Aspects Of Initiation In Hemingway′s Short Fiction

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ceberg-principle) have to be neglected. They should, however, be kept in mind as they are important constituents of Hemingway′s work.

2. What is a `story of initiation′?
In general, one can say that there is no single precise and universally applicable definition of stories of initiation in literary theory. This is mainly due to the fact that many theorists (as well as fiction authors) made statements about the character of the initiation-story only as a kind of by-product while analyzing specific examples of the genre. There are some attempts to build a concise theory, though, on which the following chapter will focus.

2.1 Origins of the term
Initiation as an anthropologic term means "the passage from childhood or adolescence to maturity and full membership in adult society" (Marcus, 189), which usually involves some kind of symbolic rite. In American literary theory the term first appears after World War II (Freese 94). As the term `initiation′ is borrowed from anthropology, many of the definitions of the literary equivalent are oriented on the original concept. As nowadays initiation rites are seldom found (especially in western societies) (Freese 128f), the term had to be adapted, though. The ritual aspects have been replaced by other characteristics to define stories of initiation which will be discussed in the following chapters. There are, however, still some definitions which also find parts of rituality in literary realizations of the initiation-theme (Marcus 190). This hypothesis is controversial in as much as it is difficult to define ritualistic behavior in everyday (western) life. Furthermore, these ritualistic initiation stories include "adult society deliberately testing and indoctrinating the young" (Marcus 190), which is only found in a "very small proportion of works called initiation stories" (Marcus 190).

2.2 Theoretic approaches to the initiation-theme in literature
Here, some attemp...