A Very Short Story

Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” is a piece that incorporates irony, symbolism, and hyperbole to create a satirical and thought-inducing work.

The overall meaning of this story is a tad baffling, seeing as it starts out well and drives on to become absurd and negatively surprising. The beginning begins with the “He” we never know the name of, and Luz in their escapades and shared moments of love. The word ‘luz’ in itself is Spanish for light, light being a symbol of brightness, guidance, and assurance. So taking into account the way the male protagonist seems daydream and think of Luz, she is his only hope in a dreary hospital, which usually stands for hopelessness and death. Luz is his hope in a place where there is anything but.

Just from that simple detail, the reader can already tell that the relationship between the two is less having to with actual love, and more drenched in the basic search for fulfilling one’s needs, in this case, the search for hope, and in Luz’s case, an attempt at doing some good-willed acts driven on pity. This is why their so-called ‘love’ is a hyperbole in itself. It is not the long-lasting entity they like to believe it is. And this is seen when the piece states that even though they felt like were married, “they wanted everyone to know about it.” It is childish and in a way shows the opposite of what they are trying to demonstrate. If they really loved each other, they would marry each other for their own benefit, not to assuage their peer’s second thoughts or doubts.

It is at the very end that the reader finds Luz ditching the male character for a an Italian, after which she tells the former that theirs was only a “boy and girl” love, and proceeds to expect a wedding proposal from the latter. She knew it was for the best.

But that is not the case, as seen when the major fails to marry her and contracts “gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.”

That ending was like meshing a love story and then placing a paragraph from a satirical, cynical and caustic version of happily-ever-after short essays. You just don’t expect it. The gag-inducing term “gonorrhea”, the unpredictable affair of a major with a mere “sales girl” and all of that occurring in a very public, very slutty venue of a taxi cab is just absurd. The fact that this is how this formerly positive and bright story comes to an end is both bizarre and sad.

It blends to make an ironic tale of how sometimes when people choose to let go of their morals or let others go because of one’s unprecedented rise to the top of whatever it may be, life just might leave them with everything but.