her
talk of silver and new clothes; they are the things that he
can't give her.

The Padrone
Guide mentor: We can also think of the padrone as the
foil to George, but we think he's more like the wife's
guide since she looks up to him in a special way and for
a special reason.

The padrone's

bow

and his

attentiveness to the wife ignite a desire in her that she


doesn't seem to have felt before. The padrone's behavior
raises the possibility in the wife's mind that she might be
worthy of respect and of being treated like a lady. In this
sense, the padrone is the wife's guide to realizing and
valuing something in herself.
Modest and obedient (page 2 -- wifely amiability )

b. Minor Character

The Maid
The hotel maid is kind of like the padrone's attendant
fairyhis Tinkerbelle. She has a way of simply

appearing: popping open the umbrella at the door and


arriving with the cat from the padrone with curiously good
timing. She's a little doubtful that there's actually a cat in
the rain, but she still goes out with the umbrella and
remains attentive to the wife.
The small detail of the maid staying outside to close the
umbrella while the wife passes inside is a wonderful
representation of how dedicated she is to her job. Like the
padrone, she takes this service very seriously, no matter
what her own thoughts are.

Point of view
The story is told in the third person, by an omniscient narrator,
which allows the author to let the reader into the minds and thoughts of
all characters.

Theme
a. Major theme:
Humanity is not only for human.
b. Minor theme:

If we want something, we should fight for it.

We should put away childish things.

Being marriage woman, we should respect our husband


opinions.

Setting:
An Italian Seaside Town on a Rainy Day
This story is set in a small, coastal Italian village. This town
may have been familiar to Hemingway, as he was stationed in
Italy during World War I. The Great War happens to be
tremendously present in this story, too. Remember the War
Monument in the public garden? It's one of the things the wife
sees from her perch at the window.

If you've ever been to Europe, you may have noticed that


these sorts of monuments are in pretty much every town,
commemorating the citizens of that particular town who were lost
to the violence. The fact that the story was written in 1925 hints to
us that the story must take place pretty near 1918, the year the war
ended.
The sheer scope of World War I's tragedy and destruction
across Europe was immense and unprecedented. It wiped out
nearly an entire generation of young men and left the landscape
scarred with trenches, craters from bombs, and half-populated
towns. The fact that the war was over, however, also meant a
period of relief and celebration amid the mourning. In the opening
paragraph, Hemingway juxtaposes the painters and colors in the
public garden with the war memorial. This is a pretty good
representation of the dueling sorrow and celebration in the years
following the armistice. The town in the story is on the seaside,
too, which suggests it's as a place for vacationers, for people
wanting to get away and forget.
Still, Hemingway doesn't set this story on your typical
sunny day on vacation. The relentless rain and the way it envelops
the whole scenegardens, sea, squareconveys a feeling of
imprisonment. No one's going out, there's no moving around, no
distraction. Rainy days in vacation towns also have a more
disappointing feeling to them than rainy days elsewhere. It sort of
hints that things aren't what they're supposed to be, or they're not
what people hoped for when they set out on holiday.
Style
a. The story was written in INFORMAL WRITING.
b. Tone:
Controlled
You might be hard-pressed to find a more controlled writer than
Hemingway. The word "control" generally implies that there is
something that needs to be controlled, right? There's a conflict
between restraint and rebellion present in this story, but
Hemingway only suggests it. The husband and wife are at odds
and discontent with one another, but they don't talk about it.
Instead, the tension lies in their lack of real interaction. There's
an unhappiness that they are studiously avoiding, but trapped as

they are in their room on this rainy day, as each other's only
company and as the only Americans at the hotel, the
awkwardness becomes pretty concentrated. Hemingway's
sentences, both in the dialogue and the descriptions, are terse.
It's so clipped that you know that there's something being
excluded.

Conflict
a. Internal conflict
Man vs Self
If the American wife want to have something, she decided to
herself to have it immediately.
"Anyway, I want a cat," she said, "I want a cat. I want a cat now.
If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."

b. External conflict
Man vs man
The main conflict of the story is character vs character, because
the American wife is contrary to the husband about cat
Plot

Initial Situation
Vacay
Who wants to spend their vacation stuck inside? The situation of
the couple stuck in their room is both monotonous and restless.
The description of the view from the window suggests that it's a
view the wife is used to. She's seen the square, the public gardens,
and the war monument before. It sounds like this is a woman who
spends a lot of time looking out the window. Her focus on the
world outside the hotel is in contrast to her husband's absorption
in his book, suggesting that the two are quite different: she is
extroverted and oriented towards lived life, he is focused toward
the internal world of books and ideas. They say opposites
attractbut that doesn't necessarily mean they can stick together.

Conflict
Hiding Cats
Seeing the cat doesn't necessarily create a conflict between the
characters, but it does give the wife a reason to movesomething
she has clearly been waiting for. Hey, it's not like she had
Facebook or even an iPod to entertain her or anything. The
husband's half-hearted offer to go down instead and her ready
dismissal of it further suggests her desire for independent
movement. She may also know full well that he didn't actually
want to go down to find the cat, but that doesn't seem to bother
her much.
Complication
A Cat in the Rain?
Once she goes downstairs, the wife encounters the hotelkeeper
known as a 'padrone' in Italian. She likes him very much, and is
thinking of this as a maid escorts her outside with an umbrella.
When she looks under the table, however, the cat isn't there. The
maid is a little amused at the thought of a cat in the rain, but the
wife is disappointed. They return inside, damp and cat-less.
Suspense
A Feeling of Great Importance
As she passes the padrone again, the wife is aroused and filled
with a sense of importance in his presence. The feeling is very
strong, but not defined or labeled. The wife isn't necessarily
conscious of her feelings either, but is strongly affected as she
proceeds upstairs. Sounds like someone's got a crush.
Climax
Back in the Room
When the wife returns to the room, her husband casually asks if
she found the cat. She replies no and sits down in front of the
mirror, evidently even more restless than before. We know she's
bored when she starts to critique her hair and profile and proceeds
to list all the things she wants: long hair, a cat on her lap, her own
silver, candles, springtime Her husband, George, is quickly fed
up with this and tells her to shut up and find something to read.

Denouement
Modified Expectations
The wife doesn't react to her husband directly, but does seem to
feel his scolding tone. She stays looking out the window as the
evening darkens around her. If she can't have "long hair or any
fun," she decides at the very least, she still wants a cat.
Conclusion
A Gift from the Padrone
The room and the couple seem to have settled into the same state
of restless rest we saw at the beginning of the story when there's a
knock at the door. The hotel maid is there with a large cat and
tells them it was sent for "the signora."

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