Summary Of Ernest Hemingway's Up In Michigan

The world can be cruel. Life is not always rainbows and castles; it is not a fairytale. Most people learn this by adulthood and accept it. However, some eventually learn the truth about real life the hard way, after experiencing first hand its brutality. In “Up in Michigan” by Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway displays loss of innocence through Liz’s experience of rape.

Hemingway shows Liz’s innocence from the get-go. Liz is a young woman in a small town in Michigan. She’s infatuated with Jim. Her infatuation is shown early on, “Liz liked Jim very much. She liked it…” (Hemingway 1). Hemingway repeatedly uses “She liked it” when describing how Liz likes Jim’s mustache, walk, smile, etc. It’s clear that these are superficial characteristics that she likes about Jim: She does not actually know anything about Jim. This shows her naivety about love; because she has never experienced love, she is only capable of experiencing “puppy love” or superficial attraction. In “Coming of Age in Horton’s Bay: Hemingway’s ‘Up in Michigan’”, Alice Petry Hall as well argues the same. She states “But it is precisely her limited and superficial knowledge of a man which would tend to generate infatuation in an inexperienced young girl…” (Petry Hall 2). She notes too, that Liz’s lack of experience and knowledge of the

“Then she walked across the dock and up the steep sandy road to go to bed. A cold mist was coming up through the woods from the bay” (Hemingway 3). Ernest Hemingway uses the mist coming up from the bay to symbolize Liz coming out of her previous romantic illusions she once had. Previously, when Jim took Liz out on the dock it was completely dark and there was no mention of mist. “The water was lapping in the piles and the point was dark across the bay” (Hemingway 3) but the mist is mentioned after Liz’s rape “She walked over to the edge of the dock and looked down to the water. There was a mist coming up the bay” (Hemingway