Salla, Rosalie P.

World Literature
BSM 3B Catheryn Tadios

Character Sketch of the Short Story “Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Hemingway

The American Wife

The protagonist of the narrative is an unnamed young American woman who is traveling with
her husband, George, in Italy. She has short, boyish hair and is lovely. She spends a lot of time
staring out the window of the hotel room she shares with George, from whom she appears to be
estranged, indicating that she is obviously dissatisfied, bored, and lonely. She perk ups though
when she notices a cat across the street in the rain and tells George she’s going to go fetch it and
bring it to their hotel. She expresses her profound sense of dissatisfaction and estrangement
through a long list of grievances and aspirations that she discusses with George, as well as her
disappointment at not being able to find the cat. She seemed to have mixed feelings about being
a woman. She rejects her husband’s offer to look for the cat on her behalf, showing that she can
be independent. However, the wants she communicates to George, such as her desire for long
hair, silver, and a pet to care for, reveal a draw to stereotypical femininity. She appears to be
unaware of the recent devastation caused in Europe by the First World War (1914–1918), which
is symbolized not just by the gloomy, rainy weather but also by the war memorial that the hotel
room overlooks.

George
George, the husband of the American woman, reads on a bed in an Italian hotel room throughout
the most of the narrative. He and his wife are on vacation in the nation. George appears to be
attentive to his wife at times, offering to go down and retrieve the cat that she sees from their
hotel window and complimenting her on her appearance, but ultimately he doesn’t seem to be
able to understand or react to her loneliness or misery. He answers by instructing her to stop up
and go fetch something to read when she comes back to their room after failing to find the cat
and shares a long list of needs and desires with him.

The Road not Taken

By Robert frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.