Child's Perspective in Hemingway's My Old Man

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The first aspect is stressed especially by Jackson J. Benson when he compares "My Old
Man" and Anderson's "I Want To Know Why" similar in view, subject, plot, tone, and
diction.
"Both stories are about boys in a race track setting. Both boys admire an older man, are
influenced by him, and then find their admiration betrayed. Both boys are left puzzled and
hurt by the experience. Each story is told in the first person by the boy who is characterized
by slightly broken grammar and the use of adolescent slang 'gee', 'gosh', and 'swell'."
(Benson, 273)
Christian Messinger argues that "Anderson sensed both the longing for success that
gripped track people and the disorder that accompanied overidentification with horses and
racing." (Christian K. Messinger, 278) The following, however, will leave aside a possible
influence by Anderson1 but rather concentrates on the employed narrating device of a
child's raconteur. Although it suggests itself to compare the two narration modes, I am
afraid I have to narrow my focus for the following examination. As Carl Ficken points out
"At the beginning of his writing career in the 1920's, Hemingway was working at (…) the
problem of point of view. In his first publication, Three Stories and Ten Poems, 1923, he
told two of the stories through an omniscient third-person narrator and the other in the first
person (…) "My Old Man" in fact, remains one of the classical examples of the unreliable
first person narrator." (Carl Ficken, 94) The following essay will thus discuss the second field of critical interest concerning "My
Old Man": the narrative revelation or more specific Hemingway's technique of establishing
a child's perspective. Based on Franz K. Stanzel’s three categories person, perspective and
modus I will outline the typical features of the autobiographical I-narrator as Stanzel states
them as relevant for interpretation. As I have pointed out the criteria that compose the I
narrating situation I will on these grounds discuss further how a child’s perspective as of
the I-narrator, Joe, is established in “My Old Man” and what function it serves in the story.
1 Hemingway vehemently denied the claimed influence of his elder patron that overshadowed his artist ego.
With the bitter satire Torrents of Spring (1927) he publicly recoiled from Anderson and broke with him as a
friend.