I know we talked about Catherine and Frederic’s relationship a bit in class today but like y’all. When Henry is in the hospital and it’s the morning before his knee surgery and him and Catherine are talking towards the end of Chapter 16? Bruh I got the ick so bad a chill ran down my spine and I shivered. Like the ick was so bad my toes curled in disgust. Yuck. And here I was questioning Not So Quiet’s feminist integrity and we got this monstrosity. I get it Hemingway uses the ice berg method so its implied there are plot lines and details outside of the words written on the page and so it can be assumed Catherine and Frederic have other, deeper, more meaningful conversations, but what if they don’t and this is literally the only conversations they have. Like that’s so weird they don’t really know all that much about each other and its just like Catherine semi-dissisociating and imagining Henry is her dead lover boy and love bombing him as she simultaneously submits all of her will to him and then Frederic is just like stuck in some imaginary erotic film he has in his head that he wants to recreate with Catherine. Some weird ahh bums lemme tell you. Idk like honestly, when Catherine isn’t being talked about (which at this point is very rarely) then in my opinion, it isn’t that bad. I appreciate the slow mundane descriptions of nature actually. I think it’s poetic. But I cannot stand the relationship plot line and how it was written like regardless of its literary purpose it literally creeps me out so bad and nothing in Hemingway’s iceberg is gonna fix it.
4 thoughts on “Creepy”
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I don’t think Frederic is creepy; I honestly think Catherine is the creepy one. Frederic wants to sleep with her and marry her, and he seems to care about her for who she is. He doesn’t seem to expect her to do whatever he wants; he seems to be going along with her to make her happy. She’s the instigator of the conversations; she’s the one insisting she’ll be perfect and Frederic is her everything. She’s very broken by the war and grief and appears to be clinging to this relationship as a lifeline. She needs help, and Frederic does seem to be carefully *trying* to help, but he’s out of his depth and she needs REAL help.
I agree, but also too, I think Henry also has the freaky creepy ah side of him just as much as Cathrine (maybe more so in some circumstances like consistently telling her her own “thoughts” almost regurtitating his thoughts to her!)
I honestly think he never intended to marry her. When they met at the beginning, I absolutely think he was just pursuing her for a hookup and then he was going to drop her. I was very surprised when she came to the American hospital and continued to be a character in the book. It’s only after he’s in the American hospital and they’re sleeping together regularly that he offers marriage BECAUSE it’s his duty to provide for a child that might result from their relationship.
In the beginning he never claimed to love her though. They both were “playing a game” rather casually.
Once she arrived at the hospital I think his feelings changed to genuine affection, however inadequate it might be. He wants to stay with her, and even in this third section where he could easily disappear off the face of the earth and abandon her, he wants to get back to her.