Get A Seeing Eye Dog

One can tell just by looking at the title, "Get A Seeing Eye Dog," that the story is about a blind person. Hemingway writes the piece centered around the concept of being blind, both on a literal level (with the main character's blindness) as well as in a metaphorical sense. "Get a Seeing Eye Dog" is not much different from other Hemingway stories, in the sense that the events of the story are primarily communicated through dialogue. In this particular story, Hemingway delves into detail only in passages describing visual imagery.... describing what can't actually be seen. For instance, the first page consists mainly of concise dialogue, but has a descriptive passage about the safari leaving. He speaks about remembering events, clearly describing the events, cherishing the memories. We see this again with a series of short dialogue followed by "you know... I remember it so well that it is palpable," followed by a  passage describing what can no longer be seen. The blindness in the story may convey us taking life's events for granted. Perhaps the saying "you don't know what you have until it's gone" applies to this story. The visual images are only fully detailed when they can't be seen and appreciated. Hemingway portrays life as a series of events taken for granted when they can be truly appreciated, and uses the blind man in "Get a Seeing Eye Dog" as a representation of wanting to appreciate the everyday beauties of life, but being incapable of doing so. He remembers moments in time that he commits himself to remembering. The story may be Hemingway's way of saying that the world is blind to the everyday, simple things in life, and doesn't fully realize them or appreciate them until they no longer exist.

A Way You'll Never Be

I did some research on the color yellow and its meanings, and found that it has conflicting symbolism. In some instances yellow is used to represent hope and happiness, but yellow can also stand for cowardice or deceit. I think that both meanings of the color yellow are employed in "A Way You'll Never Be." It has been established that the cowardice is portrayed because of the demoralizing situation he is in, at the mercy of a man shooting him in the head. He sees the yellow house, representing his feeling of cowardice, insignificance, and defeat. I believe that the other meaning of yellow is apparent here as well. The yellow house could represent hope and happiness, and the river stands in between him and this happiness or hope. The presence of the house represents his feeling of cowardice, and the fact that the house is far away, seemingly out of reach because of the river, represents the feeling of hopelessness. The river may be a representation of the war or his wound, which is the obstacle that stands between Nick and his sense of happiness and hope. He will never reach the yellow house to learn more about it in this hallucination because the river stands in his way, just as he will never reach happiness in reality because of the events of the war. The war stripped him of his hope for sanity because of the head wound he suffered. The hallucination is a result of this head wound, so in a way, I think his hallucinations represent his reality in a euphemistic way. His negative feelings of hopelessness and cowardice due to the war and a head wound are represented by a yellow house on the other side of the river.