Why I'm Not a Character in A Farewell to Arms
There is a saying about Hemingway: "He never says someone is sad; rather, he makes it rain."There is in this a great conflation of setting and character, a way of taking the mood of an individual and making it environmental. (There is also a lot of truth in the sentence, as well, and it reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. Q: Why did Ernest Hemingway's chicken cross the road? A: To die. Alone. In the rain.)
It was always hard for me to understand the "mood" of a novel. People have moods. Houses, trees, activities, the stuff of fiction: no moods. It's all an elaborate metaphor. And that would be fine, except that they test for this sort of thing on the SAT.
The flip side of this metaphor, however, I understand. My own moods are tightly linked to the weather around me. Yesterday was the first wind-whipped day of the year, and walking outside, I felt the same energy that I could watch blowing tree-leaves upside-down and newspapers across the avenues. When skies are grey and greying, or even tinged with a menacing green, I internalize a certain excitement that anticipates the electrical storm that is to follow. When the air is cool and brisk I want to play; when it is hot I am miserable (and not just, I think, because of the uncomfortable temperature or the too-bright sun); when it snows I am happy.
This is not entirely crazy. I may be highly attuned to the weather, but everybody is somewhat attuned to their environment. When lights are bright, we are all less likely to sleep (and this explains the well-lit garishness of malls and casino floors); when it's warm, we're more likely to be drowsy; if there's techno music and strobe lights, our pulse is likely to be relatively fast (even if we're not dancing); if we smell food, we're more likely to salivate and to feel hungry.
Still, I can't help but think that I take this to a strange extreme. So I don't think books have moods, and I certainly don't think rain makes this day sadder than the next (even if I do think Hemingway uses the conceit to excellent effect). But I do like to entertain the notion that I am myself a metaphor for the environment around me, that my moods reflect the world (and not the other way round). It is a nice reversal of the literary.
posted by Skay @ 4:52 PM
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