Options
"Nothing Had Eaten Any Breakfast" : Hemingway's "Canary for None"
Carter, Steven
1997
Abstract
This paper analyses Hemingway’s short story “A Canary for One”. It is shown that the story is characterized by a carefully orchestrated metapattern of oppositions and doublings. This complementary system is comprised of an ontological numbers game in which all the characters participate, and from which they all emerge as losers, as it were, with an aggregate “score” of zero. The dyadic movements of travelers and trains are also noteworthy. Furthermore the canary’s putative self-destructive behavior and its imprisoned status add a rich symbolic dimension to the story. In the appendix, at last, we find two diagrams that additionally illustrate the complementary forms of love, and the triangles formed by the nameless characters of the short story.
Series
Prospero. Rivista di Letterature Straniere, Comparatistica e Studi Culturali
IV (1997)
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Steven Carter, “"Nothing Had Eaten Any Breakfast" : Hemingway's "Canary for None" ", in: Prospero. Rivista di Letterature Straniere, Comparatistica e Studi Culturali, IV (1997), pp. 5-15
Languages
en
File(s)