Friday, January 27, 2012
Dragging on with the Details
In a book where most of the detail describes scenery, why is the scene of the final bull fight so long and descriptive? Hemingway goes through each bull-fighter's ordeal during the final day of the fiesta. While Belmonte's story of coming out of retirement to compete with Marcial was intriguing at best, I found these details to be more annoying than relevant on the final day of fighting. Hemingway also reiterates what he said earlier about Romero's fighting techniques. For a part of the story that will no longer be relevant once the fiesta ends, Hemingway spends far too much time on the subject. I wanted the story to just move on.
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I agree with you, Stephanie! I love how short, concise, and to the point Hemingway was with his writing and the final bullfighting scene went on way to long in my opinion. Maybe I missed a metaphor or something in it, but I didn't understand why it was relevant.
ReplyDeleteWhen a writer seems to drag on with details, the charitable way to read is to ask, "Why is he doing this?" Give him the benefit of the doubt. In this case, there are very real reasons that Hemingway is taking such pains to show these bullfighters. We'll talk about this in class, but it might help to think about Belmonte vs. Romero (an old, broken bullfighter who cannot live up to his legendary status vs. young and pure and full of potential).
ReplyDeleteAlso the blindness of the first bull and the strength of the second I think is echoed in the subsequent dialog on page 227 between Mike and Jake:
ReplyDelete"Bad thing to do," Mike said. She shouldn't have done it."
..."I'm drunk," I said. "I'm going in and lie down."
"Are you blind? I was blind, myself."
"Yes," I said. "I'm blind."