A Day's Wait

"A Day's Wait" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway published in his 1933 short story collection Winner Take Nothing about a nine-year-old boy who is sick during a cold winter.

The story focuses on the boy and his father who calls him Schatz (German, meaning darling). When the boy gets the flu, a doctor is called in and recommends three different medicines and tells the boy's father that his temperature is 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius). He is very quiet and depressed, finally asking when he will die; he had thought that a 102 degree temperature was lethal because he heard in France (where Celsius is used) that one cannot live with a temperature over 44 degrees. When the father explains to him the difference in scales, the boy slowly relaxes, and the next day, "he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance."

The story´s theme is the boy's misunderstanding leading to the fear of his death without his father realizing this.

analysis:

a)A fateful misunderstanding

The misunderstanding between father and son exists because they do not have the same thoughts. The boy thinks he will die but the father thinks his son is only ill. The boy uses the word "it" to describe the process of dying. The father also uses the word "it", but to describe that it is no problem for him to stay at home with his son. Since they only use the pronoun "it" neither of them knows what the other person is talking about.

b)The hunting scene

The landscape is described as frozen because it's a cold day. The father's behaviour is also cold because he is shooting birds and killing them. The father's inability to understand his son is symbolically expressed by the layer of ice separating him from nature (he is helpless on the icy surface); the same helplessness applies to his relationship to his son.

c)Interdependence between theme and point of view

The theme focuses on the misunderstanding between father and son, which is disastrous for the son due to the lack of knowledge as far as the different scales are concerned. The failure in communication leads to the son´s being afraid of dying. This is why Hemingway chooses the first person narrator with a limited point of view. He is therefore confined to presenting mere observations and suppositions. "The boy was evidently holding tight onto himself about something", which is only one example of the father´s suppositions. The father is only an observer of the scene without realizing the son´s fears. He remains detached and cannot imagine and feel the son´s distress. An observer narrator is the best way of expressing this distance between the two. Hemingway cleverly chooses this point of view as one means of showing the lack of mutual closeness in the relationship between father and son. The father does not imagine the son´s fears and cannot look into his mind at all.