Traversing Borders: Presence and Role of Liminal Space in Ernest Hemingway

Presentation Type

Presentation

Release Option

Event

Description

This essay addresses the presence and role of the liminal space in Ernest Hemingway’s short-story-cycle In Our Time. The concept of liminality occurs within the cycle in a three-fold fashion and is representative of the broader liminal space between Nick’s birth and death. This paper will address the presence of the liminal space within “Indian Camp” and proposes that the appearance of surgical lines during Nick’s encounter with the Indian women illustrates the liminal space between Nick’s understanding and incomprehension of the complexity of life and death. The line imagery appearing within the landscape of the next stories, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife” as well as ”The End of Something,” illustrate the liminal spaces through both physical landscapes and character movement. This paper also addresses the presence of the liminal space within “Three Day Blow with a discussion of how Nick’s action of crossing the threshold of his friend George’s home is evocative of “Indian Camp,” and represents a liminality between Nick’s perspective of life through the lens of his father and that of Bill, a theme contributing to the conclusion of the two installments of “Big Two-Hearted River.”

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Presenters/Co-Presenters

Brooke Marie Neal, Georgia Southern University

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Olivia Carr Edenfield

Department of Primary Presenter's Major

Department of Literature

Location

Concurrent Sessions (Room 239)

Symposium Year

2022