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"In Those Days the Distances Were All Very Different": Alienation in Ernest Hemingway's 'God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
- The Hemingway Review
- University of Idaho Department of English
- Volume 30, Number 1, Fall 2010
- pp. 18-30
- 10.1353/hem.2010.a402878
- Article
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This essay explores the significance of the opening paragraph of Hemingway's "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," examining the perplexing but necessary comparison of two seemingly unrelated locales, Kansas City and Constantinople. Early drafts of the story include substantively different introductions. In the published story, however, Hemingway's reliance on a barren physical topography establishes the emotional climate, uniting two distant cities to suggest that the impoverishment of modern urban life is the root cause of the story's tragedy.