The Battler

"The Battler" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time, by Boni & Liveright.^[1] The story is the fifth in the collection to feature Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego.^[2]

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Plot

"The Battler" begins as Nick Adams is thrown off a train, caught as a stowaway. Nick stumbles into the forest, to make his way to the next town, where he sees a fire in the darkness. A man next to the fire greets him, asking how he got the black eye. Nick answers that he was punched off a train that he got on from Walton Junction. The man says should hit the man on the train with a rock the next time he passes. Nick replies, "I’ll get him".

When the man compliments Nick on his toughness, he replies that "You got to be tough." After this, Nick realizes that the man's face is misshapen with a smashed nose, permanently swollen lips, and one missing ear. The man then asks Nick whether he has ever been crazy and admits that "I’m not quite right" followed by "I’m crazy".

Nick starts to feel uncomfortable and considers leaving until the man reveals himself to be Ad Francis, a former boxing champion. Later, Ad's African-American friend Bugs comes back to the camp with their dinner. While preparing dinner, Ad asks Nick for a knife, and Bugs tells Nick to not hand it to Ad. Ad is greatly offended and becomes very aggressive, saying, "You come in here where nobody asks you and eat a man’s food and when he asks to borrow a knife you get snotty." He threatens to hit Nick, but Bugs knocks him out with a blackjack.

Nick asks how Ad became so crazy, and Bugs explains that Ad took too many beatings in the ring and that his wife–who the media falsely claimed to be his sister–abandoned him. Shortly after, Ad became depressed and could no longer financially support himself.

After this revelation, Nick leaves the camp and heads towards Mancelona.

Characterization of African American character

Bugs, the black character, is referred to throughout the story as a negro and also by the pejorative term "nigger". This racist terminology is used casually in a third-person limited narration, which seems to reflect the perspective of Nick Adams. At the same time, Bugs' actions and speech indirectly reveal that he is generous, intelligent, and the character most in control of the situation at hand.

References

^ Oliver (1999), 21
^ Tetlow (1992), 65

Sources

Oliver, Charles. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-3467-3
Tetlow, Wendolyn E. (1992). Hemingway's "In Our Time": Lyrical Dimensions. Cranbury NJ: Associated University Presses. ISBN 978-0-8387-5219-7

External links

Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Library

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Nonfiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

Short stories

"Up In Michigan" (1921)
"Indian Camp" (1924)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"Banal Story" (1926)
"Today is Friday" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1927)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Now I Lay Me" (1927)
"A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
"Ten Indians" (1927)
"An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
"A Pursuit Race" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
"Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Plays

Today is Friday (1926)
The Fifth Column (1938)

Screenplays

The Spanish Earth (1937 film)

Letters and
journalism

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet
"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story
A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series
To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)
For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1959 TV play 1965 TV series 1984 song
The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 film 1999 animated film
Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) Under My Skin (1950) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977) Soldier's Home (1977) My Old Man (1979) After the Storm (2001) The Garden of Eden (2008) Across the River and into the Trees (2022)