A Study Guide for Ernest Hemingway's "The Three-Day Blow"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Ernest Hemingway's "The Three-Day Blow", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Studentsfor all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535846110

Book preview

18

The Three-Day Blow

Ernest Hemingway

1925

Introduction

The Three-Day Blow is one of Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, originally published in In Our Time in 1925. The story takes place in Michigan in 1917 or so and follows Nick as he arrives at his friend Bill's father's cabin in the woods at the onset of a three-day windstorm. The two young men start drinking and chatting, and finally Bill starts asking Nick about what has happened with Marjorie, with whom Nick has had a relationship. Whether Nick is at peace over the way things with Marjorie have worked out proves to be the crux of the story.

Nick Adams is Hemingway's most biographically complete persona. He shares the author's background and even his curious youthful nickname Wemedge. The notion that Nick is a version of Hemingway, if not a strictly autobiographical one, can hardly be disputed. Hemingway wrote the story in Paris, as recorded in his memoir A Moveable Feast. The Three-Day Blow can also be found in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938) and posthumous collections including The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987). It is best read in tandem with the Nick Adams story that precedes it, The End of Something.

Author Biography

Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a well-to-do Chicago suburb, to a doctor, Clarence, and his wife, Grace. He was the second of six children, and the only boy until he was sixteen and his brother Leicester was born. He thus grew up in an environment dominated by women and girls, competing with his sisters at their games and even wearing their clothes sometimes, as his mother was not inclined to enforce strict gender boundaries. As a suffragist, she was among the earliest generations of feminists, and she was also a successful singer, making opera appearances, teaching voice, and composing and publishing songs. Grace was not especially maternal, however, and would later react indifferently to her son's success. Clarence was also highly accomplished in his field, designing surgical instruments and investigating infant nutrition. He was puritanical in his criticism of vices ranging from drinking to dancing, but he did instill in his son a love of the great outdoors, especially through hunting and fishing. Hemingway spent the summers of his youth at his parents' cabin in northern Michigan, off Walloon Lake, hiking, swimming, and hunting, often in the company of Ojibway