The Cat in the House: Marechera Reads Hemingway

Abstract

Marechera’s debt to Hemingway has been in question since early complaints that “House of Hunger” copies the individualism of western writing more than it adds to an organically African tradition. Now that Marechera has been convincingly defended from such accusations, I am returning to this question with different motivations. This article looks at Marechera’s engagement with the western literature that perhaps most influenced him and ends up revealing more than a stylistic connection to Hemingway. I read Marechera’s “House of Hunger” as a direct sociological response to Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain.”

Marechera’s story is a record of the radical gulf he encounters between the realities in which he and Hemingway wrote, delimiting the substantial difference in setting that Marechera had to cross as a reader in order to appreciate Hemingway. His exploration uncovers differing symbolic registers for desire and an alternative structure for self-identity within a social space.