Language, emotion, and imagination: Constructing human identity through Hemingway's work Gorka【

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincere thanks to Professor Elisabeth Däumer. I would have never written this thesis
without all her work and patience. Also, many thanks to Professor Christine Neufeld for being
always helpful and encouraging me during these two last years at Eastern Michigan University.
Thanks to Jennifer for her proofreading. Finally, endless gratitude to my parents and sister.
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ABSTRACT
This thesis examines how Hemingway’s use of language evokes emotions in his stories
and how his particular way of evoking emotions affects readers. Hemingway’s style of providing
vivid experiences for readers centers on the image as the dimension where emotions are offered,
but also the dimension where the writer’s work converges with the reader’s reception of it. The
reader reconstructs the text through the act of signifying emotions. This process of signification
is made possible only through the use of the reader’s imagination. The study of the relation
between emotion and imagination emphasizes that readers decode fiction as they decode reality:
in the way it affects them.
In the act of reading narrative fiction--as this thesis demonstrates--human beings enhance
their identities in the same way that they construct the stories they read: by attributing meaning
to the emotions evoked in them while reading. In essence, human beings feel compelled to
immerse themselves in fiction because this diegetic process helps them to construct their
identities as humans.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………….......ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………..iii
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...iv
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………1
CHAPTER 2: HEMINGWAY’S COMPROMISE WITH THE REAL THING………………...10
2.1. PARIS: THE FIRST STEP AS A WRITER OF FICTION…………………………10
2.2. “UP IN MICHIGAN”: THE BIRTH OF HEMINGWAY’S STYLE FOLLOWING
POUND’S INFLUENCE………………………………………………………………...13
2.3. THE IMAGE AS THE DIMENSION WHERE THE CONDITIONS OF MEANING
ARE PROPOSED………………………………………………………………………..18
2.4. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………...25
CHAPTER 3: HEMINGWAY’S STRUGGLE IN ORDER TO CREATE LIFE AND NOT
SIMPLY TO REPRESENT IT…………………………………………………………………..27
3.1. “BIG TWO-HEARTED-RIVER” AND THE READER’S IMAGINATIVE
RECONSTRUCTION OF NICK’S TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE…………………….27
3.2. EMOTION AND THE SIGNIFICATION PROCESS OF NICK’S REALITY……33
3.3. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………...40
CHAPTER 4: HEMINGWAY’S MULTIPLE VOICES IN RELATION TO RACE AND
GENDER WITHIN HIS FICTION……………………………...................................................43
4.1. SPACE AND THE EMOTION OF POWER IN “INDIAN CAMP” AND “THE
DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR’S WIFE”…………………………………...…………44
4.2. THE GENDER NEGOTIATION IN HEMINGWAY’S STORIES…..……………55
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4.3. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………...58
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………..61
WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………………66