In Hemingway's In Our Time, the author refers to clean water in the form of lakes, rivers, and streams in almost all of his short stories, while he makes direct reference to water in his chapters only when that water is stagnant or contaminated. Perhaps this collection of Hemingway's is representative of the conscious mind through his stories, and the subconscious through his chapters. Read as such, water can be seen as a central element in consciousness for Hemingway. Perhaps this was an attempt to use "stream of consciousness" style, made popular by Virginia Woolf, in a very different way--with the stream as a concrete piece of the writing. Water, then, can be interpreted in the work as the difference between what is real and what is dreamt.

Because "On The Quai at Smyrna" appears in the book as a story and...