1148511李婧怡-第二次作业

《Cat in the Rain》Ernest Hemingway
“I'm going down and get that kitty,” the American wife said.
“I'll do it,” her husband offered from the bed
“No, I'll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table.”
The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.
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“Did you get the cat?” he asked, putting the book down.
“It was gone.”
“Wonder where it went to,” he said, resting his eyes from reading.
She sat down on the bed. “I wanted it so much,” she said. “I don't know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.”
George was reading again.
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She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. “I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,” she said. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”
“Yeah?” George said from the bed.
“And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.”
“Oh, shut up and get something to read,” George said. He was reading again.
                             
Comments: Concerning the conversations between the wife and the husband, the response of the husband, compared with his wife’s emotional and long dialogues, is shorter but stronger. Take the husband’s reaction to the wife at the beginning, what he says is, “I’ll do it” and “shut up and get something to read” at the final. These are seemed more like an order than a suggestion. The author use simple words to reflect the wife’s complex minds. By protecting the cat, the wife eager to change her situation, the appearance, and her relationship with her husband in the family. The expression is implicitly which can provided extremely broad imagination space for the readers.

的确如此，女人渴望改变，连续强烈地表达我想要(I want……)，但她所要的都是她丈夫不曾满足她或者又不会立即满足她的，还有就是西方文化中猫有代表女人的含义，从标题来看，猫也是对女主的一种隐喻吧。