When the wife leaves her hotel room in order to go rescue the cat in the rain outside, she walks past the hotel-keeper. Here, the narrator captures her reaction to the hotel-keeper, using hyperbolic language and imagery in the process:
He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.
Though Hemingway’s language here is quite minimalist—as it is throughout the story—there is subtle and significant figurative language in this passage. First, the wife reflects on how she “liked the deadly serious way [the hotel-keeper] received any compliments.” This is an example of hyperbolic language, as it is unlikely the man received compliments in the same way he might receive news of someone’s death. This kind of exaggeration helps readers see the man through the wife's eyes. There is also a subtle and rare example of imagery in this passage, seen in the wife’s fondness for the hotel-keeper’s “old, heavy face and big hands.” Readers can both picture the man’s face and hands here and also, in a somewhat sideways way, feel the man’s face via Hemingway’s use of the word “heavy.”
It is notable that the wife pays such close attention to the hotel-keeper’s habits and looks. This is Hemingway’s way of showing readers how lonely the wife is and how much she longs for human connection. The hotel-keeper is alert, serious, and “want[s] to serve her,” unlike her husband George, who primarily ignores her throughout the story, choosing to hide in books rather than engage with her.
