Ernest Hemingway, 1924
"The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park."
Although I lament having picked the final paragraph as my quote (especially after reading "Happy Endings"), this ending is simply too intriguing to not analyze. Here, Hemingway's plot is as dry as his writing style, mentioning not one name save "Luz". What seems to start as an unconventional love story quickly tapers out into essentially nothing. The title "A Very Short Story" is befitting, as this story ends bluntly without satisfaction or resolution. There are a million ways Hemingway could've ended this story. Love, death, tragedy, drama, etc...were all completely viable plots and endings for this story. However, the story does not make it that far. Almost prematurely, a developing story ceases to develop, ending in naught but loneliness and an STI.
It is the realism of Hemingway's story that make them so believable, so brutally honest. Like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", this story has a bleak outlook on the world. An implication about purposelessness is made in the conclusion of this story. Young love fades during time apart, and an unfaithful girl does not find replacement in her new partner. The man left by Luz contracts gonorrhea. This story is sad, and it is sad in the simplest of ways. There is no anguish, no heartbreak of dark ending. There is almost nothing worth mentioning, and that in itself is the saddest part.
I enjoy Hemingway's writing because of the message I perceive from it. Whether I am taking the correct message is up for debate, but Hemingway's work often seems to advocate a purposelessness with which I empathize. I am not religious or spiritual, I do not believe anything happens when you die. Should we all be here for no reason and to no purpose, that is something we must live and die with. Hemingway's simple, yet depressing style of writing seems to communicate just that.
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