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]

Plot

“The Battler” begins with Nick Adams, the main character, being thrown off a train because he was caught attempting to stow away. Nick then stumbles into a forest, trying to find his way to the next town. Nick sees a fire in the darkness and makes his way over to it. He sees a man next to the fire and greets him. The man asks Nick where he got the black eye and Nick explains that he was punched off of a train. The man tells him that he should hit the man on the train with a rock the next time he passes to which Nick replied, “I’ll get him.” The man compliments Nick on his toughness to which Nick replies, “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 if he has ever been crazy and says “I’m not quite right,” then, “I’m crazy.” Nick starts to feel uncomfortable after this and considers leaving, until the man reveals himself to be Ad Francis, a former boxing champion. Later, Bugs comes back to the camp with their dinner. While preparing dinner, Ad asks Nick for the knife and Bugs tells Nick to not hand it to him. 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 in order to sedate him. Nick asks how Ad became so crazy and Bugs explains that he took too many beatings in the ring, plus his wife, whom 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 the next town.

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)

Non-fiction

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

Posthumous

Short stories

"Indian Camp" (1925)
"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)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"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)

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)

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Letters and
journalism

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 film The Gun Runners, 1958 film Captain Khorshid, 1987 film

For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1965 TV series Metallica song

The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 miniseries 1999 film

Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977)