Earnest Hemingway

Earnest Hemingway famously known for his style of sparse writing often compares his prose to that of an iceberg in water, containing the majority beneath the surface. Hemingway often edited his stories leaving only the necessary information and allowing the reader to infer the meaning behind the writing. In the short story “Pamplona in July” the narrator, Hemingway himself, and his wife visit the small bull fighting village of Pamplona for Festival of San Fermin. The short story seems to be about the trip and experiences in the small town, however, in classic Hemingway style, it is about what lies underneath. Throughout the story the narrator uses descriptive imagery, diction, and the struggle between fantasy and reality to revel his own insecure jealousy within his troublesome marriage.

The narrator engages the reader and brings the story of his first visit to the small Spanish town of Pamplona to life through the descriptive imagery within the text. While describing the setting and events he uses a flourished vocabulary to depict his perspective. Each matador is portrayed differently; however, his wife’s favorite matador Maera is a “dark, spare and deadly looking man” while the other two Olmos and Algabeno are each described as “chubby faced” and “slim [and] young”(Hemingway 103). These negative descriptions show the reader that he dislikes Maera and Olmos. Young Algabeno receives the most flattering description allowing the audience to infer that he is the narrator’s favorite. He continues to describe Algabeno as “the son of a famous bull fighter” to show the development of his admiration towards the young man (103). The narrator’s jealousy begins to become evident when the bull fighting begins. Hemingway states, “I discovered that bull fighting required a very great quantity of a certain type of courage of which I had an almost complete lack”(104). This is the first time that he shows his own insecurities towards the inadequacies within his marriage as he continues on to say “any admiration [Herself] might ever redevelop for me would have to be simply an antidote to the real admiration for [the matadors]”(104). The imagery that Hemingway uses to create a matador who lacks courage allows the reader to deduce the depth of his insecurities and he recognizes that the only way Herself would see him as man is to imagine him as a matador. He sees these courageous men fighting “heavy set, black, glistening, sinister [bulls]” and he feels weak in comparison (101). These descriptions reveal the tension and insecurities within his marriage.

The narrator’s diction becomes pertinent to reveling the problems with in his marriage that lie beneath the surface. While Algabeno handles all six of the bulls that day, as the narrator watches he describes the “deadly killing[s]” as “debonair” and states that Algabeno “ha[s] command of the situation”(106). Debonair and deadly killings are