One of the implied Hemingway’s positions in this novel is that the world
is an inherently destructive place and the best response to the knowledge of
that destructiveness is to create something positive to counter it, starting with
taking pride in one’s dignity. Frederic’s narration here shows that he has made
considerable progress in his understanding of the world’s destructiveness
from the days when he was convinced that even the war “seemed no more
dangerous to me myself than war in the movies” (37). But the tone of com-
plaint shows that he has not yet moved all the way to the implied Heming-
way’s view—and understandably so, since he has just learned that his and
Catherine’s son has died in childbirth. Nevertheless, the dominant effect of
the passage is to close the interpretive, ethical, and affective distance between
Frederic and the authorial audience, and in that way to mark his genuine
progress toward Hemingway’s views.
Shortly after this point, Frederic learns that Catherine too has died. His
first impulse is to say a romantic good-bye to her, but that effort fails miser-
ably. “It was,” he says, “like saying good-bye to a statue” (332). Then somehow
he is able to complete the last steps of his movement toward the implied
Hemingway’s views, and that completion closes the rest of the interpretive,
ethical, and affective distance between Frederic and the authorial audience.
The understated and controlled quality of his narrative’s thoroughly reliable
last sentence subtly conveys the closing of the final distance. “After a while I
went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (332).
The sentence appears to be only a report, but rhetorical readers’ unfolding
responses to Frederic and his experiences—their following Frederic’s difficult
but gradual movement towards sharing Hemingway’s views of the destruc-
tive world and how to live in it—leads them to recognize the sentence as
conveying much more than the surface description of Frederic’s action.
The interaction of textual and readerly dynamics here means that the sen-
tence also functions as an ethical statement of Frederic’s decision not to be
utterly destroyed by Catherine’s death but instead to move forward even as
he acknowledges his loss.
The sixth subtype is what I call, with a nod to social science research on
coping strategies (Pearlin and Schooler), bonding through optimistic compari-
son. It occurs when the narration juxtaposes clearly estranging unreliability
to something far less estranging. Just as you and I can better cope with our
situations in life, almost no matter how bleak they look, by comparing them
with some even less rosy alternative, implied authors can guide audiences to
recognize one example of unreliability as “better” than another. Such com-
parisons within a single narrator’s discourse will take us back to “partial prog-
ress toward the norm,” so I suggest reserving this category for comparisons
ESTRANgINg UNRELIABILITY, BONDINg UNRELIABILITY • 109