1989/05/01 by Thomas Strychacz
Arts and Humanities · #American and British Literature Analysis #Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research #Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
paper · doi:10.2307/2926696
crossref issued 1989/05/01 · crossref published 1989/05/01 · crossref published-print 1989/05/01 · openalex publication_date 1989/05/01 · crossref created 2006/04/24 · crossref deposited 2018/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30
I Nthe bullring, men are made or unmanned. The kid, in the first bullfight vignette of Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, submits to the code of the ring and, by killing five times, reaches his majority. Then, remarks the narrator, He sat down in the sand and puked and they held a cape over him.' Such modest concealment does not satisfy the delighted crowd, which hollered and threw things down into the bull recognizing that this kid has finally made it, in this moment, to manhood. Villalta, the matador at the height of his powers, plays to the more deliberately. His killing becomes a test of intense watching as he sighted the bull along the sword blade and the bull look[ed] at him straight in front, hating. With Villalta's life and manhood on the line, the watches and roars with every pass of the muleta. The vignette refers repeatedly to the bullfight's quality of spectacle. If it happened right down close in front of you, could see Villalta snarl at the bull and curse him, begins the narrator: the observer becomes you the reader, and Villalta the cynosure of all eyes. At the end, Villalta's hand up at the crowd announces the successful completion of this ritual of manhood-and acknowledges its essentially theatrical nature. The physical characteristics of the ring shape the rituals enacted there, providing necessary boundaries within which potentially chaotic action may reveal a comprehensible structure. The presence of the audience, in particular, is crucial for the transformation of space into arena. Acting as an agent of legitimation for ritual gestures made in the ring, the audience assimilates all action to performance and invests performance with value.