In the third movement, which is a turning point, the girl re-joins the man at the table outside the bar on his side of the station. Here she asserts herself for the first time as the man persistently argues to settle for an abortion through hypocritical doubletalk, and consequently she comes to defy his viewpoint:
G: ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.’
A: ‘Of course it does, But I don’t want anybody but you. I don’t want anybody else. And I know it’s perfectly simple’.
G: ‘Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple.’ (my italics)
A: ‘It’s all right for you to say that, but I do know it.’
The man’s glaring hypocrisy pushes the girl to the limit of her self-control:
G: ‘‘I’ll scream,’ the girl said.’
As the discussion is near to its
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But in this story everything has to do with her feelings about having an abortion (Renner, p 35).
And he further argues:
How, one might well ask, in the view of the girl’s near-hysterical aversion to the idea of abortion, would she be smiling if she were really about to board a train taking her to the operation? If she were able to smile at all, would she not be smiling bitterly, ironically – out of the same sarcastic exasperation with which she has characteristically responded to the American’s pleading? (Renner, p 36).
Renner concludes that the logic of the story’s design enjoins that she smiles brightly at the waitress’s announcement of the train because she is no longer headed in direction of having the abortion that she has contemplated only with distress. O’Brien on the other hand, infers that the girl smiles lamentingly and that it means that she will have an abortion (O’Brien, p
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It is even implied that this makes her the real protagonist of the story (Bauer, p 134). The transformation from a dependent girl to a mature woman making her own choices happens on feminine terms. Read in such a manner the story can be viewed as feministic and anti-patriarchal, since she opposes the man’s wishes and single-handedly takes the decision that will affect her for the rest of her life (Lee, p 15). It shows a Hemingway more perceptive about the underlying dynamics of female-male relationships than he has been given credit for (Bauer, p