Themes
- Truth
- Hemingway tells his story with a lack of wordy fillers. Hemingway's narrator tells the "Up in Michigan" narrative with a black-and-white appeal that purposefully creates little space for misinterpretation. That said, Hemingway's sparse style allows the reader to re-create the "background" of the story, which recalls Hemingway's iceberg theory. Most of the story's content is actually submerged for the reader to imagine.
- Objectivity
- In "Up in Michigan," Hemingway uses his writing style to make his characters and events clear for the reader. He does this by utilizing objectivity -- his way of keeping things in their simplest form and not confusing what is occurring within the story.
- Isolation
- The early part of the story establishes that Hortons Bay is isolated in Northern Michigan; there are only five houses in the village. For two young people like Liz and Jim, there would likely be pressure to couple from the few people in the community. For example, Mrs. Smith thinks Liz is "neat." Simple proximity could also lead to sexual attraction. This is true for Liz, as she is infatuated with Jim, but not for Jim, as he "never thought about " (156).
Read more about this topic: Up In Michigan
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