46 pages • 1 hour read
Ernest HemingwayThe Garden of Eden
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
David
David Bourne is the protagonist and–to a large extent–the point of view character in The Garden of Eden. Most of the novel is told from David’s perspective, guiding the audience through the world as he experiences it. Perhaps David’s defining trait is his stoicism. His childhood experiences caused him to be strong, silent, and unexpressive about his emotions. Any time he is in danger of expressing an emotion, he represses his feelings by changing the subject or blankly agreeing with Catherine’s suggestions. He remains stoic and tries to ignore anything that might upset his equanimity. He and Catherine have a complex financial relationship, for example, because she is wealthier than he is, which allows him to live above his means but also allows her to manipulate him. But after a brief discussion about his royalties, he never raises the topic of money with his wife. Anything that would cause him to need to express himself, or provoke Catherine into more extreme behavior, is repressed and ignored.
David’s stoicism sometimes undermines him, however. His personality becomes a threat to his happiness because it prevents him from voicing his feelings. When Catherine wants to discuss gender roles with him, for example, David remains quiet. He assumes that she is in a phase in her life that will eventually pass. Rather than tell his wife about his frustrations and concerns, he nods silently. By the time David’s anger bubbles to the surface, events have spiraled out of his control. When Catherine burns his stories, he finally tells her the thoughts that he has kept to himself. This cathartic unleashing of emotion goes against everything David has done to this point, but it does not last. He quickly exits the scene and, by the time he returns, Catherine is gone. David spends so much time repressing his emotions that he loses touch with himself.
David’s deeper self is revealed in his writing. He had been a sensitive and compassionate child. His stoicism is a product of his father’s abusive behavior. He can write stories about his past but not engage with emotional reality in the present. He likes writing and takes satisfaction in it because it allows him to express thoughts and feelings that he would otherwise repress. Catherine dislikes his writing for this same reason: she does not like a version of David that challenges society’s expectations as she does. She insults his stories because the emotionally vulnerable version of David that they portray threatens her belief in her uniqueness. As a result, she destroys his stories and drives them further apart. David ultimately sides with Marita because she accepts him as he is and allows him the emotional vent of writing his stories while being with her.
Catherine
If David’s first-person perspective makes him knowable to the audience, then Catherine is a wild, chaotic, and incomprehensible force in his life. Because she is portrayed from David’s perspective, and he does not understand her, she becomes a strange presence in the story. Her mood swings and sudden personality changes are beyond David’s understanding; a deeper understanding of Catherine as a character is denied to the reader because of the focused nature of the narration. In a structural sense, Catherine is alienated from the reader because she is alienated from her husband. As the reader sees Catherine from David’s perspective, only hints and glimpses of Catherine’s true personality can be seen.
To David, Catherine seems insecure. Her anxiety and tension perhaps stem from fear of herself. She has so few hobbies and interests that she worries she lacks a personality. To David, Catherine seems little more than a woman who enjoys the finer things in life and who possesses the money to furnish herself with them. To the outsider, Catherine’s fear seems to be that she will be perceived as a rich young girl who adheres to every social expectation. Catherine attempts to resolve this anxiety by challenging the expectations society places upon her. She wants to be seen as a rebel, someone who deviates from what is expected. Her deep tan, her gender fluidity, and her erratic behavior all break convention and expectation. In challenging these social conventions, Catherine hopes to forge a new identity as an iconoclast or a radical. However, because she defines herself only in opposition to expectations, she is forced to push relentlessly forward. To maintain such an identity, she must constantly seek new conventions to challenge, merely for the sake of challenging them. Catherine fears standing still; standing still would be the death of her identity. Her chaotic behavior can be attributed to her anxious uncertainty about her identity as she is unable or unwilling to look at her real, honest self.
As a result, Catherine is caught in a difficult position. She constantly needs to reaffirm her identity as a radical but doing so puts her in opposition to the world, including everything she loves. She loves David, but her behavior drives him away. The tension between her love for her husband and her need to oppose every convention cannot be resolved. Her sudden changes in behavior and demeanor are examples of this tension manifesting in Catherine. This is perhaps the reason she burns David’s short stories and wants him to work on the narrative of their relationship. She hopes to work with David to construct a narrative about their lives. By writing her new identity into reality in partnership with David, she hopes to bring together the seemingly disparate parts of her identity. Unfortunately for Catherine, this idea does not work. She leaves the hotel with the promise to return, abandoning David to Marita. Her attempts at a resolution fail, and she leaves the narrative caught in the same state of flux as before.
Marita
Marita is a late entry to the story, but she plays an important function. She reflects the relationship between Catherine and David. She creates a reflection and an opposition to everything that defines Catherine: while Catherine works hard to tan herself dark, Marita is so naturally dark that she is referred to as a dark girl; while Catherine experiments with gender and sexuality as a way to resolve her anxieties, Marita seems comfortably at home in any situation; while Catherine tells David that she is occasionally a boy, Marita insists that she will always be his girl. Marita reflects Catherine’s radical ideas back to David and shows him an alternative that does not challenge his preconceptions. David may be married to Catherine, but the temptation of Marita is that she seems comfortable in the world and values David’s character and work.
While Marita might be defined by her acceptance of gender roles, she subtly challenges conventions in a similar manner to Catherine. Marita is introduced in the novel during an argument with a woman who may be her lover, and she quickly feels comfortable discussing Catherine’s sexuality in matter-of-fact terms with David. Marita rarely pauses when entering unfamiliar territory, partially because she seems so comfortable engaging with ideas that challenge social conventions. She differs from Catherine in that she handles everything with a degree of self-assuredness. Marita is quietly confident, regardless of the situation, and she is in control of her identity in a way that Catherine is not. Due to her self-assured approach to identity, Marita may break conventions, but she does not challenge David’s sense of acceptable behavior. Marita is not the opposite of Catherine; she is a reflection who is more comfortable with herself and who is not afraid of what she sees when she looks in a mirror.
Given that the novel is seen from David’s perspective, Marita is framed as an alternative to Catherine. Marita is from a seemingly wealthy background to the point where David bestows the nickname Heiress on her. The implication is that Marita can provide for David in the same way that Catherine can. In this way, Marita undermines one of the powers Catherine holds over her husband. Marita provides David with the same romantic and physical benefits as his wife but without Catherine’s opposition and destructive behavior and the anxiety that it produces. Marita presents herself to David as the easy alternative. She empathizes with Catherine because she is confident that she will end the novel by replacing Catherine. Furthermore, the hotel owner’s wife makes Marita’s bed for two people, and David views this as an external affirmation in favor of Marita rather than Catherine. Ultimately, David searches for anything which validates or condones this choice. Marita functions as the embodiment of David’s desire for wealth, simplicity, and normality.
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By Ernest Hemingway
