Abstract
Volatility regarding negotiated subject positions features prominently in Hemingway’s works. Yet, his portrayal of Hungarians in the vignette of Chapter VIII and the short story entitled “The Revolutionist” (both found in the collection of In Our Time, 1925) underlines 1920s America’s unwillingness to modify preconceived stereotypes about the “other.” Both stories have attracted considerable attention among scholars who have analyzed these texts from such perspectives as political ideology and the arts. Aiming to fill a gap in literary criticism, I shall examine the narrative representation of stereotypical approaches to the Hungarian minority with emphasis on societal expectations set by white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class men in the United States during the 1920s. The values they propagated in society illustrate that the Roaring Twenties was an openly discriminatory decade in which ignoring and sometimes literally attacking the “other” for deviating from the prescribed norms of the era was acceptable. Anxiety about the “other” uncovers a great deal of national insecurity; America’s battle with foreigners merges into a battle with itself.
Highlights
Volatility regarding negotiated subject positions features prominently in Hemingway’s works
The narrator in Hemingway’s In Our Time (1925) has fixed views regarding various nationalities and ethnic groups. His description of the “other”—represented by Hungarians in the vignette of Chapter VIII and the short story entitled “The Revolutionist”—tends to be driven by stereotypes implied within his enculturation in Middle America
He does not create unlikable characters who happen to be Hungarian: they represent unpleasantness because they are Hungarian. They are presented as different and unable to integrate into the circle of the other characters. They remain outsiders who are separated from the rest of society because of their “otherness.” Hemingway does not avoid using derogatory terms for minorities in his novels and short stories (“nigger” [Hemingway 1995: 133], “wops” [Hemingway 1995: 155], “kike” [Hemingway 2004: 142], etc.)
Summary
Volatility regarding negotiated subject positions features prominently in Hemingway’s works. The narrator in Hemingway’s In Our Time (1925) has fixed views regarding various nationalities and ethnic groups. His description of the “other”—represented by Hungarians in the vignette of Chapter VIII and the short story entitled “The Revolutionist”—tends to be driven by stereotypes implied within his enculturation in Middle America.
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