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, which portrays a young boy's inner conflict and fear when he becomes ill.[1][2][3][4]

"A Day's Wait"
Published inThe Snows of Kilimanjaro
Publication date1933

Plot

Narrated in first person by father,[5] 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. 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 mainly signifies the boy's misunderstanding leading to many changes in his own mind

Reception

Sheldon Norman Grebstein remarks that in "A Day's Wait", Hemingway "handles a potentially sentimental situation without expressing feeling in overt terms and without calling directly upon the reader's sense of pathos. We surmise the father's love and concern for his sick son not from any declaration of it in exposition or dialogue but rather from a series of observations, gestures and dramatic metaphors".[6]

References
  1. "A Day´s Wait by Ernest Hemingway". gs.cidsnet.de. Archived from the original on 2005-12-21. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  2. Striker, Jonet. "The Short Story Elements In A Day's Wait". articlesnatch.com. Archived from the original on 28 December 2013. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  3. Cearley, Valery Faye Thomson. Exploring connections in Ernest Hemingway's "A day's wait". worlcat.org. OCLC 50542423.
  4. "A Day's Wait". litmed.med.nyu.edu. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  5. Stafford, N. E. (1999). Piggott, Arkansas (ed.). "'A Day's Wait'". Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. 30 (2): 139 – via EBSCO.
  6. Beegel, S. F. (1993). "Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates and male taciturnity in Hemingway's 'A Day's Wait'". Studies in Short Fiction. 30 (4): 535 – via Questia.
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