"A Day's Wait" by Ernest Hemingway

Influenza

Main Characters

Son: a very sick child that thinks that he's going to die fro the flu. He asks his father, "About what time do you think I'm going to die?"

Father: a man that worries about his sick son. His son tells him that he's fine and that he does not need to go to bed. Although, his father replies, "You, go to bed. I'll see you when I get dressed."

.........

Upon returning home, he finds that Schatz has refused to let anyone into his room because he doesn’t want anyone else to catch the flu. The father enters anyway and finds the boy still staring at the foot of the bed. He takes Schatz’s temperature and finds it 102, as before. He tells Schatz his temperature is fine, and not to worry. Schatz says he’s not worrying, but he is thinking. When the father gives Schatz his medication, Schatz asks if he thinks the medication will help, and the father answers affirmatively.

The story opens as a father discovers that his 9-year-old boy, Schatz, has a fever. The father sends for the doctor and he diagnoses a mild case of influenza. As long as the fever doesn’t go above 104 degrees, the doctor says, the boy will be fine, and he leaves three different types of medication for the father to administer with instructions for each. Schatz’s temperature is determined to be 102 degrees.

• The influenza or flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919, the deadliest in modern history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims.
• More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world.

Words and Definitions

Themes and message

Plot Diagram:

Purgative: purgative agent or medicine

Influenza: a viral infection that attacks your respiratory system-your nose, throat, and lungs. Influenza, commonly called the flu.

Pneumonia: inflammation of the lungs with congestion

Commenced: to begin, start

Flushed: a rosy glow to one's face

The main themes of the short story “A Day’s Wait” by Ernest Hemingway are miscommunication and fatalistic heroism. The themes are explored in a factual, succinct manner in a narrative without too much symbolism.

Schatz and his father!

Miscommunication

As you have seen, the plot and drama of the story start off from miscommunication. Schatz hears that his temperature is 102 degrees and assumes the doctor referred to Celsius degrees, instead of Fahrenheit. This leads him to believe that he is about to die.

Exposition: A little boy and his father are in the boy's bedroom.

Conflict: The little boy is sick.

Rising Action: The father takes the boy's temperature.

Ernest Hemingway

After attempting to interest Schatz in the pirate book and failing, the father pauses, whereupon Schatz asks him when the father thinks Schatz will die. It emerges that Schatz has heard at school in France that no one can live with a temperature above 44, so Schatz thinks he is sure to die with a temperature of 102. He has been waiting to die all day.

After the father explains the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, Schatz relaxes, letting go of his iron self-control and the next day he allows himself to get upset over little things.

Climax: The boy's temperature reads as 102 degrees Fahrenheit but the boy is only use to reading Celsius so he thinks he's going to die.

Fatalistic heroism

As we have mentioned in other parts of this study guide, Schatz is a typical character in Hemingway’s writings, the fatalistic hero. Even if it is not true, the boy assumes the attitude of a hero who is about to die. He accepts his fate with stoicism trying to protect his father and family from the pain of seeing him die and from catching his disease:

Use of contrasts

• Born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero (now in Oak Park), Illinois,
• Ernest Hemingway served in World War I and worked in journalism before publishing his story collection In Our Time.
• He was renowned for novels like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the 1953 Pulitzer. In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.

The two characters in the short story are constructed in strong opposition. While the child is going through an inner torment, taking his cold very dramatically because he assumes he is about to die, the father is very prosaic, ignorant of the child’s concerns.

Surprisingly, many flu victims were young, otherwise healthy adults. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain or prevent its spread.

• In the U.S., citizens were ordered to wear masks, and schools, theaters and other public places were shuttered. Researchers later discovered what made the 1918 pandemic so deadly: In many victims, the influenza virus had invaded their lungs and caused pneumonia.

Falling Action: The father explains the difference between the two ways to read the temperatures.

Resolution: The boy just has the flu so he is better next day.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

1. Why does the boy think he's going to die?

He thinks he's going to die because when his father read 102 degrees, the boy thought he was talking about Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

2. What does the term "Schatz" mean?

Taken from a German term for affection.

3.Describe the setting of the story. A bedroom with a little boy in the bed with his father at his bedside.

"A Day's Wait" by Ernest Hemingway

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PROF ALBIN JOHN

GENERAL English