31 pages • 1 hour read
Ernest HemingwayA Day's Wait
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway lived a life full of action and drama; it seems almost impossible that so much could happen to one man. In some ways, Hemingway is more of an American legend than Paul Bunyan. As such, separating the actual man from the mythos surrounding him can be challenging. While researching his entire life, reading one of his many biographies, or watching a Hemingway documentary is worthwhile, this section focuses on his life only up to 1933 and its potential influences on “A Day’s Wait.”
Hemingway was born in 1899, one of the most turbulent times in US history. He grew up outside Chicago but spent every summer on Walloon Lake, Michigan. There, he learned how to fish and hunt, pastimes that he continued to enjoy most of his life. Michigan is the setting for several of Hemingway’s works, and some argue that “A Day’s Wait” may be one of them.
Hemingway didn’t get along with his parents and left home after graduating from high school. He worked briefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Hemingway tried to join the army during World War I but was rejected because of his vision problems. Undeterred, he signed on as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross. Hemingway left the US in May, arriving in Italy in June, but was severely injured by mortar fire in early July. Despite his injuries, Hemingway helped Italian soldiers to safety, getting further injured by gunfire in the process. His bravery earned him a silver medal of honor from the Italian government.
Hemingway spent six months recuperating overseas and fell in love with a Red Cross nurse (Agnes von Kurowsky). When he returned to the US, he thought she’d follow and they’d marry. He was devastated to learn that she became engaged to someone else in his absence. This abandonment affected him deeply, and several biographers speculate that his frequent poor treatment of women stemmed from this relationship.
Because of Agnes’s abandonment, his disillusion with war, and his continued slow recovery, Hemingway was in emotional turmoil. After recuperating at home, he traveled to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with friends. This trip later inspired one of his famous short stories, “Big Two-Hearted River.” After the trip, Hemingway took a job as a reporter for the Toronto Star. During this time, he met his first wife, Hadley Richardson. They married in 1921, and Hemingway became a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star.
The couple moved to Paris so that Hemingway could focus on his fiction writing. There, Hemingway met Gertrude Stein, who greatly influenced his writing style. In addition, Hemingway met and learned from many other notable figures, including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Pablo Picasso. Because he was back in a war zone (the Greco-Turkish War), he reported on the war as well.
In 1923, several key points of Hemingway’s legend solidified. First, he visited Pamplona, which began his lifelong obsession with bullfighting. While he was there, people started calling him “Papa,” a name that stuck throughout the rest of his life. Second, he moved (somewhat unhappily) back to Toronto, and his first child, John (called “Jack” or “Bumby”) was born. Also, his first and second works, the collections Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time, were published.
The Hemingway family returned to Paris in 1924, where Hemingway worked as an editor for The Transatlantic Review. During this time, Hemingway began work on his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. The work was published in 1926 and received critical acclaim. Unfortunately, his marriage to Richardson ended during this time because of his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer.
Hemingway and Richardson divorced in 1927, and Hemingway married Pfeiffer the same year. In 1928, the couple returned to the US and had their first child, Patrick. Hemingway continued traveling the world but tended to spend his winters in Key West and his summers in Wyoming. In 1929, A Farewell to Arms was published, receiving mixed reviews. Hemingway’s last child, Gloria, was born in 1931. After the birth, Pfeiffer’s uncle gifted the family a house in Key West, which remained their permanent home.
“A Day’s Wait” was part of Hemingway’s short story collection Winner Take Nothing, published in 1933. He based the story on true events involving his eldest son, Jack. Because Jack was Richardson’s son, not Pfeiffer’s, he was educated mostly in foreign boarding schools. After the divorce, he saw Hemingway only during summer vacations and on the occasional break. If this story is somewhat autobiographical, the fact that Jack isn’t Pfeiffer’s blood-related child may account for the fact that “Papa” is caring for the sick child instead of “Mama.”
Hemingway’s writing drew from his vast life experiences. He felt that writing should be “true” and therefore made a point to write about the many things he personally experienced. Likewise, in trying make his writing “true,” he tended to omit adjectives and sentimental language. His style, cultivated through years of work as a journalist and the mentorship of Gertrude Stein, focused mostly on short, simple sentences. His works tend to take an objective view, with little direct emphasis on characters’ feelings, hinting at emotions only through characters’ words and actions.
This straightforward, objective style helps reinforce Hemingway’s themes. Hemingway, who saw and experienced much suffering in several wars, including witnessing death firsthand, found enormous strength and bravery in suffering silently and gracefully accepting fate. This style of bravery factored heavily into his works. Bravery and Manliness as well as Heroic Fatalism, both important themes in “A Day’s Wait,” are inextricably tied to Hemingway’s life.
Sociohistorical Context: Gender Roles and Caretaking in the 1930s
“A Day’s Wait” is somewhat of a paradox regarding gender roles. Modern audiences may find Papa’s being the primary caregiver for Schatz perfectly normal. However, 1930s audiences would have found it highly unusual. One can view this in two ways. The first is that Hemingway is making a point that caregiving is an important part of masculinity, despite the strict gender roles of the time. The second is that Hemingway argues that men shouldn’t be caregivers because they can’t help but be terrible at it.
For both viewpoints, one must infer that a woman is present in the story. Fortunately, the first line in the story indicates that this is likely the case: “He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill” (Lines 1-2). Considering that the story was published in 1933, it’s safe to assume that a couple in bed together, with children in the house, are most likely husband and wife. However, the story has only one other oblique reference to this wife, as part of the “they” who tell Papa that Schatz refuses to let others into the room. Except for the brief time when Papa goes hunting, all of Schatz’s care falls on him. Papa consults with the doctor, Papa writes down the instructions, Papa gives Schatz his medicine, and Papa sits with Schatz. By 1930s standards, his wife (or a nanny or servant in wealthier households) should have done all of this.
Many 1930s readers would have seen Papa’s taking over this domestic duty as emasculating. However, Hemingway’s portrayal of Papa contradicts that viewpoint. He’s a caretaker but also a taciturn man who speaks in short, clipped sentences despite being worried about his son. He goes hunting and manages to be successful despite poor conditions. Instead of a fairy tale or something relaxing, he reads his son Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates. Papa is a “man’s man,” and Hemingway seems to say that caretaking is a man’s job just as much as a woman’s.
The opposing viewpoint, however, would claim that Papa is a terrible caregiver because men don’t belong in that role. While Papa is trying to be a good caregiver by sitting with his son and keeping up with his medications, he never presses Schatz to find out what’s distressing him, despite repeatedly commenting that something seems off about his son’s behavior. This lack of information leads the child to go an entire day believing that he’ll die without asking for help.
Furthermore, when Schatz tells Papa that he doesn’t have to stay, Papa takes that as his cue to leave the boy and go hunting. Hemingway’s clipped writing style doesn’t clarify whether Papa bothered to arrange for someone else to care for Schatz in his absence. While parenting advice from the 1920s and ‘30s stresses teaching children self-reliance, abandoning a sick child goes beyond that. These critics would argue that Hemingway reversed gender roles in this story to show that, despite trying their best, men aren’t effective caregivers. Both of these views, however, highlight the ambiguity that characterizes Hemingway’s work.
Historical Context: The Spanish Flu
Healthcare has changed immeasurably since the 1930s. However, even 1930s audiences might have found it odd to call the doctor at the first sign of a fever. Doctors were expensive and often considered a luxury during this time, with the Great Depression in full swing. Moreover, children are prone to fevers and illnesses in the winter. Most parents, even today, would wait a day before calling a doctor. They’d at least use a thermometer to take an official temperature themselves before calling.
However, in “A Day’s Wait,” Papa merely feels Schatz’s forehead and calls for the doctor. The doctor, likewise, visits the home quickly, arriving before nine o’ clock in the morning. Although the doctor doesn’t think Schatz’s illness is very concerning, he still leaves three pills and explicit instructions on what to look for. These behaviors may seem like an overreaction to the flu for modern audiences, but for 1930s readers, the flu was deadly and terrifying.
The first Spanish flu epidemic started in 1918 and killed 21 million people worldwide, including roughly 625,000 in the US. A resurgence in 1927 killed about half that number. Both times, the virus struck so rapidly that doctors couldn’t isolate it to try and create a vaccine. The virus hit children and the elderly particularly hard. The Spanish flu infected over a quarter of the US population. It started with average flu symptoms—fever, chills, and sore throat—and rapidly progressed to the lungs, sometimes causing respiratory failure within hours. This rapid shift from flu to lung failure is why the doctor informs Papa that Schatz should be fine unless the flu turns into pneumonia.
The undercurrent of worry permeating “A Day’s Wait” is, thus, warranted. The doctor in the story states that it’s “a light epidemic of flu” (Line 23), but the mere mention of an epidemic—light or not—would have frightened 1930s audiences. While the doctor tries to downplay the severity, the fact that he specifically calls it an epidemic would likewise put contemporary readers on high alert. Most of Hemingway’s audience at the time of publication would have lived through the Spanish flu epidemic and thus be extremely cautious and concerned about a child contracting the flu.
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