An Analysis of Up in Michigan Essay -- Up in Michigan Essays

An Analysis of Up in Michigan My choosing this story for an analysis is based on what I think is the very American feeling there is to this short story. The title alone has this American ring to it: Up in Michigan. From the start settling the story deep into the soil of the country. The title seems like the beginning of an old tale, once upon a time up in Michigan†¦it ends there and propels the "unfinished", never settled way of the story along. And at the same time it signifies that this is just another story, told a hundred times before. The story is set in a very small town, which plays a great role in the way the characters interact with one another. The two main characters of the story get presented each in their little paragraph in the beginning of the story. Their way of meeting each other is, one gets the feeling, not by chance, but rather because the town is so small that they could never avoid meeting each other. A phrase like "One day she found that she liked it he way the hair was black †¦"(p.59) indicates that the girl Liz' falling in love with Jim the blacksmith is not the falling in love of a metropolitan person who is marked by the many choices of a bigger environment. Liz's love or interest in Jim comes from there being no other it seems and so with time she has developed an interest in him that is totally based on a picture she makes of him in her mind. What is significant here is the obvious difference in the way the two characters are described by Hemingway. Liz likes Jim very much; Jim just likes her face. She thinks about him all the time; he never thinks of her. There is a basic unbalan... ... the death of a young girls dreams, it is at the same time the initiation of a life. It is the simple act of growing up, moving into another world, where nothing is as you dream it will be. Where bitterness is an unescapeable part of your life. Where your hair can not always be neat and your clothes might get dirty sometimes. The fact that Jim lies unconscious on the dock as if he now has the role of the dead buck, just emphasizes Liz coming to consciousness about her own life. She rises from the battlefield like a heroine, at first she shakes Jim in the fainting hope that there might be a way to get back. ("†¦shook him once more just to make sure"), but then realizing her fate she stoically takes of her coat and as an imitation of the Pieta-figure puts her coat over her past life, that in the figure of the drunken Jim, has passed away.