Maybe not half. Maybe... asymmetrical fractions.

My face when I realized that, indeed, the baby was going to get torn in half.

Aaaand I decided because of foreshadowing! "Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up." "He held onto the baby and pushed [pulled?] with all his weight."

I have decided that there are some metaphors in the story too. "But it was getting darker on this inside too," for instance, is a metaphor. It's not really getting darker inside because daylight doesn't have much of an effect on indoor lighting, usually. The real meaning is that the atmosphere is darkening. Also, since the story itself is actually about divorce, the baby getting torn apart (=[=[=[=[=[=[=[!!!!!!=[) symbolizes the way that divorce can, sometimes, tear a family apart.

The author's distinct lack of quotation marks lends to the tug of war feeling of the story. She tugs and shouts, and he tugs and shouts....

Aaaalso, the title "Popular Mechanics" is probably a reference to the mainstream/status quo and divorce. At first, I thought it had something to do with the mechanics of babies and how they are structured, because to be honest, when I read something, and the baby dies at the end, it becomes a story about a baby dying, no matter WHAT anybody else says. Nyeugh.

Oachlove?

My conclusion upon the conclusion of chapter three seems to be correct.... Mr. Barnes, who I would personally really like to encounter a character with the last name "Nobles," is indeed apparently in love with Lady Ashley/Brett, and this love is inexplicably painful.

Anyway, Hemingway seems to be employing indirect characterization. Aside from Barnes' chronic oversimplifications of others by phrases like:

"(any foreigner was an Englishman)." which I rather suspect is supposed to be (verbally) ironic,

and Brett's comments, like

"I shouldn't wonder. Greek, you know,"

Hemingway seems to desire that his audience draw its own conclusions about the characters. He shows us rather than telling us.

For example, we now know that Barnes cries at night in his hotel(?) room from the inexplicable pain of loving Lady Ashley and that his bank balance, after deductions, is $1832.60. I don't know if that's good or not, especially since I don't know when this story takes place, which I should rectify, but maybe with a bit of research, I can decide. We also know that Braddocks values prowess in idiom expression, which seems unusual. What could he mean by "wonderful command of the idiom"? I can only imagine.

I think Ernest may have done a bit of foreshadowing, as well, on page 37. "Don't worry," Brett said. "I've never let yo down, have I?" She's going to let him down, somehow.

But we won't know unless we read on, will we? I don't know why I'm using "we" repeatedly.