The purpose of this paper is to throw some stylistic light on Ernest Hemingway’s “The Undefeated” as a pilot study for my long-range goal: comprehensive research of the development of American colloquial style in literature from the early 19^th century to the mid-20^th century.

First of all, some syntactic features of the narrative part of the text are surveyed on the basis of the exact figures given for comparison between the bullring scene and others. The general syntactic survey conducted allows us to recognize free modifiers as one of the essential tools for the author’s expressions.

The following section, confining the survey to the main bullring scene, devotes itself to the examination of the stylistic roles of free modifiers, with a view to explicating the author’s strategy. The careful examination carried out makes it known that free modifiers are responsible for the realistic descriptions of the scene. Absolutes in particular contribute to giving us a sense of presence because of their unique stylistic advantages. It is hoped that the initial survey in this paper sets the stage for shedding new light upon the obscurity of Hemingway’s hard-boiled style.