# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Ernest Hemingway.

- [Nick Adams](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/nick_adams.md): Nick Adams moves through Hemingway's stories as son, soldier, husband, and fisherman — always the same watchful boy who once lay face-down on a pillow and told himself his heart was broken. He wants to be good and tough 
- [Unknown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): He talks his way through bars, poolrooms, and frozen roads, testing everyone he meets against the war he was in and the books he's read. He wants real communion but keeps getting humiliated by men who actually fought — I
- [Scripps O'Neil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/scripps_oneil.md): Scripps O'Neil returns home to an empty house and a distant Indian war-whoop, then sets off down the railroad tracks with nothing but grief and grand schemes. He is sentimental, self-dramatizing, and genuinely tender — t
- [Manuel Garcia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/manuel_garcia.md): Manuel Garcia arrives at Retana's office carrying his suitcase, freshly out of the hospital, and asks for work in a trade that has already written him off. Under the stuffed head of the bull that killed his brother, he n
- [Yogi Johnson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/yogi_johnson.md): Yogi Johnson leaves the workmen's entrance into melting snow and a town suddenly full of thaw, and the season's arrival unsettles him more than the war did. He tests himself against waitresses, librarians, schoolgirls, a
- [Jack Brennan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/jack_brennan.md): Jack Brennan is training for Walcott at a country farm, but he can't sleep, can't shut his hands, and can't stop worrying about Bronx property, Florida property, the kids, the wife. Hogan and the narrator watch him go st
- [Diana Scripps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/diana_scripps.md): Diana lives in a rented room above a former saloon, hoping a story by Ruth Suckow or a shared walk to the beanery will hold Scripps's attention. She married him, but the spring wind and the town's easy camaraderie pull h
- [Mrs. Scripps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/mrs_scripps.md): Scripps O'Neil's elderly mother, a minor character in The Torrents of Spring.
- [Zurito](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/zurito.md): Zurito is the picador Manuel insists on having, the man whose skill with the horse and lance lets a bullfighter call his shots. He belongs to the older, harder world of the corrida, where a good pic means the difference 
- [The girl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/the_girl.md): She waits tables in a mountain inn, sings German opera under her breath, and wears an apron that swells with a pregnancy no ring explains. Nick and George read her touchiness as pride and speculate about her life, but he
- [Krebs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/krebs.md): Krebs sits on his front porch watching bobbed-haired girls walk under the trees, wanting one without wanting the courting, the intrigue, or the consequences. The war taught him that you don't need a girl unless you think
- [Billy Tabeshaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/billy_tabeshaw.md): Billy Tabeshaw leans on his cant-hook while Dick Boulton picks a fight with Dr. Adams over stolen logs, sweating through the whole row without understanding a word of it. When the men walk off through the back gate, Dick
- [William Campbell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/william_campbell.md): William Campbell lies under a sheet he has decided he loves, telling 'Sliding Billy' Turner that he can't slide, that every time he tries it catches. He is deep in the grip of something—drugs, drink, or both—and Turner, 
- [Walcott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/walcott.md): Walcott exists mostly as a rumor in the training camp — the man Hogan says will tear Jack in two, the reason the farm's reputation is on the line. He never needs to appear to press down on the story; his reputation does 
- [Mandy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/mandy.md): Mandy works at the restaurant where Scripps eats, and her conversation — all those interminable literary reminiscences — has made her the quiet center of a marriage coming apart. Diana Scripps watches her husband light u
- [John Collins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/john_collins.md): John Collins shows up at the farm with Morgan and Steinfelt in tow, breezy and unbothered, telling everyone Jack has never been right and never will be. He's the one who's supposed to have the fighter ready, yet he's bee
- [Liz Coates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/liz_coates.md): Liz Coates works for the Smiths and is the tidiest girl Mrs. Smith has ever seen, but her real life is the kitchen door and the view of Jim Gilmore walking over from the shop. She likes his mustache, his white teeth, the
- [Danny Hogan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/danny_hogan.md): Hogan runs the training camp and has watched Jack not sleep for a week, calling him stale as poorhouse cake and predicting Walcott will tear him in two. He's blunt, unsentimental, and right, and he knows the farm will ta
- [Uncle George](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/uncle_george.md): Nick Adams's uncle, present during the Indian camp birth.
- [The doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/the_doctor.md): The doctor moves through the early Nick Adams stories as the figure who explains what has happened — the major's young wife dead of pneumonia, the machines and the photographs of restored hands. He is practical, unsentim
- [Don Miguel Retana](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/don_miguel_retana.md): A bullfight promoter in The Undefeated.
- [James G. Blaine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/james_g_blaine.md): A political figure referenced in The Torrents of Spring.
- [Ole Andreson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/ole_andreson.md): Ole Andreson has stopped going out for meals, and when Nick Adams climbs the stairs to warn him, he receives the news with a flatness that unsettles more than fear would. He is heavy, slow, and past fighting; whatever he
- [Guy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/guy.md): A friend of Nick Adams in The Three-Day Blow.
- [El Heraldo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/el_heraldo.md): A bullfighting newspaper in The Undefeated.
- [Massa Red Dog](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/massa_red_dog.md): A character in The Torrents of Spring, a Native American.
- [Turner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/turner.md): A friend of Nick Adams in The Battler.
- [Marjorie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/marjorie.md): Marjorie rows the boat, baits her own hooks, and knows the river better than most of the men in town, which makes her a genuine companion rather than a decorative one. She is easy with Nick in the old way, teasing and co
- [Henry James](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/henry_james.md): Author referenced in The Torrents of Spring.
- [Indians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/indians.md): Native American characters appearing in several stories.
- [Hubert Elliot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/hubert_elliot.md): Hubert Elliot came to Europe with a contract for a book of poems and a vague sense that marriage and art would somehow complete each other. Instead he and Cornelia wanted a baby with a desperation that curdled into separ
- [Mrs. Elliot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/mrs_elliot.md): Cornelia Elliot married Hubert after a dance in the back room of a shop, and the marriage has settled into a long, humid disappointment neither of them can name. She learned the touch system to type his manuscripts, but 
- [Rinaldi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/rinaldi.md): An Italian soldier in In Another Country.
- [George Gardner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/george_gardner.md): A boxer mentioned in Fifty Grand.
- [Young Hernandez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/young_hernandez.md): A bullfighter in The Undefeated.
- [Maera](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/maera.md): A bullfighter in The Undefeated.
- [Bugs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/bugs.md): Ad Francis's companion in The Battler.
- [Mister Adams](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/mister_adams.md): Nick Adams's father, the doctor.
- [Jim Gilmore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/jim_gilmore.md): A blacksmith in Up in Michigan.
- [Lucy O'Neil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/lucy_oneil.md): Scripps O'Neil's daughter in The Torrents of Spring.
- [Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/smith.md): A character in The Torrents of Spring.
- [The Indian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/the_indian.md): Various Native American individuals in early stories.
- [F. Scott Fitzgerald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/f_scott_fitzgerald.md): Author referenced in The Torrents of Spring.
- [Lousy O'Neil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_15_se/characters/lousy_oneil.md): Scripps O'Neil's daughter in The Torrents of Spring.

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