S. H. Life of Francis Macomber & Snows of Kili Export

Jan--

The time varies. This is rather a short story than a novel so it won't last too long. A couple of weeks, Eloise?

On November 1, come in here and read what Eloise has posted to open the board, plus the headers (the top of the board before the messages). Generally, in a book discussion on the Internet, the leader posts some questions and indicates what section of the book we are discussing in the header.

Then read others' posts to see if they have already posted your comment, or if they have a question you can answer, or a topic you are interested in.

For example, in my Dos Passos club we are discussing Newsreel XXXVII to the end, this week. Some of the questions we are addressing is how the various characters view institutions and how their lives have been impacted by institutions. If you were interested in these topics you could click on Post A Message and write about one of them. You should make your title clear and related to what you are discussing to help those who read your posts. If you are not interested in the topics the leader suggests, or if you have a specific question about the book, you can post on your own topic.

Once you click on Post My Message your post will be posted. It will allow you 30 minutes to edit or delete the post before it becomes permanent.

You can check the board as often as you want. I suspect most folks check it once a day or a few times a week. I work on the computer, so I check more often.

SeniorNet is very beginner-friendly. If you have any questions while participating please post them and everyone will try to help you out. However, this is the best thing you could do is jump in and begin practicing. The discussion board for the book will work just like this one.

Kleo

Thank you KLEO for helping out this way and JAN, now you know how it works and if you ever have a mind to learn more, this DISCUSSION will tell you all there is, but frankly I didn't read it at first because I learned little by little going to only one discussion, then venturing out to about 5 or 6 now.

We will discuss this Short Story from the first of November to the 15th. Then another short story by Hemingway from the 15th to the end of November. The title will be announced shortly.

The questions will not be posted before the 1st of November. The first week we will discuss the first 15 pages and we want to keep the ending secret for later as participants sometimes prefer not to know how the story ends. The story has about 30 pages long.

Isn't this fun? I love it.

Eloïse

ELOISE & KLEO:

Your comments are most helpful, but it's obvious I just have to dip my toe in the water and get wet gradually. I love my regular book clubs, but the on-line discussions are a whole new world that hopefully won't present a huge learning curve......I'm anxious to try this but also anxious not to make some horrid faux pas!

Thanks again,

Jan

Jan, please relax, a book discussion online is different from a live one. Our thoughts are stated in a post and there are no faux-pas, only our own personal view on a certain part of the book that we want to express. We are discussing fiction in this instance and any comparison between values posted and those of the author is valid provided it says in the correct boundaries set by SeniorNet. Just be as spontaneous as you want to be, I am sure you will do very well.

Eloïse

As far back as I can remember "macomber" has been an adjective in my vocabulary and I don't remember anytime anyone challenging my using it--until I challenged myself yesterday while reading for this upcoming discussion--and I raise it now for our group--at the end of our reading/discussion--Yvonne

I would like to join the group and read the story. The lion in the photograph is beautiful.

Yvonne, macomber as an adjective? please give us an example so I might understand how it can be used. Every time I see a word I have not seen before in a text, I look it up and I couldn't find anything on macomber as an adjective.

Hats, welcome welcome. I am pleased that you will join us here. I have seen your posts and I know you will bring interesting points for us to think about in the discussion.

Eloïse

Eloise- what a wonderful group you have amassed for the discussion of Macomber. My goodness, this will be a good one. We have poor one-armed Kleo that will be pecking away with her thoughts, newbies that have joined us such as Yvonne, Pam, Snap Happy Jan and WV Judy. We are graced with your “once timid” but now brilliant enlightening thoughts. I love the idea that our comers are asking wonderful questions. I wish too that I had had the nerve to do that when I was new, I stumbled and it wasn’t necessary. There are so many wonderful people to help you along in these discussions.

Yvonne, I can honestly say that I have never in my life heard of the adjective “Macomber.” What does it mean? Hats is here! Hello again. I love your thoughts and your posts. Malryn is here and always offers wonderful links pertinent to our discussions. I am ready.

The note mentioning this had an important line at the end:

I challenged myself yesterday while reading for this upcoming discussion--and I raise it now for our group--at the end of our reading/discussion--Yvonne

There's a reason for this. Let's wait and discuss 'macomber' as an adjective at the end of our reading/discussion as Yvonne suggested.

Kleo

Eloise,

Thank you for the kind welcome.

Hi Alf,

I love the quote below your name. Isn't it the truth?

I must be getting senile, I apparently signed up for this session but don't remember doing so. Oh. Now I remember, because I was going to send Eloise an extra copy of a Hemingway biography, but it didn't work out due to Canadian vs US postal rates.

I am so glad we are reading Hemingway short stories - I really enjoyed A Moveable Feast and remembered that some consider his short stories his best work. I hope we do them all eventually! I'm reading a Hemingway biography A Life Without Consequences, and there's quite a long passage about these two stories, Author James Mellow labels The Short Happy Life... as the deadliest of Hemingway's marital tales. After we've all read it, I'll post some more of what Mellow relates about the tale,

Pamela

Hi, all,
... count me in, too.
I'm joining this group although when I read ALL I could of Hemingway back in college (eons ago), it became too much, like too much Halloween candy, and I haven't glanced at him since.

"Macomber" as an adjective? What a puzzle ... don't have a clue!

Yes Pamela you are one of us now and can't go back on your word, no we won't let you.

Mippy, you are most welcome, come and join us. Imagine what I will learn from all of you. As a teenager I just read and didn't bother analyzing anything. I used to let the story carry me then. Now though, it's different, we bring our accumulated knowledge in whatever field we evolved in and it becomes easier to read between the lines than when we were very young.

But please let's be patient and not run ahead of everybody and pass judgment on the overall piece until we are really into the discussion, then we can post our observations because many people don't read the pre-discussion and might feel they missed something that was previously mentioned.

Hemingway has this quality that we can almost feel the same way he does in his work, don't you think? The mark of an excellent writer.

Eloïse

Eloise, thanks for the welcome!
Of course I downloaded and read the story already!

Did you know it takes 25 pages to print out? It took a LONG time.
I assume it's old enough that we are not cutting through any copywrite laws when we download it, correct?

Mippy, no, I don't think we can be sued for downloading an online short story, but I am not a lawyer. If it's there, why can't we print it? I found "The Hemingway Reader" by Charles Pope giving me 10 of Hemingway's short stories and among them, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" that will be discussed after this one, provided enough want to join. I saw your posts in the Iliad that Ginny is leading. What an epic that is. I couldn't find it second hand here, otherwise I would have joined in too. My daughter Françoise loves it and she posts as time permits as she is working.

Éloïse

I picked up a copy of Hemingway short stories at the library this morning and read the first few paragraphs of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". I think I'd like to join you all on this one.

See you on 11/1. ...Babi

BABI, Welcome, if it is quiet here, it surely must be because we are reading? Weeeell OK, but I have been feverously studying this short story and with this roster of extremely well read and interesting participants we will keep the discussion on a roll I am sure. I am so happy that you will be joining us.

Don't forget Monday is November 1st, see you then.

Éloïse

Many of us have read Hemingway a long time ago but today we feel differently because of our long experience in life and also perhaps because we have lost some of our innocence. If we have lost something over time, in return we should have gained insight providing better judgment of character.

At first, the characters seem to be having a quiet conversation but a single word gives a clue that tension exists between them.

If dramatic events similar to the ones in this story were taking place in another location, would the characters in this story have experienced the same feelings towards each other? In other words, is a particularly stressful situation necessary to bring out the true personality of a partner, even if they have lived together for many years?

Éloïse

What is Hemingway telling us in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber? Is he moralizing, sarcastic or rational?

Does he really understand how each character might feel in a specific situation?

Is he telling the story from his own point of view?

Éloïse

hehehe Hemingway even includes the lion's point of view - well rounded this author wasn't he - knew how the animals think!

I love how it says so much about the story within the first few paragraphs - icy, [the story is icy and their marriage is not exactly warm but like ice cubes - shaped for the purpose] - sharp, [dialogue sharp and sour barbs, like either lemon or lime] sophisticated, and high-end-income-bracket where lunch is served on the savannah under a fly tent with mess boys in attendance. Not a khaki fly but a green one -

Green the color of ambivalence as the vernal green of life and the livid green of death; youth, hope and jealousy. Green combining the blue of the intellect with the emotions of the yellow sun, the renewer of life. Green is nature, reproduction, abundance, a wreck at sea, inexperience - and the 'Green Knight' - all that overhead where they ate in leisure.

The bottles out of the canvas sweats wet - foreshadowing the tale of Francis Macomber's sweating out the lion's charge. The opposite like sun and shade, leisure with gimlets and lions charging the hunter risking death.

Struck me anew how well Hemingway tells a story using dialogue with little written explanation as if from an author or unknown helping to round out a story.

Green is the color of money in the United States. Red is the color of blood -- anywhere. The tent fly is green. The Great White Hunter's face is red. Francis Macomber is yellow. He has just bolted from the lion that was killed as his trophy. What's worse, he admits it. He's not playing the game according to the rules.

That's what they're doing, you know. They're playing a rich man's game. They're playing rôles, as they drink their gimlets shaded from the African sun. Gimlets out in No Man's Land? Why, sure, the rich can do and have anything anywhere.

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is Hemingway's satiric social commentary about a shallow and specious breed of men and women for whom he has no respect. The only character he respects in this story is Wilson, and he doesn't respect him much. "It's quite illegal" to lash the natives, but it's done because "they prefer it to the fines." What code of honor is this, or rationalization of one?

In the same context of "You've got your lion, and a damn fine one, too," Hemingway says:

"'They are,' he (Wilson) thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle?' "
American women are equated as both prey and hunter, "the hardest in the world."

Big game hunting is a rich man's game, one where he proves or disproves his worth as a man. Let's stalk lions and buffalos and kill them whether they're attacking us or not. Let's take home our trophies and hang them on the wall where everyone can see that we're as manly and macho as the Great White Hunter who usually finishes the kill. Let's show off the trophies of our useless wives, who laugh and scorn us if we have a normal response to fear; wives who are unfaithful and generally couldn't care less as long as we keep them in jewels and gimlets and play the game according to the rules. Who makes the rules? Why, the rich, of course.

Mal

Excuse my coming in here as I am just lurking. Mal talks about the rich and their power and it calls to mind what I have been reading about the various cultures throughout the millennia. It always comes down to class -- the rich versus the poor. And the rich couldn't care less.

Robby

I was impressed with the way Hemingway could convey that something embarassing and shameful had happened, in the first paragraphs, without actually saying so.

Wilson could not understand Maconber's behavior following the incident. He was not following the 'rules'. In this case, I believe it was the 'English Gentleman' rules. To me, Maconber's frank words and behavior were wholly American. No polite pretenses.

Can someone tell me what a 'four-letter' man is? The five-letter woman I grasped immediately, but I haven't been able to come up with a four-letter word that seems appropriate to the occasion.

Babi

In colleges and universities in the United States letters are given to students who do well in sports. (Like the letter seen on university sweaters.) A four letterman is one who has won four letters, or is the tops. Since a club is mentioned here, one might assume that winning four letters could be a requirement for membership.

Mal

Barbara, Welcome to the group. I love your description of the state of their marriage...ice cubes...sharp...lemon or lime... I believe that camping tents were green at first, at least when we first were camping out with the family. Even "camping" out in nature seemed luxury to us, yet luxury surrounded by danger.

Mal, is that what the story is about I wonder, money? or as you say: "Let's show off the trophies of our useless wives," like if they want to prove their worth killing lions.

We already have determined what nationality the characters are. Is there a difference in their behavior because of that?

As rich as they all seem to be while enjoying the finer things in life, can you detect which one among the group belongs to 'old money' as the expression goes and how is it described?

Robby you are most welcome in this discussion, and please don't stop here, we want to know what you think of all this. Is the story about the rich vs the poor?

Babi, Hemingway can speak volumes in just the way he arranges a few words in a sentence, don't you think? I can only guess that the definition of a four-letter-man is similar to the one of the five-letter woman was my first impression, but today, authors don't take such precautions any more.

Éloïse

Mal, thanks for the explanation of 4-letter man. And unlike Babi, I did not pick up on 5-letter woman ------ oh, or does it begin with B.

I've not read much Hemingway, but I loved the way he built such suspense and tension into the first few paragraphs. We know something bad has happened, and now we want to know more.

My user name, Snaphappy, has changed to Jan.E - but I'm still me.

We DO want to know what event has triggered this tension in the group; we don't have to read very far before we're "hooked". And, the way Hemingway tells us about it and segues into the transition from the present to the events of the day before is absolutely seamless. We don't even realize that we're being taken back until we're re-living the lion hunt.

And, did you realize that we "know" these 3 people, we know about the marriage, the relationship between the 3 of them, their money situation, something of their characters, and Hemingway has given us very little, if any, description about THEM....we have descriptions of the tent, the jungle, the weather, the gimlets....but we've learned all this about the characters by the words Hemingway has put in the mouths of the characters. Great short story writers tell you these things without telling you....if that makes sense.

I'm not sure about the 4 letter man thing - knowing the type of person Hemingway was, I'm not sure he was referring to letters that Macomber had earned. I think we probably have to get our minds a little deeper down in the gutter and come up with something a little grittier. Also, I DO believe that 5 letter woman is referring to the "B" word, and if that's so, then 4 letter man must have a counterpart! The 5 letter woman is a whole other discussion for a later time.

Jan

This story certainly isn't for the fainthearted, is it?

That is so British, isn't it, to pretend there is nothing amiss when indeed there is something unsavory happening? Even the mess boy was "cooling" everyone down in celebration after Macomber was toted back to camp in "triumph" accomplishing his mission of killing a "damned fine lion." Yah, right.

I feel sorry for Macomber, our wealthy hunter, he doesn't have a clue how to hunt and is there only to attain then gloat over his prizes. I think that his fear surprised and humiliated him on this adventure.
His financial value didn't hold water for him during this safari and he must have been dismayed to find out that with all the expense he wasn't able to buy courage, for himself. He is the one that should have had the "RED" face. Perhaps the blodody 4 letter word should have been WEAK. The poor guy was awash with fear and alarm and then Wilson as well as the frigid ice-queen wife further intimidated him with their curt remarks. Talk about conflict- this whole story centers around everybody's conflict.

I felt sorry for Macomber too. I think Hemmingway describes his fear so well: the dry mouth, the sweatiness, the pit in the stomach, nightmares. His predicament, one of dealing with fear, made me think of men in general. Men carry a terrible burden. They always need or are expected to put forth a brave front whether on a safari, in a war battle or just at home. Nowadays, I think, we have changed a bit. Men are allowed to show some sensitivity.

Maybe Hemmingway wanted us to deal with the fact that fear vs. courage is not a gender thing. The feeling of wanting to run and hide, surrender and give up are feelings experienced by men and women.

We read Wilson't thoughts as he is passing a not so pretty judgment on his clients the Macombers. First he tries to cover up Francis' weakness in the face of danger by raising his glass saying "Here's to the lion" knowing quite well how it all happened. Could he have openly scorned his employer in front of his wife and their native 'boys'? I don't know if he could have been totally honest if he wanted to keep his job.

Pedln, your guess is as good as any one of ours perhaps? we can't think of something to be proud of if Wilson says: "So he's a bloody four-letter man as well as a bloody coward, he thought".

Jen, it strikes me how Hemingway will write from one or the other character's point of view with equal ease, Wilson's British reactions and repartees, while the Americans reacted accordingly.

Alf, I think 'WEAK' is a far nicer four-letter word than the one I have in mind that would go with 'coward'. Is Hemingway sparing our sensitive ears?

Then what about a beautiful wife? Didn't Margaret always count on her beauty for getting where she wanted to go in life? and what choice does an extremely "handsome" woman have other than becoming a rich man's wife, because a rich man would seek an ornament worthy of his wealth, then they both get what they need.

Éloïse

Macomber says, "You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?" Wilson looks at him coldly because Macomber apparently is a four letterman.

Here's one definition of the Mathaiga/Muthaiga Club:

Muthaiga Country Club. Click this link.: "Famous Country Club in Nairobi, one-time headquarters of a number of wealthy aristocratic English." I believe the four letter system in university sports began in England. Macomber is American and belongs to this club.

I read also that the Muthaiga Club was noted for the fact that members occasionally rode through the dining room on horseback. Fraternal fun and games.

There's a good bit about three year letterman and four year lettermen at Cambridge in England (also at Harvard in Cambridge) on the web. It is a sign of high status to be a four letterman. I truly believe this is what Hemingway meant in his reference to the club. Wilson, who had never gone to a university could never be a four letterman, or ever belong to such a club. His resentment shows.

The five letter woman bit to me is a kind of play on words, an amused spoofing of status by Hemingway, and could possibly mean bitch, knowing the disrespect for women on safari (and perhaps in general and with some good reason) that Wilson (and perhaps Hemingway) had.

To me this story is about power and dominance, one segment of society over another. Men over women. Women over men. Man over nature. Nature over man.

Macomber had power because he was immensely rich.

Employed by the rich, Wilson's power was different. He had power over the rich because he was an experienced hunter; had more knowledge than the people for whom he worked. He also had power over the natives that worked under him; the power to decide to lash them or to fine them; power to keep them and the green pigeons he took out to hunt alive or dead.

Margaret Macomber had power over her husband and other men because of her beauty and her willingness to spread it around, thus reducing them to their lowest, basest denominator and weakening them, in their estimation and the estimation of many men throughout history. She also had the power to take one of Francis Macomber's greatest trophies away. Wilson explains that she won't do this because she needs Macomber's money. Margot Macomber's status is secondhand.

The lion's status is unquestionable. He is King.

Mal

Many of us have read Hemingway a long time ago but today we feel differently because of our long experience in life and also perhaps because we have lost some of our innocence. If we have lost something over time, in return we should have gained insight providing better judgment of character. Éloïse

I could not read Hemingway, other than The Old Man and the Sea when I was young. I didn't like him, I didn't appreciate him. I like to think I was rather sophisticated when I was younger, jaded, urban, hip. When I read The Sun Also Rises last year, I realized that this was not so. If I had been more sophisticated, I might have liked Hemingway when I was younger.

It is sad, for me, to think of how jaded Hemingway was so young. They all were, the authors of the post WWI generation. This made me see so easily the title of one biography of the players and the era, Everybody Was so Young. They were. And they weren't. Their youth was what they lost.

Kleo

"At first, the characters seem to be having a quiet conversation but a single word gives a clue that tension exists between them.

Éloïse

I strongly disagree that the '[at] first, the characters seem to be having a quiet conversation,' because the first sentence is not the 'quiet conversation' but rather the tension of the setting:

"It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened."

Even before we get to the conversation we know that something is wrong. What's wrong? Well, that's what we are eagerly reading to find out! But we don't '[pretend] that nothing had happened' unless something is seriously wrong. The little things we can joke about. Big things require dangerous pretensions.

Kleo

If dramatic events similar to the ones in this story were taking place in another location, would the characters in this story have experienced the same feelings towards each other? In other words, is a particularly stressful situation necessary to bring out the true personality of a partner, even if they have lived together for many years? Éloïse

I'm a bit confused. It seems as if at first you are asking us to imagine the story out of Africa, but then to imagine a different situation, Éloïse.

I think that '[if] dramatic events similar to the ones in this story were taking place in another location' the same feeling would have arisen in the characters. I think the strong feelings are based upon the ennui of a not particularly successful long term relationship where two people don't respect each other. Respect is necessary in any relationship, otherwise the tendency towards parasitism is too strong to resist. Francis and his wife do not respect each other. When this lack of respect is given a basis in fact in front of an outsider, serious damage is done, IF the other party takes advantage of it. And, that, is the problem with lack of respect, the desire to take advantage of the other person's humiliation, to trump the situation, to show that you are really the superior one, when there is mutual lack of respect, is too great for an ordinary human to resist.

I think a particularly stressful situation is necessary because it is too easy to just go with the flow in a mediocre relationship. Especially in a time frame when divorce was difficult and potentially dangerous for at least the woman. You certainly can't guarantee anything in a marriage. What's to say a change of partner would make it better. The known ick is often superior to taking a chance with the unknown ick.

Is a safari in Africa more stressful than other situations a married couple in Western Society is likely to encounter? Well, Francis Macomber's is. I don't think this marriage needed a very big straw to break the camel's back, though. It could have been something as small as dancing lessons.

Kleo

<BLOCKQUOTEBig game hunting is a rich man's game, one where he proves or disproves his worth as a man. Let's stalk lions and buffalos and kill them whether they're attacking us or not. Let's take home our trophies and hang them on the wall where everyone can see that we're as manly and macho as the Great White Hunter who usually finishes the kill. Let's show off the trophies of our useless wives, who laugh and scorn us if we have a normal response to fear; wives who are unfaithful and generally couldn't care less as long as we keep them in jewels and gimlets and play the game according to the rules. Who makes the rules? Why, the rich, of course. Mal

Did they really make these rules? What man would make rules like this for himself? Why would rich men make rules that require unhappiness? Aren't these cultural rules that rich men have to play by? What's the purpose of these rules? I think they're cultural rules designed to keep the rich exclusively the rich, designed to limit the number of invitations to join.

Kleo

It does mean the four letter word that begins with 's' also--she's a b----, he's a s---. This means he messes everything up, and/or he‘s a low-life. I took it to mean he‘s a low life, the male equivalent of b----, being s---, and he‘s one. Makes an error, acts cowardly, and everyone has to cover his a-- for him. As to 'four letter man' collegiately speaking, it means specifically that you gained a letter in four different sports--I liked learning this a while ago. But it's not the same as four-letter man, I don't think. 'Four-letter man' is also a euphemism for gay. I tried looking most of this up on-line, but there were no delimitative sources.

Kleo

Actually, Wilson is the one who belongs to the Muthaiga Country Club, not Macomber. Macomber doesn't even know the types of things they discuss at the Muthaiga Country Club. His money can't tell him that a gentleman hunter would not tell tales out of school. He can buy many things with his wealth, but the successful hunter, Wilson, has had to earn his membership in the club, and must continue to earn it by acting the gentleman in the club, not discussing his clients, no matter how boorish they are.

Kleo

KLEO, it seems as if you're making every effort to knock down every logical idea I present. You've succeeded. Hope it isn't a personal grudge on your part. I don't believe we've ever met face to face.

Frankly, I don't think it's worth the time or the effort to figure out what Hemngway meant by four letter man, five letter woman. If people want those letters to be dirty, so be it.

Mal

No, Mal, I don't even remember that I read only your posts or responded to only your posts. I thought that mostly I responded to Eloise's discussion questions.

I am interested in the meaning of four-letter man because it is an unusual expression that I first learned about or even heard a while ago. This is only the second time I have encountered it. I thought that you were the one who pointed out that it meant college letters, something I didn't disagree with per se, but did add on to--what I had originally thought was neat. If you're not interested in discussing it, you don't have to. But I see no need to point out whether my discussing it is worth the time or not.

It's not about you, Mal, it's about Hemingway's story.

Kleo

OK, lets continue with this discussion, there is so much to discover as we examine every aspect for hidden meanings.

Then Wilson thinks he has seen Macomber enough and decides to break with the poor chap and just do his job while keeping apart from them. Thinking about how he could do this he said: "what was it the French called it: Distinguished consideration" What? I really never heard of this except in business letters when I was still working. Later he changes his mind again about Francis Macomber.

Can we trust Wilson to tell it as it is? Has he hunted on too many African Safaris, and been in contact with too many people like the Macombers? Does Wilson remind you of someone close to the story?

Éloïse

Before we continue, perhaps we could examine this short bio of Ernest Hemingway and it will give us an idea of how he acquired his taste for hunting and perhaps also his literary style as he had been a reporter before he became a renown author.

Éloïse

As far as I can see, he was always a reporter. In addition to his reportorial skills, however, he was able to write his stories in beautifully woven phrases.

Robby

Actually Wilson bores the heck out of me - he sounds pompous - seems to me he is the one who describes their marriage which in affect he is saying is a system of barter and he is the one who believes that being free of fear or rather acting courageous puts you in the enviable position of being truly alive since no one can touch you, is the meaning I get out of his Jeu de la vie.

He interpretes Margot's look when Francis finds his courage. He sees the world around him in the same light as his role as a hunter. An independent hunter who guides and sets things up for the hunt to go his way - he does not create a plan of action with his fellow hunter but charges ahead and sets the client up for success or failure on his terms.

To me Wilson reminds me of everything I've ever read about Hemingway - Hemingway had concocted a myth of his own toughness - Death and violence are constant themes in his writing. Hemingway bags the big ones - the Pulitzer and the Nobel - he couldn't go to Sweden to accept the Nobel because of injuries sustained in a plane accident - Hemingway bagging the big ones did not provide him the happy life. I'm thinking that he lived believing one day he would be happy if and when he proved how brave he was -

Also his description of Margot sound too much like a bitter man - this was written after at least 2 divorces wasn't it...

I guess I have difficulty with the premise that life is good, life is happy, when you are free from the constraints of fear so that adventure with a license to act out the ritual to kill the noble in nature is one of the top accomplishments a man can aspire, along with, independence from the pain of betrayal by someone you love.

Hi, I have just read the comments on the story for first time. Interesting background material comments but how about looking at the story from the viewpoint of these questions: How short was M's life and why was he happy? Does Margot really intend to kill M or was she perhaps really in love with him at the end? Would you like to have Wilson as a friend, or a companion in an emergency situation? Does the lion resemble M or Wilson and why? Why did M and Margot remain married if they did not love each other, or did they? I am sure that you all have even more questions. And a last one. Did H. have a low opinion on women? Why?

Newvoyager

Newvoyager, welcome to our discussion. You posed some great questions that will surely come to be discussed in the next few days, great food for thought. Perhaps you might consider giving us your opinion on some of them.

Éloïse

KleoP - 02:42pm Nov 1, 2004 PST (#60 of 70) Rich Man's Game, Rich Man's Rules?

<BLOCKQUOTEBig game hunting is a rich man's game, one where he proves or disproves his worth as a man. Let's stalk lions and buffalos and kill them whether they're attacking us or not. Let's take home our trophies and hang them on the wall where everyone can see that we're as manly and macho as the Great White Hunter who usually finishes the kill. Let's show off the trophies of our useless wives, who laugh and scorn us if we have a normal response to fear; wives who are unfaithful and generally couldn't care less as long as we keep them in jewels and gimlets and play the game according to the rules. Who makes the rules? Why, the rich, of course. Mal

Did they really make these rules? What man would make rules like this for himself? Why would rich men make rules that require unhappiness? Aren't these cultural rules that rich men have to play by? What's the purpose of these rules? I think they're cultural rules designed to keep the rich exclusively the rich, designed to limit the number of invitations to join.

Kleo

Wow, this is an interesting passage to muse on. I think I'm following your points and agreeing, Kleo, when you are saying that these contexts- or contexts that exist that are similar but not as exaggerated in usual instances or as bitterly reflected about by most-that they are sometimes just cultural rules that EVOLVE but ARE NOT created by any one group or necessarily wished for, wanted, or reasoned out. I would suggest that they also have their own life, apart from all people involved or not involved in them, and apart from reason after they come about. Personally, I would tend to think they're not even manipulated PURPOSELY by people- not in order to keep the rich the rich or for any other reason. It's just a shame that such mores exist but that nobody does anything to disband them! But maybe, like with some of the social customs and relations touched on here being examples, there are people who may subconsciously think they may benefit, although in actuality they do not benefit, and these people may also subconsciouly choose to leave these nuances in place? Mandy

"Green the color of ambivalence as the vernal green of life and the livid green of death; youth, hope and jealousy. Green combining the blue of the intellect with the emotions of the yellow sun, the renewer of life. Green is nature, reproduction, abundance, a wreck at sea, inexperience - and the 'Green Knight' - all that overhead where they ate in leisure."

These are beautiful words from this poster! I'll always see green more fully now. And you do highlight some of the things I love about Hemingway. Favorite BESIDES THIS STORY, short story with, I believe, "Elephants" in the title, "The Killers" is excellent in writing though dark/stark in content I think, and The Sun Also Rises. (Been a while since reading these, is why all the couched language there.)

Eloise, all, I didn't introduce myself in my first post and everyone is being so friendly. This is new to me too, on-line at least. I am so excited there are so many people who love this stuff so much (and as much as me) and that want to think and share about it! How fun!!

Mandy

On my message "what's copied at top below" I'd like to clarify that I was "speaking" while interpreting Mal's thoughtful interpretations more loosely. I don't want anyone to think that I would not think that many someones should be held responsible for horrible things like treatment of slaves, killing of animals, or poor treatment of wives or husbands. I'm just saying that the state of the world when it is overarchingly deplorable, may have become that way culturally or in particular people's lives by the entity and the people taking on something- acting of their own volition, but maybe not realizing... There do seem to be states existing that seem somewhat out of our control, yes? As much as a Hemingway story's lines immediately capture a mood and set us in the scene before we know it. Mandy

Loved the points made about gender reversal representation, within the fear felt and shown by Macomber and the hardship that his, such a human reaction gets, such humiliation.

(Don't mean to keep crowding my late-night thoughts here when they're won't likely be interruptions and reactions from others. Last thing you all need is a whole chunk from me! Yet, I'm a grad student and I may have to sometimes review and respond in a clump or with a period of time in between that's longer than I'd like. Though I'll especially try to review and enter in more often with this dialogue being on a short read!)

Wondering what you all think on Eloise's bit on, "What of Mrs. Macomber?" that followed the comments about the male's fear. About whether Margaret was simply doing what she in a sense "had to" being a handsome woman in this society and time in marrying Macomber and in not leaving him, and in having a fling with Wilson too. I think Hemingway gives each of these character's more choice in their immediate actions- though the overall moods and some of the happenings established are maybe more a collective result and the characters aren't able to be as efficacious in regards to those. But I think with their behaviors, Hemingway gives the characters each an influence which they have to exert over themselves, assert with the their companions. I think he establishes this context, through underpinnings, so that we can really despise the characters, and sympathize some, more than we would if they were merely trapped by their circumstances. Now the lion IS trapped by his circumstances, and we sympathize with the lion most of all.

Mandy

ReaderWriter, welcome to this forum. What interesting thoughts. Do you know if the movie I saw a long time ago "Elephant Walk" was adapted from a Hemingway short story?

Mal said, on a final note about the four-letter man: “Since a club is mentioned here, one might assume that winning four letters could be a requirement for membership.” I like this explanation as it fits well in the context and maybe H allowed the reader to fill in our own epithet according to our own background, clever of him.

Alf, what do you think the mention of a ‘red face’ means “He is the one that should have had the "RED" face” in this story. Is it to alert us to the blood that will be shed?

This story, taking place at the time of the two world wars, when bravery was highly valued, a man openly showing his fear was considered cowardly, but today we might have a different view of what bravery stands for, we might be much more sympathetic toward a man who openly shows his emotions as we see that constantly on talk shows and on the news, so it has become an acceptable and normal behavior.

How do you all feel about that?

I think the answer to the question "Can we trust Wilson?" is in Barbara's recent post, "Actually Wilson bores the heck out of me - he sounds pompous - seems to me he is the one who describes their marriage which in affect he is saying is a system of barter and he is the one who believes that being free of fear or rather acting courageous puts you in the enviable position of being truly alive since no one can touch you."

This is perfectly the problem with Wilson and people like him, they think the ultimate in living life as a human being is preventing the damage others can do to you. This is not true. The ultimate in living life as a human being is being able to intimately touch the life of another. If you think 'being truly alive' means the safety of no one being able to touch you, then you have missed the greatest thing about being human, allowing someone else to touch you.

I can never trust a man who cannot trust, and doesn't even see the grave failure in his relation to all other humans by his own failure to trust.

Great post, Barbara. I think you gave some insight into another Great White Hunter, also.

Kleo

"I would suggest that [cultural mores] also have their own life, apart from all people involved or not involved in them, and apart from reason after they come about.... But maybe, like with some of the social customs and relations touched on here being examples, there are people who may subconsciously think they may benefit, although in actuality they do not benefit, and these people may also subconsciouly choose to leave these nuances in place?" Mandy

Yes, I think that our cultural institutions have their own power, or maybe inertia better reflects your other comments. Humans fear change, the unknown. This is our power and our distinction from the beasts, after all, the knowing. And you're right, it is tricky to benefit/not benefit from social customs in the exact way you want to. For example, Francis may think he is benefiting by 'marrying well.' If he were to do otherwise, he would have to face his own insecurities about belonging in the society he does. Would this be toom much for Francis, for the unhappy Francis, that is? I think, sometimes, that the people most able to benefit from flaunting the cultural expectations of society are the least able to do so. Isn't it society, though, that is supposed to benefit, not Francis? After all, what does exclusion matter to him personally?

Kleo

The movie Elephant Walk is based on a novel of the same title by Robert Standish. I don't know anything about this author. I assume he is British.

Kleo

A look at history will show that the rich and powerful have made the rules, cultural and otherwise, from the earliest civilizations until now.

There's been some merciless hazing thrown in to keep people in line. The measure of a man was how much pain he could stand without flinching. To run away from it made him a coward.

Whether we like to believe it or not, this is as true now as it was in September, 1936 when "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was first published in "Cosmopolitan Magazine."

Mal

Hemingway says in A Moveable Feast:

"The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it." Page 6

When Gertrude Stein told Hemingway in Paris that a story of his was inaccrochanble, he said, "But what if it is not dirty but it is only that you are trying to use words that people would actually use? That are the only words that can make the story come true and that you must use them? You have to use them." Page 15

"I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it." Page 26

From the chapter called "Hunger was good discipline", Page 72: "You God damn complainer. You dirty phony and martyr," I said to myself. "You quit journalism of your own accord."

"It was a very simple story called 'Out of Season' and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." Page 75

Courtesy of SCRAWLER.

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A 'character' is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that this book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel.

"If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism.

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings...into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature.

"People in a novel, not skillfully constructed 'characters,' must be projected from the writer's assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever was lucky as well as serious and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time." (Death in the Afternoon p. 191)

Good Mal, now we know that this was written in 1936, between the two wars when the economy was strong and the dangers ahead were still nebulous.

Wilson shows his contempt toward Macomber and decides to have nothing to do with him except the essential of his job. We can read his thoughts: "I'm sorry, Macomber said, and looked at him with his American face that would stay adolescent until it became middle aged, then immediately Wilson has a change of heart and feels pity for the poor chap.

Margaret decides to put the incident behind her and make a fresh start, comes back to the tent to see what was ahead for the group and try not be dull, as she says. Somehow, I don't see her as cold and calculating as she appears to be to some participants here. I see her as acting and being the wife of a wealthy perhaps aristocrat man, caring about the killing of innocent animals having crying spells as any female would do in other walks of life in the same situation.

She looks down on Francis now. Is that all she is capable of? or is there something deeper inside this woman?

Lets find out.

Éloïse

ELOISE, I read somewhere yesterday that this story was written in 1933. 1936 is the date of first publication. Either way, the world at that time was suffering the effects of the Great Depression.

Mal

Up until this incident, Margaret could be pleased with her choice of husband. Not only was he wealthy and handsome, he was a top athlete in many sports and had the respect of others. If there was something in the nature of a 'bargain' between them, she could consider it an acceptable bargain.

Macomber's display of cowardice was extemely upsetting and I can well understand her staring at the two men as Wilson attempted his 'let's petend it didn't happen' bit. Going off to cry in private was natural. When she comes back her manner is biting and sarcastic with both men. "Mr. Wilson is really very impressive killing anything. You do kill anything, don't you?"

Wilson now sees her as one of those women "the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive..." "She is away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enamelled in that American female cruelty. They are the damnedest women; simply the damnedest."

This is Wilson's view, of course, but her words and actions give it some merit, IMO.

BAbi

Designs in AFRICAN FABRIC are so different and attractive. Their artistic sense is bolder, with sharper contrasts and strong colors complimenting their skin tones. They make a definite statement about who they are.

I love to see native Africans dressed up in their native clothes walking in our downtown office district.

Eloïse

As Mal points out, the world was in the throws of the depression, in 1933. 1933 saw also Hitler come to power, massive rearmament of Germany, Mussolini in Italy, crisis in Spain, bad government in the UK exacerbating world economic ills, great fears of socialism in the United States were beginning, and still the world was recovering from the shock of WWI. Although the end of the direct economic downturn in the USA, it was also the start of the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains. What a year, but not one of hope.

I think the Great War stripped our hopes and made the dangers ahead all too real.

I don't think this was a time of optimism for the world. Hemingway, as a reporter, was well aware of how dangerous the world was perceived to many people in this era. Only before the War could we pretend that technology would make a better world for all. After the War, everyone knew it was a lie, technology was creating a more ferocious world, the diminishing distances with advances was making the world more dangerous, not more accessible.

I think that Margaret cared about her husband's failure shows their is some depth. Maybe it is depth even she doesn't know or care about. Again, acknowledging it would allow for change. That's part of the fun of society, though, isn't it? You get to lie even to yourself.

I think, though, that I can see this story in a larger perspective thinking about the time it was written. Americans were different. We came to WWI late, the heroes to save the world. Did we get to keep our baby faces from it? Is Hemingway saying something about Americans in general, with Francis Macomber, and our relation to the rest of the world? Did we make someone else do our killing?

Kleo

I see the Mrs. as very shrewd and calculating. Now that her husband has embarassed and humiliated himself perhaps she won't be held in such high societal esteem. This is paramount to this woman.
Will she now be considered as he? Will she, too, be dishonored by the scandalous thought that Mr. M. has disgraced himself? Will the genteel, pompous ladies look down their snobby noses at her, as they titter, gossip and speak in whispers , "Oh poor Mrs. Macomber- isn't it shameful that she must endure this awkward incident? " I'm sure that a woman such as she is cringing and this ticklish situation has no bounds for corrupting her good name.

Well, now, she needn't worry about it- she's a grieving widow. That is much easier to endure than an unworthy, frightened, no-good such as poor Mr. M. Her name remains impeccably clean and her status remains in high regard.

As the former wife of a scientist I must say that neither science and technology can do anything by themselves. It is the countries or factions -- made up of people -- which own them and control their use that can create danger. Just as it is the countries and factions which stockpile weapons to create a fear factor, and possibly use, are the ones to watch out for. The person with the gun in his or her hand is the one in control. Top gun.

This was proven very true when Margaret Macomber took that gun in her hands and fired from the safety of the vehicle in which she sat. With one pull of the trigger she rid herself of the blot on her escutcheon that her cowardly husband had put there.

Women like Margot are interested only in the status and position that money can bring. When Francis ran, he threatened her position terribly. Better that he stand there and take whatever came, including death, "like a man."

Women like Margot don't cry over the fate of innocent wild animals. The more trophies Francis brought home, the higher Margot's position was in the eyes of High Society.

"Oh, there's a Depression on? I didn't know. You see, Francis and I were on safari in Africa."

I can't find anything nice about Margaret Macomber or anything to like. Spoiled rotten, she thought only of herself. The fact that her husband, despite his money, was an ordinary human being who had a normal reaction of fear when confronted with a serious life or death situation galled her like a cup of bitter vetch.

There was no humanity to this woman. All she was interested in was where the next invitation and diamond tiara were coming from. Lord help her if they didn't come from the Vanderbilts and Tiffany's.

Hemingway has done a magnificent job in his portrayal of her.

Mal

The short story I couldn't recall the exact name of is "Hills like White Elephants."

This story seems to be about power (as much or more so than money) - power of men over animals, men over other men, wives over husbands. And, especially it's about Margot Macomber, who's the power in the Macomber marriage and refuses to let her husband show any type of influence in their relationship.

She isn't at all shy at showing everyone around them how her husband's actions have humiliated her when at the beginning of the story she shuns her husband's choice of drink, and then again when he takes her hand and she withdraws it. She's so open with her affairs with other men that it's obvious she either doesn't care what he thinks or, if she does, she isn't afraid of his reaction. After the lion fiasco, she blatantly "leaned forward over the low seat and kissed him on the mouth", referring to Wilson. That's a funny reaction when your husband has just had what's left of his manhood destroyed. I don't know too many husbands that would tolerate that kind of behavior unless they were wimps or in a coma.

As long as the status quo is maintained in the marriage, i.e. she's in the driver's seat, and he's just a back seat driver, then all is well. When Macomber changes....she knows she's lost the control, the power, the leverage. And, she takes steps to regain that power.

Interesting take on women from Hemingway - one could assume he doesn't like them very much, or at least doesn't have much respect for them. I guess two failed marriages might do that to a person, especially if he assumes the wives were at fault for the failures! Hemingway does a great job of depicting Margot Macomber - she's not likeable, but you remember her!

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but this story was made into a movie in 1947 called "The Macomber Affair" starring Joan Bennett as Margot, Gregory Peck as Wilson, and Robert Preston as Macomber. No wonder Margot Macomber went for Wilson - I'd take Gregory Peck over Robert Preston myself!

Jan

Ernest Hemingway married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson September 3, 1920 when he was 21 years old. She is described as a rather shy, quiet young woman. They lived on her trust fund since he was writing; had one child, Bumby. Hadley was 8 years older than Hemingway. A Moveable Feast covers some years of that marriage. At times, when Hemingway wasn't selling his work, they had something of a tough time living in Paris, where they had gone in shortly after they were married. They weren't getting along, said they'd try 100 days to make things work at the end. They didn't succeed at this, so were divorced March 10, 1927.

Hemingway was married May 10, 1927 to Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, a devout Catholic with a good job, a huge trust fund, and many admirers. Thay had two children, Gregory and Patrick, and were divorced November 4, 1940, or 4 years after this story was first published.

Mal

Yes, power is a very important part of this story. I went into that in Post #56.

Robert Wilson has a very important part in this story. He is the only one in this literary triangle who is not emotionally involved with anyone, and plays the rôle of outside observer. Hemingway uses him to tell the reader a great deal about Francis and Margaret Macomber and how rich Americans were perceived outside the United States at that time. This Greek Chorus kind of character is used often by good writers to relay information that would be more difficult to state in a different way.

Mal

MAL, Hemingway divorced Pauline Pfeiffer in 1940 and married Martha Gellhorn the same year. He divorced her after five years. Mary Welsh Hemingway became is fourth wife in 1946. She survived him and wrote a book about her life and their life, titled How It Was .

Papa Hemingway , written by A.E. Hotchner, is another good source of information. (A.E. Hotchner is Paul Newman's pal and partner in the Newman's Own Brand enterprise.)

Hemingway's fiction reflects his own life and experiences, beginning wih his participation in WW I and later in the Spanish civil war against Franco. He went on several safaris with Mary Hemingway; one ended in the crash of their plane.

Based on what I read by him and about , I believe that- as JAN suggested in #90- he may not really have liked women. Men are his heroes, and their manly deeds are celebrated over and over again.

Barbara. ”sets the client up for success or failure on his terms.” Interesting Barbara and I wonder how Wilson would set up failure on his terms though. Would that not defeat his purpose? His job is to make his client look good, that is what he is paid for whether he kills his lion or not?

Acts of bravery is at the core of most of Hemingway’s novels and as you say, it reflects his colorful personality.

Jan.E "This story seems to be about power" right and power is not always in the hands of whoever holds the purse strings.

Traude, you are most welcome to join us, it is an honor to have you. Hemingway you said perhaps didn’t like women, but if he had 4 wives, why do you think he didn’t like them.

How do you stay in a position of power? Francis has the money, Margaret the beauty and she could have supported her husband in his demise. she could have done that instead of putting him down. Wilson has the ability to help them keep or lose that position of power while he is their guide as he can make Francis still look good when he kills another animal the next day. Francis can afford to lose face, as his money can easily erase every shadow of shame with a generous gift, Margaret, on the other hand can lose everything by losing Francis being on the last lap of her youth and beauty, lose Francis and she loses her high status - at this point she is not a widow yet and doesn’t seem to have a personal fortune.

Interesting posts everyone as we are finding more than just about the story as you share your excellent ideas.

Éloïse

I agree with JAN that Margaret did not pick up that rifle because she was ashamed of her husband's cowardice. It was the change in him during the buffalo hunt that frightened her. The new Francis Macomber would not tolerate her behavior; she was facing the very real prospect that he would divorce her. She was not going to permit that to happen. 'Widow' is a much preferable status to 'cast-off'.

Hemingway didn't waste much time remarrying, did he? And he was very good at picking brides with healthy trust funds. I find myself with a much higher regard for the writer than for the man.

Babi

"It had taken a strange chance of hunting, a sudden precipitation into action without opportunity for worrying beforehand, to bring this about with Macomber, but regardless of how it had happened it had most certainly happened. Look at the beggar now, Wilson thought. It's that some of them stay little boys so long, Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives. Their figures stay boyish when they're fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned strange people. But he like this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don't know what started it. But over now. Hadn't had time to be afraid with the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He'd seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear."

Through Wilson Hemingway says a lot right here. Francis Macomber had gone through a Rite of Passage. He had gone from being a boy to being a man. We mean the same thing when we say, "It's good he's going in the Army. It'll make a man out of him."

As long as Francis Macomber remained a boy, Margaret had control over him. When he became a man she lost that control. The fear she had because of that loss outweighed any exhilaration she might have had about his standing firm and going in for the kill.

When Macomber died, Margaret gained all the money he had and all the power it implied, thus continuing her hold on control.

Mal

Ernest Hemingway was a man who had an immense curiosity, one who observed everything and took in all that he experienced and saw. It is these things that made him the writer he was.

I don't think he disliked women; I think he disliked certain kinds of women, just as he disliked certain kinds of men.

Hemingway was never going to be one who was comfortable in a conventional male rôle (for the time.) Bring home the bacon while little wifey in her apron cleans the house and serves the food and takes care of the kids.

Hemingway was compelled to live life to the hilt and write about it, unencumbered by anything or anyone. We could call him selfish. Most good writers are; have to be if they're going to write. I sincerely believe that anyone, male or female, who is compelled to do something, whether it's writing, scientific research, development of corporations, politics, medicine, the law, art, whatever it is, is the same way.

I can't separate Hemingway's writing from the man. As I said, the world never would have had the books he wrote unless he had been the kind of person he was.

Mal

Hemingway was quoted in Everybody Was So Young as saying that he wasn't any good alone, he had to be married. I am just finishing up his biography A Life Without Consequences, an excellent study of his life. My impression is he changes wives when he sits still too long. He marries, things are fine for a long time, then he is unhappy because he's staying relatively in one place. So off he goes somewhere, and pretty soon there's a divorce and a new wife. The author of this biography hints that he knew that all his wives were good women and good wives, but he just up and left when someone interesting came along.

Hemingway was attracted to strong women, but even after reading this biography I don't know if he liked or hated them. I suspect he didn't either. If I had to bet money, I would say he needed someone to take care of him and sleep with him but that he really didn't approve of women.

Pamela

I more or less accidentally read a summary of The Short Life... just before I read the story. (It was discussed in A Life Without Consequences). So I knew what was going to happen and most of the details. Nevertheless, when I read the last page and closed the book, I was stunned by the revelations and the ending. My admiration for him as a writer grows the more I read of him.

What leaped out at me were the raw emotions. Here is a man who has humiliated himself with cowardice - something that would embarass anyone. He didn't know he was a coward, do any of us? He thought it was a fact, not just an isolated incident. His wife is as cold-hearted as any women in fiction. She constantly brings up the subject, she withdraws, she sleeps with another man, she wants to make sure her husband knows that he is nothing.

But then Francis gets a second chance and discovers that he has overcome his cowardice and is brave and manly. It's taken him all his life to discover this, and I was really excited for him. He won't take anything off of anybody from the point on, and he is so proud, so elated to discover that he is brave. He's found something more meaningful to him than a beautiful but cold trophy wife. I wanted his wife to be excited for him, too, and couldn't imagine her not being if she wasn't totally lacking in human empathy.

Did she shoot to protect him and miss? Or did she kill him because she couldn't control him any longer? Hemingway doesn't let us know. It works either way, and I'll be thinking about this story for years to come. It's very sad that Francis finally found what he was made of and then dies. But maybe that's when we die, when we come to truly know ourselves, who knows? There's only the empty shell of a wife left at the end of the story.

Pamela

Further on the POWER STRUGGLE in this story:

As a woman perhaps I don't quite "get" why there's such a fierce competition among men. This is not to say that we women don't wage our own power plays, but men seem to play the game quite differently, and this story is a prime example. A group of men will use much rougher language together than any of them will individually or around a mixed group, they'll "embellish" many of the things they talk about, they'll do a lot of "hey fellow, well met" kind of stuff, and chances are they'll brag a bit about their "weapons" collection or their "boy toy" collection. And why? Are they impressing each other, do they not want to appear weak in front of their peers, or is this a throwback to their caveman days???? Let's just say it's a jockeying for power.

In this story Hemingway weaves that kind of power play into a fascinating interaction between Wilson and Macomber, much of it unspoken. Of course, the attention of Margaret is one of the prizes, but Wilson, whose job it is to lead this safari, certainly doesn't cut Macomber any slack when it comes to the use of guns and allowing Macomber to shine. Wilson puts Macomber down at every turn, mainly by innuendos and refusing to say or do things that could improve his (Macomber's)image. Wilson plays the power game admirably....until he slips up and reveals the illegality of using the vehicle in the hunt....then Macomber "has something on him" and Macomber wins a small power battle (but unfortunately not the war).

As you can tell, I loved this story. It's beautifully written and the interaction between the characters is relentless, and in the end, deadly. I was rooting for Macomber in the power battle with Margaret, but in those short moments when he finally DID win.....he lost! I wanted Macomber to win the power war he was in with Wilson, but....did he really DESERVE to win??? Probably not.

Jan

hmmm I wonder if he was in a power/war or not - I looked closely at the dialogue in the beginning of the story and on every turn he is asking Wilson if this or that is correct - seems like he has put a lot of trust in Wilson, who I think betrays his trust - I would think when you buy a safari or hunt the hunter you have hired is there for you, not in competition with you.

Some of what Francis asks is; if he should tip after being served the drinks, then asks if the headman will distribute the tip - asks about the distance away from camp the lion is located who is roaring - asks about the range he should shoot within etc.

One of the sentences that struck me was when Wilson voices to his face "It's not very pleasant to have your wife see you do something like that." without sounding sheepish Francis says -- "I wouldn't think about that any more. Any one could be upset by his first lion. That's all over."

Now that sounds more like a successful man who does not take failure to heart but sees failure as simply a failed attempt of which anyone who is successful has many but picks themselves up and goes on. A sort of building block towards success.

Also, he never orders his wife around - the one time he does attempt to control her is when he asks her to stop being so bitchy which is how she was acting toward both him and Wilson, actually being superior to Wilson.

All the bit about Wilson's red face was in response to noticing his drinking - she says that Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.

Interesting dynamics going on here when you look at the symbolic meaning of alcohol; creation and destruction - fire and water -- and Wilson's face, Margot at one point says Wilson's beautiful red-face red meaning; fire, sun, joy, war gods, Mars, passion, energy, strength, blood, anger, martyrdom, calamity.

Red with white is the symbol for death - She noticed where the baked red of his face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his Stetson hat hmmm

Because that sentence continues his Stetson hat that hung now from one of the pegs of the tent pole Living in the part of the country where men still wear hats we know that a hat is very much a mark or identity of a man. It is easy to see, his hat hung is saying, this is Wilson's power, attitude, opinions hanging like a trophy inside the tent -

And a hat off or tipped is showing homage therefore, this tent is like Wilson's temple, his center in the shade with boulder-strewn cliff behind - grass spread out to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front - and the forest beyond. Is Wilson actually the one sacrificed in the story or is it really Francis...?

Back to Francis who is described as; very tall, very well built, fit, thirty-five years old like an oarsman, thin-lipped, handsome - and Margot says at one point; Francis, my pearl a pearl hmmm innocence, purity, perfection, humility - Francis does not appear to be a man who is out to win at another's expense - he wins in sports and has medals for fishing, so he is no namby pammy but, not out for the kill among men - he seems to be more about creating success for himself.

I am seeing this half hour of so called living is Wilson's definition of living - how Wilson defines a man.

As to our understanding of Margot - most of her characterizations are described by Wilson - Francis asked her to stop being Bitchy - and was lonely looking at her sleeping while he was feeling fear when the lion roared during the night but, he does not express much about Margot as a women. Margot says, "I'm coming," then Wilson does the ordering "No, you're not." but then Margot asks Francis as the ultimate authority, "Oh, yes, I am. Mayn't I, Francis?"

Where as it is Wilson who says things like

Women upset - Amounts to nothing. Strain on the nerves and one thing'n another --- off to cry, she seemed a hell of a fine woman

Now that I thought was telling, especially in light of his other remarks - that remark says to me that a women is fine if, she is showing signs of being helpless or, dependent on a certain kind of a man, and if that man disappoints her than she is affected as if she isn't a person in her own right - but then we know that was the typical views held by men about women at the time.

And this next is perplexing no woman ever misses her lion - I wonder if that has another meaning? But let's go on with his definition of a women as it relates to Margot

expected her to be stupid. But she wasn't stupid, no, not stupid, the hardest in the world, the cruelest, the most predatory...

...the most attractive, their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously as they have hardened. Or they pick men they can handle? They can't know that much at the age they marry. He was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women before because this was a very attractive one.enameled in that American female cruelty. They are the damnedest women. Really the damnedest.

I'm still trying to sort out though if Wilson was responsible for the death of Francis - did he say the first animal was dead when he should have, as a hired hunter, put a bullet or so in the animal - I do not know enough about hunting protocol to determine if he acted carelessly or not. But with his thoughts about American women I cannot see him arranging the death of Francis for the sake, or the persuit, of Margot.

hmmm and yet, did he need a death as a sacrifice at the alter of his tent on the savannah?

"The phrase, 'Hemingway code hero' originated with scholar Philip Young. He uses it to describe a Hemingway character who 'offers up and exemplifies certain principles of honor, courage, and endurance which in a life of tension and pain make a man a man.'

"It's important to note the difference between the 'Hemingway hero' and the 'Hemingway code hero.' Some people (myself included) have fallen into the habit of using these terms interchangeably. "The 'Hemingway hero' is a living breathing character essential to the story's narrative. Nick Adams is an example of a Hemingway hero.

The 'Hemingway code hero' is often times a living breathing character as well, but he doesn't always have to take a human form. Sometimes the 'Hemingway code hero' simply represents an ideal that the Hemingway hero tries to live up to, a code he tries to follow. An example of the Hemingway code hero (in human form) would be white hunter Robert Wilson from 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.'

"To simplify the theory some, Earl Rovit developed a unique naming system. He refers to the 'Hemingway hero' as the tyro and the 'Hemingway code hero' as the tutor."

Source:

Online Hemingway Library

A human death on Wilson's watch would damage his reputation as a hunter. I doubt very much if he would instigate or invite one. Hunting was the way he made his living, after all. It's my feeling that Wilson speaks for society in this story. His views of men's strengths and weaknesses and of women are the views of society of that day (and perhaps today.)

In my opinion, the lion is the most important character in the book. Lions signify strength and power. The symbol of the lion is used in Buddhism and Hinduism. There are references to lions in the Bible. What are the two statues at the entrance of the New York Public Library?

In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber the lion is the instigator; it is the manipulator. Without it there would be no story.

The lion is king. Throughout history human beings have tried to prove that they are as strong and stronger than the lion. The ultimate goal in many cultures was to best the lion. Psychologically and realistically, it still is today.

Hemingway says:

"Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side of the front seat, onto the step and down onto the ground. The lion still stood looking majestically and coolly toward this object that his eyes only showed in silhouette, bulking like some superrhino. There was no man smell carried toward his and he watched the object, moving his great head a little from side to side. Then watching the object, not afraid, but hesitating before going down the bank to drink with such a thing opposite him, he saw a man figure detach itself from it and he turned his heavy head and swung away toward the cover for the trees as he heard a cracking crash and felt the slam of a .30-06 220-grain solid bullet that bit his flank and ripped in sudden hot scalding nausea through his stomach. He trotted, heavy, big-footed, swinging wounded lull-bellied, the trees toward the tall grass and cover, and the crash came again to go past him ripping the air apart. Then it crashed again and he felt the blow as it hit his lower ribs and ripped on through, blood sudden hot and frothy in his mouth, and he galloped toward the high grass where he could crouch and not be seen and make them bring the crashing thing close enough so he could make a rush and get the man that held it."

The lion is majestically minding his own business, standing guard over his tribe. He is pre-emptively attacked by men for no other reason than to kill this noble beast and prove that they are superior to him. Throughout history human beings have tried to prove that they are as strong and stronger than the lion.

Man seems compelled to prove his worth at the expense of someone or something else with no recognition that to live in tolerance side by side with other, different people, ideas, beliefs and things is a sign of greater strength than the killing of any kind of lion and bringing home his head and pelt as trophies.

Mal

MAL'S comments about the lion in the story are excellent! Hemingway uses the lion in this story to symbolize manhood and valor and the ability to "take charge".

MAL'S comments also answer one of Eloise's original questions about location and how it influences the story. This story could not have taken place in Wisconsin in a duck blind with a group of hunters nor on a pheasant hunt in Kansas. We would have had a group of hunters with guns in both those places - but....we would have had no lion! The location Hemingway chose is absolutely vital to this story, and as MAL said, "without the lion, there would be no story".

The exotic location of the story also has a direct bearing on, certainly not the lion as he's in his own element, but the characters. Wilson is pretty much at home as are the periphery characters, but the Macombers are intruders and outsiders. They are not comfortable in this environment with its unwritten rules of conduct. It seems that people tend to act differently when they are away from their natural element, as witnessed by the bad behavior of many Americans on vacation. We do things we might not ordinarily do. Perhaps Macomber's and Margaret's actions were outside their normal realm - although Wilson would lead us to believe that they are acting according to their character and their past actions (esp. Margaret). And since Hemingway gave us Wilson's POV throughout the story, obviously he (Hemingway) believes that they acted characteristically. It's just a thought.

Jan

After reading the last interpretative posts I suddenly wondered about the meaning of "happy" in the title.

Was Francis Macomber really happy, or is the adjective used (and meant) in an ironic sense?

BARBARA, I had to go back and find the section of the story you quoted, thinking I really had that one mixed up. But no, it was Macomber who said, "It's not very pleasant to have your wife see you do something like that." And Wilson replied, "I wouldn't think about that anymore. Any one could be upset over his first lion. That's all over." Wilson is doing his job, ie., trying to make sure his clients come away feeling good about themselves and about his services.

I found your thoughts on the significance of the pearl ("Francis, my pearl") interesting. The reference that pops into my mind is the 'pearl of great price'. I felt Margaret was being sarcastic -again - and implying that her 'pearl' had lost much of its luster.

TRAUDE, with Macomber's new found sense of completion, of true 'manliness', he is positively joyous. "You've gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly," his wife said contemptuously, but her contempt was not secure. She was very afraid of something. Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. "You know I have", he said, "I really have."

I could only think, when he died, that he died happier than he had ever been, and there is something to be said for that.

Babi

Kleo, you reminded me of the depressions when there was no hope that it would ever end. In fact for some people WW2 was a relief this side of the Atlantic, except for soldiers and their families. But for the rich, did they notice a difference in their lifestyle as they continued going on safaris and joining select clubs?

Alf, ”Her name (Margaret) remains impeccably clean and her status remains in high regard.” but that is if you assume that she won’t be accused of her husband’s murder. Of course the motive would have to be found and I don’t think a one-night stand with Wilson would weigh too much in a murder trial, still…. The ending leaves certainly a lot of room for speculation. Some would say all she wanted in life was status and by killing her husband she could perhaps rise in her status, but is Margaret a calculating a woman? I am missing something?

Mal, Escutcheon? Bitter vetch? I had to look those two up. I never saw them before. I wonder if Hemingway ever wrote anything nice and romantic about a woman in his novels. Perhaps in For Whom the Bell Tolls, I remember seeing it in the 1960’s with Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, a wonderful movie. Oh! I was so young then….

Agreed, Wilson is on familiar ground. Why then does he treat his clients like if they were accomplished hunters. That would indicate to me that he is not that smart. In his long career, he must have seen many scared clients on their first lion hunt, then why is he so contemptuous of Francis? Then I presume he had to be full of himself. Francis is trying to look like a hero in front of a wife he adores and because Wilson scorns him, Margaret feels that she should too? Then there is only one honest person in the trio as BARBARA said: ”Francis does not appear to be a man who is out to win at another's expense“

Code Hero! Who is the hero in the story do you think?

JAN, I am ashamed to ask but what is POV? ”And since Hemingway gave us Wilson's POV throughout the story, obviously he (Hemingway) believes that they acted characteristically. It's just a thought.” I always have in the back of my mind that any author cannot be completely unbiased because they can’t help but write according to their convictions, otherwise their writing would sound false, no? Can Hemingway know how a woman really feels after reading his biography? Or can he only write about how he feels himself about what a woman feels? Oh! Dear, Oh! Dear.

Wonderful thoughts everyone, I am learning so much.

Éloïse

ELOISE, sorry for throwing you that curve on POV (point of view). This book discussion is turning into a really good one as the comments are very insightful and informative. And, we are not all agreeing with one another, which is as it should be. Good stories make us read between the lines, and we all read something different there.

TRUDE, your comment re Macomber and the meaning of happy caught my attention. In the title "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", notice that there is no comma between the "short" and the "happy", which means that short modifies happy. If there were a comma and it read "short, happy life, then both words would go with life. Soooo, if I haven't lost you up to now, that means that the short space of his life when he changed completely was the only happy part.

An interesting little note on the story is that Hemingway's original working title for this story was "The Happy Ending" before he changed it to the current one. Would the title have made a difference in how we interpret the story?

I'm going to keep quiet for a while now as I've been way too talkative in these discussions (except that ELOISE just now posed some more interesting questions which means that at some point, I'll be obliged to put in my two cents worth....again).

Jan

I previously posed the question about would I want the character Wilson as a friend or a companion in a dangerous situation. That is essentially the same as asking if I would like Ernst Hemingway in those roles. The answer is “yes” and “yes”.

I believe that Hemingway projected himself into his novels. So Wilson the “white hunter” fits the bill easily. Lets look at the character. First it appears that he comes from a middle or lower class background. This is evidenced by describing him as having “machine gunners eyes.” Officers from the British upper class did not man this weapon. His “cold blue eyes” are those of a pragmatist. Even though he does also project a “merry smile.”

He quotes Shakespeare in stating a guiding principle of his life. He has standards that he shares with others in his profession and he maintains them. He sees both of the other characters as they are but tolerates them. But when they exceed his tolerance level he decides to complete his business obligation to them but not to associate with them beyond that.

He easily classifies Margot as a “b----“. He wonders at the spinelessness of Macomber but is willing to reevaluate him as a new man after he rises to his standards of manhood. Unfortunately, he does not sense a change in Margot’s relationship with Harry after his facing the “buff.”

He is sensitive to other’s feelings when he tries to minimize Harry’s feeling of shame yet he bears Margot’s badgering him about his sunburned face. He shows cool courage in the field.

His only mistake is in misjudging Margot’s role in her husband’s death. She did not intend to shoot him. (I will explain that position at another time) He allowed his rigidity of judgement to unjustly condemn her.

newvoyager

Jan - keep talking - it helps -

I've been trying to get above or maybe it is beneath the story to find out what its all about - never mind what clubs or how wealthy or what class warefare or put down of women but what are the dynamics of these three really getting at - why this particular setting with the lion the center of the story - or is it - like as if they were all just a bundle of characteristics with no characteristic being more than or better than or richer than the other...

As if drawing diagrams - what is going on here - what is the message - I can't believe it is as simple as Hemingway suggesting by conquaring the fear of death you can be top dog on this earth and therefore as top dog that makes for happiness. That is like saying the terrorist who unafraid of death, once he straps on his explosives he is the most powerful he can be and unafraid of death he lives happy for those last few minutes or hours of his life.

Maybe that is what he is saying and if so sheesh...

Thank you for your posts regarding the interpretation of "happy" in the title.

ELOÏSE, POV = point of view.

In haste, Traude

There is a great possibility that Margot had finally come to admire or perhaps love Francis again just before he was shot. I agree with all of the negative comments about her in the previous posts on the subject. But there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for her actions. She had married him when he was 24 years old and perhaps not yet matured. One sentence , “... he had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing about him if it were not the most SINISTER”. Was this because she knew that he was gay or that she despised him because he had no backbone? Did she just want him to act like a man that she could respect? Later when Francis says, “why don’t you behave your self?” she responds, “I’ve tried it so long. So very long”. What was she trying to achieve in their relationship?

Later when Francis has shot a “buff” she says, “You were marvelous, darling.” Doesn’t that sound very much like the admiration she had previously shown for Wilson? At this point things were reversed. She says,” I’ve never been more frightened in my life.” She now had a small taste of the fear that Francis has just overcome. So, just as Francis has undergone a transformation so also has she, he from being spineless, she from being ashamed of him. Hemingway later writes,”... She had done the best she could do for many years back and the way they were together now was no one person’s fault.” He also clearly states, “...(she) had shot at the buffalo...”. Later we read that she was crying hysterically after the shooting, not the expected actions of a calculating killer.

But only Hemingway knows for sure. What do you think?

Newvoyager

I think La Macomber wished her husband was dead long before that gun went off.

I think she wanted to have all his assets without the nuisance of him.

If she didn't really intend to kill him when she lifted that gun, she gave every indication that she would have liked to.

I think Margaret was a Five Letter Woman who would never change her stripes.

Mal

TRAUDE:

I apologize for misspelling your name in my previous post!

Jan

I agree completely with Mal. See my previous post #87.

So many people get angry at their spouses with words and angry thoughts in total exasperation. Yet, it would take more than just a cowardly moment facing a wild animal to make a woman want to kill her husband. That seems to be going too far just on the basis of the few words the author wrote. Margot showed genuine admiration for Francis a moment before she picked up the gun to shoot in the direction of Francis and the buffalo.

Did H. indicate what had been their life before that, except a few small hints about the couple's past, or did I miss that? Not that I think that Margot is a sweet little woman, by far, but there is not enough evidence in my mind that she would deliberately kill a man who had been 'forgiving' of her misbehaviors before throughout their marriage.

Wilson hardly could have been a man Margot would have liked to marry, because marriage was essential then to make a woman honest and respected and he was definitely not in her league. Then, I would like to be convinced that she was a murderer somehow, by what words in the story can we arrive at this conclusion?

Did Hemingway end the story like this on purpose to make readers aware of their inner sentiments regarding a situation where the fault would point to a beautiful woman while the two men would be perceived as totally innocent and heroic?

What is your sentiment on this?

Éloïse

What sweet women, who love and respect their husbands, do you know who kiss other men in front of their husbands and sneak off for a night of illicit bliss with a Great White Hunter or anyone else?

I didn't say Margaret killed her husband with malice and forethought, I said she wished he was dead and out of the way. Sometimes the wish becomes the deed, intentionally or not.

Be careful what you wish for.

Mal

I've re-read those last few pages two or three times, and I cannot see that Margaret made any admiring remark shortly before the shooting. Her last words are described as spoken 'contemptuously' and 'bitterly'. She is also described as 'very afraid of something', and that something could only have been the change in Macomber.

It does say that she 'shot at the buffalo', but given the setting, Macomber was between her and the buffalo. The buffalo was very close to her husband, and even if she had been an expert gunwoman she could not have shot the buffalo in any vulnerable spot. I do think it was a spur of the moment thing, unpremeditated, but I don't for a minute believe it was accidental.

Babi

Margot comes back in the tent, crawls into bed like if nothing had happened. In your opinion, what should have Francis done in this case? Surely not beat her, but then what?

The deeper I go into this, the more I feel sorry for Francis. At least he has feelings, anger, fear, pride, "bastard, you insolent bastard" he thought when Wilson asked if he had slept well the morning after.

Hemingway reveals facets of the personality of his characters. Can you detect his method in doing that? Is there a method?

Do you feel that Wilson is taking charge of every situation and turns it to his advantage?

Éloïse

I enjoyed the diverget opinions on "Faire Margot".

I wonder how many have noticed how H. put his stamp as a gun lover on this story. He did not just say that someone used a rifle. No, it (like a person) was addressed by its proper name. For example Wilson, the primary hunter, usually had “the big gun”, the symbol of ultimate power and control. Its name was a Gibbs at .505 caliber. Francis, as befitting a novice, uses the Springfield. Even though this is more than adequate for the job (caliber .30-06) it is lower on the armament totem pole. Margot, clearly at the bottom of the pecking order, carried a Mannlicher, a light hunting rifle, but lethal enough as we have seen. Trivia? Perhaps not to H.

Who was braver, the lion or the "buff"?

Newvoyager

Newvoyager, Good point, about the guns, as I was reading all the different kinds, I suddenly realized all my ignorance about guns. The only one I remember is a 22 rifle that we owned decades ago. Of course, of course, H had a fixation about hunting. It was the 'in' thing then. In the 50's, men would go on hunting trips to kill deer, moose, 'perdrix' I don't know the English for that. Now you ask a super question: "Who was braver, the lion or the "buff"? I love it, what a question, frankly I don't know, I have to think about it.

What do you all say? We haven't heard from Kiwi Lady yet, and Ginger, yskole, Prosserij, Mahjong,

Éloïse

Perdrix translates into "partridge".

Newvoyager

What do we make of the fact that Margaret (not Margot) shot Francis from the jeep ? Isn't that of some significance? Hadn't Wilson said to Francis early on that shooting an animal from (the protection of) a vehicle was an absolute no-no, i.e. simply not done?

I agree in principle with MAL's impression of Margaret. But did Margaret shoot her husband on impulse to help him when she saw him in mortal danger, or did she do so with "malice aforethought" seeing this as her opportunity to fulfill a long-harbored, perhaps unacknolwedged wish?

There is no specific description of the details; Wilson seems to assume it was murder and deliberate; Margaret is "shaken", but where does that leave the reader?

This points us in the direction of BARBARA's earlier question about the messsage of the story. If there is one, what is it?

I don't have the vaguest idea what message there is in this story, or even if there is one. I do see a very strong principal theme, though: Courage, Cowardice and Bravado. This leads me to wonder about how to distinguish one from the other.

Francis Macomber's instinct was to protect himself from extreme danger when he faced a charging lion, knowing full well -- and acknowledging -- that even armed he was ill-equipped to meet such a challenge. Is that really cowardice?

Was Robert Wilson's being able to face the same danger courage or bravado?

As TRAUDE says, and I pointed out earlier, Margaret Macomber shot from the safety of a vehicle. Was that cowardice? Bravado? In my mind it certainly didn't take any courage.

I don't know why I keep thinking of Jesus Christ, who never lifted a hand against a fellow human being or an animal. Perhaps it is because of talking about "The Age of Faith" in the Story of Civilization discussion.

I call what Jesus did courage. I call risking one's life to save another human being courage. I do not call a man's or woman's confronting a lion or a herd of buffalo armed with a potent weapon courage.

Having said this, now I have begun to think that, for me anyway, any message in this story has to do with the ridiculousness and pettiness of all too many rules of society, the kinds of rules that say a man isn't a man unless he faces extreme danger with only a rifle and a stiff upper lip to keep him all together in one piece. That's my idea. I feel sure that wasn't what Ernest Hemingway had in mind.

Mal

Here I promised to keep quiet and I'm right back....but there's just so much to discuss in this story.

Hemingway is telling us that power motivates people to do many things, and not all of them good. The useless, wanton killing of innocent and beautiful animals is the way the men exercised their power. Wilson showed his power by keeping the larger weapons for himself and for being the "cleanup man" if things went wrong in the hunt. Margaret, of course, used her power to seduce Wilson and in the end to control the direction her marriage was taking. All the main characters on the safari exercised their power over the "underlings" (the bearers, cook, etc).

Hemingway also is telling us - and this is probably the most important "moral" in the story.....that just one brief moment in our lives can change us forever. We don't know when that moment will be there, but we have to recognize and/or take advantage of it when it appears or lose it forever. Macomber changed during his moment, and Margaret took her moment and "ran with it". The lion had his moment which he met head on as did the buffalo who was running from his. I'm not sure Wilson had that moment, but if he did, maybe some of you know what it was.

ELOISE, I'm anxious to make some points re the ending of the story, but I don't know if you'd like to keep that part of the discussion for next week. You've done such a nice job of keeping us on track here, that I wouldn't want to jump the gun (pardon the pun)and forge ahead when you'd rather wait.

Jan

ELOISE, you asked how Hemingway revealed facets of character in his story. For me, I found those insights in the private thoughts of the different characters. I notice, tho', now that I think of it, that while we learned many of Wilson's thoughts, and some of Macomber's, I don't recall any from Margaret. Have I forgotten them, or were we not allowed to know Margaret/Margot's private thoughts? Perhaps to keep us guessing...did she or didn't she?

Was Robert Wilson's being able to face the same danger courage or bravado? Interesting question, MAL. After all the hunts he has led, tho', I would think it is now more a matter of experience and self-confidence. I also suspect that a hunter who goes in for bravado would not last very long. (To me, 'bravado' suggests a 'show-off' imitation of courage.)

Babi

Traude, It is fun to play detective trying to determine if Margaret shot her husband deliberately or not. I guess if H. had given us a small clue, it would be easier, but we are not given much information except that she cried hysterically. That is what led me to think that if she had done that deliberately, how could she pretend to be hysterical in front of her shrewd and cold ex-lover. Fortunately Hemingway didn’t venture into writing about how a woman would feel having shot her husband whether accidentally or not.

Jan, ”I'm not sure Wilson had that moment To me Wilson uses every moment to suit his best interest and when Francis was shot he immediately tried to protect himself while he was already assuming that Margaret had committed murder.

Because this story is so short and it takes place only within a couple of days, it is hard not to comment on the ending as we go along. I am just following along with what you all want to say because you are such a wonderful group. Thank you for that.

We could look into what the beautiful wild animals are doing during all of this mess. How many different wild animals are involved in the story? How many times were animals mentioned from start to finish? Did anyone count them? How do you feel when your read that an animal has been wounded or shot dead?

Éloïse

. . . came away with a bit of a different "take".

First of all, while I have no problem with hunting for food, or killing an animal in self-defense, I find hunting for the sport of killing abominable, just as I find hunting for a zoo abominable, or training of animals to "perform". So right there I did not like the setting for this story or the people in it, or the author for that matter who would have participated in these activities, even though I do think he's a brilliant writer who says soooooo much with such sparse language.

The other thing I found interesting in this story is the comeraderie amongst men when certain life events happen; in this case one man having lost his fear a long time ago and the other one coming of age and losing his. Even if they don't like each other personally, I think there is a bonding between men that women will never understand when events like that happen. And I think when that happened, Margot was the odd man out, and she didn't like it and didn't know how to handle it and was probably resentful.

But even though I agree that Margot was a bitch, I don't think she killed her husband on purpose. I had the feeling that once Macomber felt the change in himself, the marriage that had once had a sad sort of balance was suddenly out of balance. Women have superb intuition for that, and Margot just "knew", and it left her confused and afraid. I think she was also a very sexually frustrated woman who learned to live with her lot for the sake of money and played on the side. I felt that because there were so many references made about Macomber looking boyish and being a boy-man. Boy-men usually don't have a clue about the needs of women. If she had been a different sort of woman I think this is the point at which the marriage might actually have become a "real" relationship for the first time. But being who she was, I can imagine that all sorts of things went through her mind---like is Macomber now going to be as cool and calculating as Wilson? Will I still be able to play my games? Be in control? Will he discard me in the same way that Wilson would? I'm aging and no longer as beautiful as I once was. And subconsciously she probably knew her power was gone. In fact, I think all these thoughts were subconscious in the heat of the moment, and not methodical or calculating. She had just counted on her beauty and simply didn't know what to do when the balance changed except react.

So when Macomber was shooting at the buffalo and didn't down him right away, I sort of see her subconscious working in trying to get her power back in the same way family members will try to change the changed person back to what he/she was before. It's a phenomenon I've watched fairly often. A family member changes and everyone is rattled because they are unfamiliar with this "new" person; so they try to change him back, or manipulate to get power back in other ways, in order to bring blance back. I think Margot shot at the buffalo because if she was the one to get the killing shot, she would still have some power by balancing her kill against his. I don't think she was trying to save her husband from the buffalo or trying to kill him. It was instinctive more than deliberate. Instead, because she was a novice just like Macomber was at this game, she miscalculated because the distance was probably too great and the gun not powerful enough (someone else mentioned that she was given the weakest gun), and she hit him instead. I don't think she would have been hysterical if she had very deliberately killed Macomber.

Anyhow, those are things that went through my mind as I read the story. Couples form a pattern, and when one upsets the pattern, the other one often does something instinctual/manipulative/foolish that tries to re-establish the old patterns that may have been very negative, but at least one knows what to expect. She had no idea what to expect from this new Macomber and simply reacted in a situation of which she did not realize the danger.

Just my musings. All the other musings have been very insightful here---fascinating posts by all of you.

Playing the detective is such good mental exercise in this story, and I hope I get some opposing viewpoints. MOUNTAIN ROSE'S comments were logical but.... I have to disagree with her conclusion. I think Hemingway actually DOES gives us several clues as to whether or not Margaret deliberately killed her husband. Remember that all the way through this story there has been a lot of wanton, senseless killing, and having and using a gun has worked well for the men in the story. With the guns, they have been winners in the battle with the animals. Hemingway has set the stage for the final act!

(1) Hemingway tells us early on that “Margaret was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her, and Macomber had too much money for Margaret ever to leave him”. Is she stuck in an untenable situation that has no real solution?? Macomber isn’t the same man that she married, this safari has changed their relationship, and Hemingway tells us that she feels she is past her prime-it wouldn’t be easy to find another husband at this point in her life, and she doesn’t want to give up Macomber’s money. I’d be feeling a little desperate myself, I think. Aging, divorced, and poor don't make for a happy combination!

(2) Before going to the buffalo hunt, Margaret is insistent that she go along – even to the point of threatening her husband, “If you make a scene, I’ll leave you darling”. Why is she so insistent that she be included in this part of the safari??

(3) When the buffalo gets up after being shot, “Then it’s going to be just like the lion”, said Margaret, full of anticipation”. Anticipation of what???

(4) “You’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly, his wife said contemptuously. But her contempt was not secure. She was very afraid of something”. Margaret says, ostensibly of the ride and the hunt “I’ve never been more frightened in my life”. Could it be as BABI said, the change in her husband that has frightened her. Macomber says, “you know I don’t think I’ll ever be afraid of anything again." And “anything” in Margaret’s frame of reference probably means he’s not afraid of divorcing her. And what a switch in roles here – now Margaret’s the one afraid and Macomber is secure. Again, Margaret’s fear and insecurity continue to increase.

(5) When Wilson and Macomber go back in the bush to find the wounded buffalo, Hemingway makes a point to tell the reader that the gun was left with Margaret in the car. Margaret knows at this point that she has lost the power over her husband, and it’s also at this point that the seed of an idea is planted – nothing definite you understand. On some level she realizes that the gun gives her some power – she’s seen it demonstrated over and over during this safari. She still probably doesn’t know what she’s going to do with the gun, if anything.

(6) And, the most powerful clue of all is the picture Hemingway leaves us with as Wilson and Macomber go back to find the buffalo. “Macomber, looking back, saw his wife, with the rifle by her side, looking at him. He waved to her and she did not wave back." Why did Macomber look back? Why didn’t she wave back???? Hemingway made this picture of Margaret and the rifle so powerful and it remains so etched in our memories that he had to have put it in for a purpose. I think it’s the clue that solves the mystery.

(7) Then…notice that Margaret never denies deliberately killing her husband. The only thing she keeps saying is "stop it".The 1st thing out of my mouth if I’d just shot my husband accidentally would be, “I didn’t mean to”, or "it was just an accident!". And, of course, she’s upset – wouldn’t you be if you’d just murdered your husband????

Sooooo, my feeling is that she deliberately took advantage of the situation, the convenient gun, the available witnesses to an “accident”, and with no particular forethought, but with clear motives - fear, desperation, and greed. Nobody ever accused this woman of being stupid!

Jan

"It was a very simple story called 'Out of Season' and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood."
Page 75, A Moveable Feast

That's what Hemingway has done here in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".

Good writers know the beginning and the end of a story or novel are very important. This story starts:
"It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened."
This immediately grabs the reader's interest. Like, what happened? Then Hemingway goes on with a discussion about whether people prefer a gimlet or a lemon squash. All very civilized. The reader feels a degree of amazement to find out these people are on Safari in the wilderness of Africa. What a beginning!

The story ends with a scene featuring Wilson and Margaret Macomber. Wilson admits to being a little angry because he had started to like her now deceased husband, Francis. He goads Margaret:
" 'Don't worry,' he said. 'There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There's the testimony of the gun-bearer and the driver too. You're perfectly all right.'

" 'Stop it,' she said.

" 'There's a hell of a lot to be done,' he said. 'And I'll have to send a truck off to the lake to wireless for a plane to take the three of us into Nairobi. Why didn't you poison him? That's what they do in England.' "
The italicized emphasis is mine. This sentence is a trick Hemingway uses in this smashing ending where the reader is left not knowing whether or not Margaret Macomber deliberately killed her husband, or whether it was an accident. This is exactly what Hemingway meant when he talked about omitting part of the story.

What's interesting is that the conclusion readers come to reflects their own personal principles, experiences and lives. Instead of looking objectively at what Hemingway has written, the reader, if a woman, generally will say, "Of course, she didn't kill him deliberately, even though she was a five letter woman. I never would do that."

Or she might say, "Of course, she killed him deliberately. She might have been hard to get along with, but he was a lousy husband, and she was unhappy in her marriage and wanted out of it. I'm glad she's getting away with it."

The reader becomes Margot. What a compliment to the skill of this writer!

What a man would say I don't know, though I would suspect some men would say it would be right in line with her character to kill Francis. She was, after all, the kind of woman who sucks the strength and manliness out of men because of her need for power and control. (There's a very descriptive word for this that fits Margot Macomber beautifully, but I am reluctant to use it in SeniorNet.)

Because of what Hemingway omitted that he might have put in had this story been a novel, the reader can only speculate about the Macombers' marriage. Hemingway has given us no real facts about that at all.

Nobody will ever know whether Margot deliberately killed her husband, and that's exactly what Hemingway wanted. Good writers put a hook at the end of their stories and books that make readers want to read more of their work, or go back to the story or book they just read. This is an incredibly big and successful hook.

The story doesn't end there. Robert Wilson forces Margaret to humble herself and say "please".
" 'Oh, please stop it,' she said. 'Please, please stop it.'

" 'That's better,' Wilson said. 'Please is much better. Now I'll stop.' "
Hemingway pulls us back to a strong thread in this story by cleverly showing Wilson's control. Wilson has had control over every single incident and character in this story since it first began. He's the one who has held the power throughout.

Ernest Hemingway was a masterful writer who understood human beings and human nature and had the talent to write it down and tell us, while at the same time leaving us full of questions.

Mal

MOUNTAIN ROSE, JAN AND MALRYN, I have thoroughly enjoyed my morning's reading here. All three of you posited such clear, well thought out and well supported viewpoints.

Jan, I also felt strongly that Margaret/Margot's failure to wave back was ominously significant. And as does Malryn, I see Wilson's persistence in pushing Margaret until she says "Please" as a demonstration of his power, and his awareness of it. It leaves me wondering if he does not intend to continue using this power over her; that the story of Wilson and Margaret does not end here. That, of course, is pure speculation.

... Babi

I think Margot impulsively killed her husband. She was shaken by the change in the balance of power caused by his new bravery and was probably thinking of this while she was alone in the jeep. The opportunity came, and she took it - perhaps even denying to herself what she was doing. She was crying hysterically afterwards as a release reaction, perhaps to the horror of what she had done, maybe more to the fear that she might get nailed for his murder. I can't imagine Hemingway thinking otherwise than its being deliberate based on my perception of his attitude towards women. And what would be the point of the story if she didn't kill him? At any rate, those are my thoughts,

Pamela

MAL that was a GREAT post re Hemingway deliberately omitting part of the story and being able to do it in a way that the reader doesn't know he/she is being manipulated. I'd never really thought about it in that light.

Also your comments that our feelings about the ending of the story reflect our own principles is exactly right! This thought is kinda scary, though, since from what I read into the clues Hemingway dropped, I think she killed him deliberately, albeit impulsively. So, now I'm wondering what that says about ME???

Jan

JAN, I see the clues Hemingway dropped as ambivalent. I don't think it mattered to Hemingway whether Margaret deliberately killed her husband or not. What difference did it make? Francis was dead.

I have to say, too, that Francis wasn't the only one who changed in the course of this story, so did Margaret. I believe Margot's fear was fear of herself.

Mal

I don't think so. I think it's perfectly possible to see the character of a person without "becoming" that person. We do it all the time in our relationships with other people in real life. Nor do I see why an average woman would put herself in the shoes of a woman like this who lives for her beauty and money. Most of us can't even imagine being that avaricious or self-involved with physicality, especially to the point of murder. (at least I haven't met any women like that).

"It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened."

That is why it is in the heading Mal. Throughout the story there is this tension between genders, between spouses, between Wilson and his clients, between the three and the animals. But Hemingway thrives on tension, that is his lifeblood.

On trial for the murder of Francis, what would the lawyer's plea to convince the jury that Margaret is guilty?

Would he say that the motives were nebulous to say the least? and the proof that it was premeditated would have to be brought up? The witnesses could only relate the facts of what happened on the scene as they didn't know each other at all before the hunt.

What was Wilson's intentions when he assumes that Margaret deliberately shot her husband instead of the buffalo? His one-night-stand didn't seem to impress him very much as all he had to say about it was: "she didn't say much". Clearly she didn't do it for the love of the man, than why did she do it? For revenge because her husband was a coward? Was he a coward?

Let's see, can I put myself in her shoes? I would have to know all about her life's story for that, not just a few bribes of information. I would have to have the same personality, improbable, the same nationality, hardly, the same beauty, h... no.

Interesting comments here, we should all become lawyers after this.

Éloïse

If the female reader doesn't identify with Margaret in any way; doesn't put herself in her shoes long enough to say, "What would I have done? Would I have deliberately killed that boyish, and to me ineffectual, weak man whose only strength was his money, the man who didn't satisfy me sexually and I had to turn to other men to fulfill my needs? Or would I let him live and continue in an empty life with somebody I didn't love or even care much for?" then Ernest Hemingway has failed.

ELOISE, I quoted the first sentence in the book to show how strong a beginning this story has, and for no other reason.

Though it would be a fun game to play, I suppose, I won't put Margaret Macomber in an imaginary trial situation for the simple reason that I don't think the question of whether or not she deliberately murdered her husband is the most important part of this story.

What is important, then?

The dynamics between husband and wife are important.

The dynamics between a man, who is hunting big game for sport, proof of superiority and enhancement of his ego, and an experienced hunter, without whom the first man is nothing more than a target for the attack of a wild animal, whose life and territory have been threatened, are important.

The dynamics between Margaret and a man who has not much more than disdain for her (Wilson) are important.

The development of these characters and what ELOISE calls the tension among them, mostly through the use of dialogue and very little description, is important.

The dynamics of the place, the African wild, is important.

Most important, in my opinion, is the influence of a society, which believes a man is not a man unless he goes through at least one trial by fire successfully in his life, and has beaten the odds. We haven't dwelled on that society and its influences on our own time and, just incidentally, on 21st century women trying to make it in a man's world, very much in this discussion, and I believe it needs talking about.

Mal

I think Mr. Hemingway was making a point about the "circle" of the gentry, the elite high-society folk.

Mal says "The dynamics of the place, the African wild, is important."

Think about that. Why did Hemingway opt for an untamed, desolate country for this setting? I think he's brilliant. All of these thoughts run rampant thru my mind; what does he want us to see? It is an undisciplined, uncontrolled and unmanageable area - a bestial wasteland. Perhaps he was attempting to tame the shrew?" Or was he making light of the "barreness" of their relationship? It is all so primal.

Yes, Mal, women trying to make it in a man's world is important that is true, then how do men deal with women's independence while still keeping their dignity is another story.

Jan, you said a while back something about the title that I didn't yet mention but I wanted to: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". Do you mean that the only happiness Francis had in his life was the moment when he shot the Buffalo? and that sentence with a comma after "short" would have had a totally different meaning? of course, it would now that you mention it. I never thought of it, but that is something to think about certainly.

Wilson said about Francis: "Beggar had probably been afraid all his life" with this I feel that Wilson, I suppose would never have afraid in his life. "Hadn't had time to be afraid of the buff. Then and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now." What on earth is Wilson talking about here about motor cars? does any one know?

Éloïse

hmmm I've been muddling through this story for the past couple of days - seeing figures as action figures without benefit of our cultural identities or the difference in sex other than it representing a hierarchy of power - finally tonight it hit for me -

The story seems to be filled with an organization or structure of power - the hierarchy of servents - as someone earlier mentioned the guns - between the three main characters - even the animals in the hunt have a hierarchy of value placed on them.

Then along comes this baby face American who is not playing by the rules - the rules may have been adapted and developed by a certian economic group but they have become so ingrained that even here in the bush a white hunter who is low man on the chain of the proper English-club-powerful lives by the system and carved out a place for himself that gives him more power than those who he arranges and sells a hunt.

Not only does this baby faced American not play by the power rules and he must be instructed every step of the way how to play the upshot is regardless if it was intentional or not the lowest on the ladder of the powerful turns the tables is takes on the power position by daring to use the most powerful gun and committing the ultimate act.

I am thinking that this is the story of Europe at the time - all of Europe is being turned on its head as the lowest are taking the power in their hands and turning the game on its head.

We have the rise of Hitler in Germany, not the Kaiser or the Emperior of Austria but Hitler who had been a lowly soldier in WWI - we have the turnover in Spain and the Red Russians, the peasants of Russia are taking over the country forcing land owner Russians from their homes, walking into their houses and taking at will what they want.

And so here is a small simple story of an organized bit of culture, the carrying on a traditional hunt, when it is turned on its head by this baby faced American and this women who chose to take action rather than sit quietly in the vehicle waiting for instructions from the more powerful member of the system.

Instead she beckons chaos and unleaches the power and destruction of that chaos no different than the gypsy Rafael, the brave Pilar and the nineteen-year-old raped and orphaned Maria with Jordan dynamite the bridge. The near death Stoic American helped and buys time for the fleeing guerillas who are turning the Spanish power system on its head.

ELOISE re Wilson's comments about the motor car: I believe that Wilson was trying to explain (to himself if to no one else) Macomber's new-found valor and his loss of fear. So Wilson says that (1) Macomber hadn't had time to be afraid, (2) he was angry (at himself? at Margaret? at Wilson?), and (3) hunting from the motor car put Macomber on more familiar territory than if he had been on foot -and the car also provided some margin of safety. Obviously, he thinks since Macomber is now fearless, he'll be a "damn fire eater", i.e. a power to be reckoned with, perhaps more reckless and daring in his actions, more anxious to take on dangerous game, and more of a threat to Wilson's authority.

I continue to be amazed at Hemingway's genius for never letting up on the tension and the power struggles that go on in this story. Everything we've discussed so far goes right back to those things. And...there is NOTHING in the story to lighten the mood in any way - it's all grit right from the 1st sentence to the last. And, the reader knows from the 1st sentence that this probably isn't going to be a happy story, but I certainly wasn't prepared for the "hook" at the end that MAL (I think) mentioned. I really like unpredictable stories!

Jan

Here is a video clip with sound of a LION HUNT IN AFRICA

Several hunters are talking while their guns are pointing toward a roaring lion only a few feet away. Click on the link to know what happens next.

Éloïse

That's a great video, ELOISE, thank you. Those men stood strong when the lion charged, didn't they? Armed with powerful weapons, they could. I can see why Francis Macomber bolted. I'm on the side of the lion.

BARBARA makes reference to the Spanish Civil War and Hemingway's novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, in her Post #140, which deals with that war. A year after "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was published, or 1937, Ernest Hemingway was in Spain covering that war as a journalist. Thanks for giving us historical information about the time of this story, Barb.

ELOISE, when I mentioned working women in the 21st century, I had in mind the Trial by Fire they must undergo. If women are to do men's work and assume men's rôles they face the same challenges that men do in the workplace. The Trial by Fire in order to come of age and succeed that existed in Hemingway's day exists today in a different kind of jungle.

Actually, this is an ancient concept, but the one we see represented in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" came from England. It began early with the rigorous hazing in public schools like Eton and Harrow and colleges like Oxford and Cambridge, and persisted through the lives of gentry males. (Not only the gentry, the lower classes had and have their own types of Trials by Fire.) What I'd like to know is why this primitive demand of society has persisted?

Mal

What I'd like to know is why this primitive demand of society has persisted?

Interesting question, Mal. Traditionally, it seems to me a testing to determine if this member of the group is going to be able to hold his own. Is he strong enough to be useful to the group? Will he be loyal? Can we trust him? Do we give him respect, or dismiss him as unreliable? We still need to know who we can rely on, and who we can't.

...Babi

Ernest Hemingway hated his mother, Grace Hemingway. She had been an opera singer and did her best to instill culture into her children. She decided that her son, Ernest, and her daughter, Marcelline, were twins, dressed Ernest in girl's clothes, and raised him in an androgynous way, creating early some confusion in his mind about gender.

At the same time, she was a much sterner parent than Hemingway's father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, an easy-going, lenient parent, was.

Dr. Hemingway was a fine marksman, who took his son into the woods to hunt at an easly age, and taught him what he called "muscular Christian values."

As Hemingway grew up he began to question his father's masculinity. He finally concluded that his mother had emasculated his father. In many ways it appears as if Ernest Hemingway thought he had to fight for his own masculinity.

This background spilled over into his relationship with women as an adult. Hemingway didn't dislike women; he hated emasculating women.

His first love was his nurse, Agnes Kurowsky, who took care of him in the hospital after he suffered severe leg injuries in Italy where he had gone as an ambulance driver at the age of 19 in World War I. Agnes was 7 years older than he was, and it was this age difference she used as reason for breaking off the relationship. Hemingway was badly wounded by this rejection and carried the scars caused by it the rest of his life.

Hemingway liked strong women. He hated emasculating women like Margaret Macomber. His first wife, Hadley Richardson, was probably the least strong of all the women he married.

His second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, was a strong, independent woman. She was a career woman who worked in a man's field, women's fashions and publishing. She was an editor of Vogue Magazine, not an easy job then or now.

His third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was a journalist, also working in a man's world. She said of Hemingway that he was a "mythologist", that he created "the myth of Ernest Hemingway", which the world believed and believes today.

His fourth wife, Mary Welsh, also was a journalist and author. She may well have been the strongest of them all. She went on Safaris with him, understood his need for adventure, excitement and change. She stuck by Hemingway until he died.

Some of his letters, as mentioned by Bernice Kert in her book, The Hemingway Women, show a softer, more tender side to this man than he'd have the world believe.

It seems as if Hemingway deliberately tried to persuade the world that he was not emasculated in the way he thought his father had been.

Mal

Selected Poetry of Ernest Hemingway

you state that: "If the female reader doesn't identify with Margaret in any way; . . . . then Ernest Hemingway has failed."

That's a pretty bold statement of the author's intentions. As far as I can see what this story is, is just a very well written mystery which the author has left to the reader to conclude. One can read any mystery without identifying with the characters. And why exactly must we identify with Margot and not one of the men? Actually in this story I would identify more with either of the males. I think that's exactly what most have done here---tried to solve a mystery from the descriptions of character the author gives---not necessarily our own experiences, just as any other mystery.

I just don't see it. I can tell you for certain that in no way do I identify with Margot, neither having had that sort of beauty or ever desiring that sort of wealth, nor believing that sexual adventure outside of marriage was OK, nor knowing the sort of fear that she probably feels in losing control. In fact, as I said before, I don't know too many women who could relate to that. So what is there to identify with except that she is a character in a story? Are you saying she is an archetype? Because if you are, I must disagree again simply because I can identify with some archetyes and not with others, and the archetype I identify with is Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Letter", but certainly not Margot.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I just can't see where you are coming from.

. . . any of you ladies identify with characteristics of either of the males. For instance, I can identify with the fear that Macomber feels about the wounded lion, and I can identify with him overcoming that fear at some point and "coming of age". I can also identify with Wilson in the way he does his job to the best of his ability but has a quiet sort of disdain for many of the people he serves. I can even identify with Wilson in his taking advantage of the women who think they haven't gotten their money's worth if they don't share the cot with the great white hunter. I've taken advantage of people who wanted something that I didn't think was right, but they wanted it and paid for it. It's not that I like that side of my character, but I admit it's there.

So there are archetypical characteristics I can identify with---but not necessarily the whole character.

And by the way, I think Babi's post #144 was brillliant. A society tests everyone, male and female, in different ways to see if there is a fit and a person can be trusted. It's necessary for the cohesion of a society to do that. Some tests are just more bizarre than others.

And did anyone identify with the lion or the buffalo? I found myself identifying with the lion more than any of the human characters---the being wounded and continuing the good fight right to the very end with a sort of impartial feeling towards the humans in the story except for the fact that they were the source of hurt.

So be it, ROSE.

It is my contention as a writer that a good writer creates characters, some characteristics of which a reader should be able to identify with positively or negatively, even if the characters are lions and buffalos. If you don't agree with that, it's fine with me.

I've said my piece. Now I'll shut up and let you hold the fort.

Mal

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and it is good that there are so many different ones. It makes us aware that we all come from different backgrounds, education and living a long time like I have, I had the pleasure of changing my mind several times in my life about people in different situations.

As we are discussing this short story by Hemingway, it is time for me to ask if any of you wish to continue with another short story by him, The Snows of Kilimanjaro that would be starting right after The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, on November the 15th to the 30th. The setting is in Africa as well and as usual Hemingway chooses characters that challenge us in the most exquisite manner as he tries to know why we are the way we are.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is also online.

It will be a pleasure for me to have your participation in another Hemingway short story. .

Éloïse

No, I am holding the fort here, hahaha, good one Mal.

In case your didn't look in the video in the link I posted, this below is an extract from the site:

A couple tid bits about that lion video, The lion had killed several people before the professional hunters where called in. It had been trapped and moved to a lion only preserve where it was killing every lion it came in contact with. Then it was moved to another area where it dug out from to where these guys where called in to take it out.

As much as we feel sorry for this lion, some have to be put down because of their violent and deadly nature and they are a menace to other animals in the wild. So in this case, to shoot it was the humane thing to do.

This video will be in the heading because it relates to this discussion in almost every detail. We can even hear a female voice saying that she was shaking with fear, it seems she was shooting this film.

Éloïse

Here is you chance to definitively establish the truth of the matter. How would you write the missing last paragraph of the story? It is set on a steamer headed back to England and is Margot reflecting on the event of the death of her husband.

Is it possible that it is an event that "just happened" wihout any deep meanings? Like life and death on the plains of Africa?

I hope that Papa appreciates your efforts.

newvoyager

ps We could publish all of the contributions to this site. Well done!

Barbara,

I enjoyed your analogy of what was happening in Europe with Hemingway's story. I never thought of that, but I bet Hem had. Eloise, the lion video was sobering. Did anyone besides me root for the lion? The men seemed ridiculous standing around with their pop guns trying to kill that magnificant creature!

Pamela

An essay by Jim Shoe entitled Hemingway’s “Portrayal of masculinity”, he writes:

“Hemingway also seems to associate acts of violence with masculinity. Nathan Scott Jr. writes of Hemingway’s manliest characters: Whatever they do, whether it be bullfighting or fishing or prizefighting or hunting lions in the African bush or blowing up bridges as a military saboteur – is done with consummate skill and with pride of craft; they are tough and competent: they can be counted on in a tight squeeze, and they do not cheat or squeal or flinch at the prospect of danger. (Scott, 217)”

Does that mean that H himself is that or would like to be? Even the gun bearers were scared while Wilson coolly just took over the situation by telling Francis that they couldn't leave a dying lion there and just take off and pretend that nothing happened, as Francis suggested, when Wilson said that they should go and finish him off. Wouldn't you also think that this was the decent thing to do?

”The other male character used often by Hemingway is the coward or the “messy man”. This is the man who follows no code and has no honor or bravery. He is often dominated by a woman,by far the most humiliating condition according to Hemingway.

One of the best examples of the coward is portrayed in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Francis. He is dominated by his wife and looked down upon by manly hunter Wilson. But as the story goes on, Macomber overcomes his cowardliness and becomes the sought after “code” hero for the short while before his death. The hunting expedition serves as an opportunity for Francis to learn the code and reassert his power over his wife. The male characters used by Hemingway in his stories say a lot about his own views of masculinity.”

Gradually since the time that the story was written we don’t see this show of masculinity we used to see before and it is gradually being taken over by the strong women if we go by what we see in television shows and let’s face it in the military where women serve in just as dangerous situation as men on the battlefield. “Du jamais vu”. Today, it seems strange to read how men wanted to prove their manhood that way only a short 50 odd years ago. Do you think things have changed?

Éloïse

I'm planning on reading "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" this week. I'd be interested in continuing this Hemingway theme in discussion. I thought Jim Shoe's essay on Hemingway and masculinity was very good, and had to agree with his views. ...Babi

Babi, thank you, you are the first to say you wish to continue the discussion with Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Barbara, “I am thinking that this is the story of Europe at the time - all of Europe is being turned on its head as the lowest are taking the power in their hands and turning the game on its head.” Good point and Hemingway was living in Europe and he could very well have been influenced by the tension that existed in the world between the two wars.

Wars produce heroes and by the same token, hero-worship and acts of bravery were like a medal of honor. I remember the admiration we had for soldiers in uniform during the war, my husband wanted to join the army at 19 but he was refused because of his eyes. There were not many young men out of uniform here.

Newvoyager, “How would you write the missing last paragraph of the story?” Since you pose the question, why don’t you try your hand at it first. This should be very interesting indeed for all of us to finish this story our own way. I have my own ending in my mind, but I will wait for those who want to try their hand at it before I write it.

How about it folks. Lets do it, lets finish Hemingway’s short story. We still have 5 days left discussing The Short Happy Life… I think it’s a wonderful idea. We could pretend to be Hemingway and write a paragraph, not a book though, about what happens next.

While we talk about November 15th, what do you say we just continue with Hemingway and discuss The Snows of Kilimanjaro. It will be good to make parallels of the two stories. No cheating though and look into Google where they offer several critiques of his work.

Éloïse

ÉLOÏSE, it was very helpful to me to have your summary of the video part of the lion hunt in the link, which was inaccessible to me.

I agree with the sentiments expressed in # 154. Reflecting on last year's discussion of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez, I believe the term "machismo", not yet widely used in EH's time, fits him rather well.

It will be great to next discuss "The Snows ...", for comparison. The story was made into a movie years ago with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward and Hildegard Neff. I must confess that I liked the film better than the story at the time. Rereading it may change my mind.

As for rewriting the ending of "The Short Happy Life ...", I'd rather not presume.

I've always felt that Wilson hated the fact that he had to make a living by bringing these "hunters" into his world. He loved the land and animals and didn't like to take these people by car up to where the animals lived and let them kill them in order to put a head on the wall of their den. This wasn't hunting as he loved it.

The Books&Literature page won't allow you to register for "Snows." So please sign me up.

Hemingway Chronology

It's good that we have enough participants wanting to continue with Snows of Kilimanjaro after the 15th, because we are not finished with Hemingway yet, saying this tongue-in-cheek. Thank you Mal for posting the chronology of the author. It give us so much more to examine in his writing about nature, about people, about his values.

I feel the extreme sadness of this author as he is almost desperately trying to find joy in life. Is it surprising that he committed suicide?

Éloïse

It interests me, KIDSAL, that you feel that Wilson didn't like making a living as a Great White Hunter. I'll think about what you said.

There was no sentimentality to Wilson as I see him, and I've had the impression that Wilson thought hunting was a business, often a dangerous and exciting one. I also think he respected the animals and the land more than he loved them. He and those greenhorn people who went to Africa only for trophies are a very different breed.

As I think about Hemingway, he seems to me to be like conquerors like Alexander the Great and Constantine, among others. If they think there are worlds to conquer, mountains to climb, wars to be fought, they go out and do it at the expense of those who care about them.

Enough is never enough; there always has to be more. Life can be boring to this kind of person, and he or she can't stand to be bored for very long a time.

I was married to a man who travelled a lot because of the work he did. If it hadn't been work as stimulus to go away and find a certain kind of adventure, it would have been something else. Home was just a stopping-off place for him. People like this, male or female, do not make good spouses.

Having had some experience with alcohol and people who drink more than they should, I can say without hesitation that alcohol played a big part in Hemingway's relationship with other people, including women. You see, with people like this, one drink is never enough, either. This is a big part of addiction. Hemingway was addicted to a lot of things.

Alcohol is a stimulant at first, but primarily a depressant. Large consumption of alcohol over a long period of time can bring about depression like the kind Hemingway had, especially toward the end of his life. He'd suffered many painful injuries from the time he was a young man. He was in a plane crash which brought him more severe injuries. He was aging, his strength, vitality and writing skills were diminishing. If he was like other alcoholics I've known, the alcohol wasn't doing what he thought it should as a stimulant and pain-killer any more. I can see every reason why he killed himself.

Nobody can write like Hemingway, ELOISE. Never in my born days would I attempt to write a final paragraph to this story.

Mal

What a grand discussion you've provided Eloise. Each individual insight that has been offered here by your participants has increased my knowledge as well as my pleasure in being here. Will you have a URL, for the online reading of The Snows of Kilamanjaro?"

The ending I would choose for this story would be one where the beast would attack the humans, fulfilling my belief that "what goes around, comes around." LOL

ÉLOUÏSE, EH's paranoia in the last years of his life is detailed in Mary Welch Hemingway's book.

He imagined IRS and FBI agents following him, he became increasingly, and needlessly, worried about finances and taxes but would not believe it when his accountants and laywers told him time and again that his financial status was sound.

He had "normal" periods, and he was a born charmer. His hospital stays were downplayed or simply suppressed. But even then there were press hounds. At one time he entered a hospital under a different name, and Mary identified herself with the same name when she visited him there --- until one day she ran into an old school chum who visited her husband... and the secret was out.

Several times EH managed to feign normalcy and was released. His wife and intimate knowing friends, like A.E. Hotchner, were gravely concerned. There was at least one prior incident after his last return to Ketchum, when he had a shotgun in hand ready to pull the trigger, and the people around him were paralyzed with fear - but just in time his doctor walked in for his scheduled visit. It took Mary years to acknowledge to herself that his death was not an accident.

EH was a fun-loving, thrill-seeking adventurous macho guy, who loved women, wine and song. He had an ear for foreign languages, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona, he taught Mary to shoot in Kenya. He took from life everything it had to offer ... to him that is. But what did he actually conquer? Did he have a broader vision?

With due respect, I'm afraid the comparison with Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great is a bit far-fetched.

I can't click on The Snows of K... discussion either to register. I'm interested in this story, too, and in fact would love it if we would just keep on going on Hemingway's short stories!

I was never sure that Alexander the Great deserved his title because he didn't hold on to his kingdom at all. Maybe Hemingway has held on to his world through his works.

My personal opinion after reading some biographies of Hemingway is he was conflicted about sexuality and women. He almost protested too much about gays and made some comments that made me wonder if he might have been at least bisexual in the closet. He seemed to have to have a woman around all the time but threw them off regularly without any real cause. I don't know if he knew what love, at least love between male and female, really was. He knew one thing though: he knew how to write like no other!

Pamela

Dear people of my heart. The heading for Snows of Kilimanjaro is backstage right now and ready to appear when The Powers That Be will bring it out for us to post in. I was waiting to see if anyone wanted to continue discussing Hemingway's Short Stories. You can continue to post here in the meantime but we will start "Snows" only on the 15th.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is shocking in the sense that it deals with a subject that we try to avoid coming face to face with. Death. Hemingway is a provoking and fascinating writer who loved taking risks in his writing as well as in life.

In the meantime, please let us continue with The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber as there are some issues that have not been addressed yet.

I am sorry Traude that you couldn't access the link. It does take a long time to load though and you have to click on a button to start the video. If you did all that and it still didn't work, there is a lot there that you missed, like the killing of that lion and his raising on his hind legs to attack the gunner, then he stumbled from his wounds and lay down to die. The hunters congratulated themselves for their skill. The sound track had the lion roaring too like Hemingway described it in the story.

Éloïse

"Mary and Hemingway endured a plane crash in 1954 while touring waterfalls and some of Africa's most prized scenery. It seems that the pilot hit a telegraph wire. Injuries were minor. Soon after a boat ride across Lake Victoria they took another flight in which the plane could not make it off the ground. It too crashed and caught fire. They all made it out, however injuries to Hemingway were serious. It is told that in effort to make it off the plane, Hemingway used his own head to ram the exit door in, so the attendants could safely make it out. The results were that Hemingway's 'skull was fractured, two disks of his spine were cracked, his right arm and shoulder were dislocated, his liver, right kidney, and spleen were ruptured, his sphincter muscle was paralyzed by compressed vertebrae on the iliace nerve, his arms, face and head were burned by the flames of the plane, his vision and hearing were impared.' "

Source:

Hemingway

Now I'm wondering if Hemingway's paranoia and other symptoms at the end of his life might not have been caused by the severe head injury he sustained, mixed with medications he must have taken and alcohol.

TRAUDE, you don't think some of those ancient conquerors might have shared Hemingway's need for excitement and adventure and his love of wine, women and song?

I read the Mary Welsh Hemingway biography many years ago, along with as much of Hemingway's work as I could find. Wish my memory were better!

Mal

I agree wholeheartedly with TRAUDE and MAL about not writing an ending to this story. The story already has a perfect ending to which I would not possibly presume to improve upon.

ELOISE, the video you gave us has so stuck in my mind! The majestic lion that doesn't stand a chance against the hunters but fights to the end (although I realize this was a rogue lion tht had become a problem). It's hard to imagine deliberately killing so regal an animal, but Wilson and Macomber apparently thought it was their "right" to do so in order to prove their manhood. You indicated that you don't believe that we expect men to do this proving so much any more. But...I think we do.

Look at the membership of the NRA (and how many women belong to that organization?), and the comments that followed the video were most interesting. Not one comment related to the fate of the lion. One man said, "When life gives you a hill to climb - take your gun...." I almost believe that the need to excel and prove oneself is programmed into the male animal. Society decrees a lot of this, but just maybe it's innate. We have to consider (with the usual and increasing exceptions, of course) who starts wars, who fights in wars, who does most of the dangerous car and boat racing, who gets into physical fights, who physically and mentally abuses spouses and children, who goes hunting every year during deer season, who climbs the highest mountains, and how many women have you heard of lately who've raped a man??? Any woman in our century who makes it to the top of the business ladder has to prove herself to be better than the men that she crawls over as she claws her way to the top.

I've been intested in the comments re Hemingway's relationships with women,his sexuality issues (if he had any), and his drinking. We lived in So. Florida for 15 years and often went to Key West (one of my favorite places in the whole world). Of course, the Hemingway house is there along with Sloppy Joe's Bar (it has another name now) which claimed Hemingway as a regular customer. We were able to pick up a lot of local "gossip" about Hemingway, and the "word" in Key West was that, indeed, he was very much the drunk and spent literally hours in Sloppy Joe's. The fact that he was involved in some homosexual relationships is common knowledge in Key West. His house there is most interesting as it's furnished with VERY odd and mostly useless items that he collected, including huge old bathtubs made into planters, and the grounds are overrun with the descendants of the original cats that Hemingway owned (the ones that have the extra toe on each paw).

When someone writes as Hemingway does......I care about what he did in his private life only to the extent that it was reflected in his writing. But....he was a MOST interesting character!!

ELOISE, after the foregoing comments, are you sure you want this group to continue with the next Hemingway story????

Jan

ÉLOÏSE, I'm working on my Friday project and popping in only quickly.

I waited for the download and did at last get to "the" pag. A sheet of radom undecipherable symbols came up. Thank you again for describing it.

That dalliance EH had in Venice right under the watchful, resentful eyes of Mary produced "Across the River and Into the Woods". It was not favorably received and is not mentioned often. By that time he was decidedly past his prime.

In haste.

A brief aside here: It may be, Mal, that Hemingway's paranoia and other problems were caused by the head trauma. Yet, in reading Traude's description of his symptoms, I was startled to find they exactly mirrored those of my Aunt Marie's husband. He was convinced that he was going to lose everything he owned, that he was a failure, and no one could convince him his fears were baseless. He, too, eventually took his own life. There was no history of brain injury in his case. It was baffling and heartbreaking.

Babi

BaBi, ome doctors have suggested that my son's episodes with paranoia and schizophrenia could be caused, not only by a severe head injury he sustained, but by chemical changes in receptors and neuro-transmitters. Since my son was heavy into drugs and alcohol for a while, it was thought that perhaps those might have caused chemical changes which aggravated the injury condition. Chemical changes in the brain can be caused by other things, too.

I feel certain that Hemingway's drinking caused changes in his brain and loss of brain cells. If he had lived and continued drinking as heavily as he had been, he could have ended up with a "wet brain" (Cerebral edema.), as so many alcoholics do. Cerebral edema can produce all kinds of personality and behavior changes in people. Certain medications can do the same thing to the brain that alcohol does.

I'd have to know a lot more about your aunt's husband before I could make the smallest educated guess. I suppose it's possible that he had a kind of pre-Alzheimer's Disease dementia.

Mal

MAL, I think that Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great had demonstrably a lot more on their mind than wine, women and song.

Hemingway is quite simply not in their league, IMHO.

I have read many opinions about EH and his treatment of "The short happy life...". I am sure that he purposely left the ending as he did to allow us to develop our own opinions about the characters and their motives, each of us imagining the unwritten ending that exists only in our several widely divergent minds.

Well,here is an ending that I propose...

********************************************************

That was the last I spoke to Wilson until the inquest in Nairobi. There he was almost deferential to my grieving widow status, playing out his code of the protective safari professional. The coroner’s hearing was brief. They were anxious to settle the matter quickly, wanting to avoid any sensation because of Francis’s family name and my advertizing past. The British consul was so kind as to personally secure passage for me and Francis’s coffin on the India Star to England. We could then sail to America and Francis’s family home.

The captain and crew were most kind to me. I soon developed a daily routine of staying in my Starboard cabin, taking my meals on the small desk and resting in the evening breezes near the fantail or what ever they called this more deserted part of the ship.

When Francis fell I knew that my new life had also come to an end. And it was so soon after I thought that we had gotten what we were looking for in Africa. Yes, we had in spite of that horrid man and his pointless confrontations with the dumb beasts. Yet it was that experience that worked for us. There remains nothing now for me but to think of our life as it would have been and go on from there. Yes, it is cool here in the evenings. I think I will stay until long after dark.

newvoyager

Oh! too bad, I thought it could have been fun give our version of what could happen to Margaret after she is arrested for her husband's murder and put on trial. Oh! well.

Interesting to read all this about Hemingway, it certainly gives us a lot to ponder. It breaks the spell I find. Here we are on an exciting African safari and a woman shoots her husband accidentally or intentionally instead of a lion. (did you know that 'safari' is a Swahili word for journey said Google?) It is not the story of a lion hunt, but it is the story of a marriage gone to pot.

I like the way Hemingway sets his plots, no ordinary stuff for him like a messy divorce case but nothing less than an exciting African safari where you think you know where the story is heading but instead you get a surprise ending.

Éloïse

Newvoyager, we posted together. Great that you venture out like this about the story's ending. It reveals our inner thoughts and feelings. Thank you and perhaps now someone else will try it.

TRAUDE, in re W. W. and S: Uh huh, if you say so.

She's gone, the bloody, hypocritical, maneater bitch, swaddled in enameled widowhood. After Abdullah testified; they looked at the pictures, and that was that.

Wilson sat down to wait; stuck out his legs and took a long drink. Still drinking their whisky. Hope there's no nuisance women in the next batch. Hell of a good lion. Hell of a good bull.

Forgive me, Papa.

Mal

I want to tell you that the ending I wrote in Post #175 is not Marilyn Freeman or Marilyn Freeman's conclusions. It is Robert Wilson narrating in the best Hemingway style of writing I could come up with --- and it's not very good, thus my apology to Hemingway.

Mal

Oh! Mal, you sure have a way with words. I love it.

Wilson then continued catering to the rich and beautiful expecting excitement from clients and beasts. Does anyone feel that the man is bored with the upper class, still drinking their whiskey, but can't very well get out of the business because nothing could provide him with the excitement he had become accustomed to?

Do you see a future for that man other than getting old doing Safaris for the upper crust?

What is in store for Margaret?

Please continue to take a swing at an ending as to what could happen after the story is finished. I think we might find out a lot about ourselves that way.

Éloïse

The online short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro is now up in the heading for those who wish to start reading it. We will start it on the 15th.

This paragraph just below jumped up at me when I read it. It is so full of anticipation. The three of them are in the truck going after Buffalo's and "Wilson suddenly turns and said, "By God, there they are!"

"And looking where he pointed, while the car jumped forward and Wilson spoke in rapid Swahili to the driver, Macomber saw three huge, black animals looking almost cylindrical in their long heaviness, like big black tank cars, moving at a gallop across the far edge of the open prairie. They moved at a stiff-necked, still bodied gallop and he could see the upsweep wide black horns on their heads as they galloped heads out, the heads not moving

About 5 years ago my sister and me were walking in a National park and we saw a huge black bear 20 feet away from us and believe me when he came out of the forest onto the road where we were walking, we stopped dead on our tracks. He stopped too and we just stared at each other. We slowly turned around thinking of my banana in my back sac and was afraid to move to drop it on the ground. We started walking slowly and my sister turned her head to see what he was doing and he was following us and again after five minutes. The third time he decided we were not good to eat, so he disappeared in the forest. We were shaken believe me.

That bear was man size, he could outrun us easily but we knew he could catch us if he wanted. No doubt that they have the upper hand in a drastic situation if they don't get shot at first.

Éloïse

Margaret sat sobbing huddled in the back seat of the car as Wilson brought down his full contempt on this woman who only a few hours before had shared his bed.

Her trial bought American paparazzi to Africa in droves spreading the story of this socialite who killed her husband on a Safari and they unabashedly arranged the incidents of the lion hunt in such a way as to satisfy the insatiable appetite of people for each gory detail.

Claiming her innocence was still sentenced to six months in jail for manslaughter.

After her release, Hollywood offered her a juicy contract both for her story and for starring in their next film about an African safari. Her career was launched and she was nominated for an Oscar for best actress.

Éloïse

Wilson has evoked several negative opinions in the course of this discussion. However I do not consider him a principal character in “The Short...”. Consider this. He never initiated any action that effected the relationship between Francis and Margot. (The double cot scene was not his idea.) He only reflected on and reacted to their actions and sentiments from the standpoint of the relationship between them. It was not until the last paragraph that he expressed his opinion verbally and in a most callous way. I rate him as much a background character as the lion and the buffalos. I believe almost any other type of person could have fulfilled this role. In fact the story could have been written using an unseen narrator in his place.

What do you think?

And in regard to the relative bravery of the lion vs the “buff”... neither was braver. Neither exhibited bravery as we attribute this characteristic to mankind. What they did was react to a threat as an animal not afraid of any stronger predator.

Thanks for an interesting exchange.

Newvoyager

As quiet finally settled on the camp, one by one the woman and the men began their dutiful preparations for sleep, although none of them would be able to sleep. In the gathering darkness, absolutely quiet and completely hidden, but quite close to the camp, the lioness’s yellow eyes caught the last glints of the setting sun as she waited, patiently, for her moment

Jan

Just couldn't resist a short ending!

I mentioned early on that Wilson was like a Greek chorus, in a way. He was, however, much more than that. He was the thread that held the story together, a very important character, in my opinion. Hemingway needed this kind of rough character to contrast the complicated, polished, mannered, often shallow ways of civilization with the raw, unexpected, urgent tests of survival in African nature. (Which here exposes a different kind of attempt to survive.)

I liked your ending, JAN. Interesting, and very apropos, that you used a lioness. Lionesses do the hunting for the pride. Tit for tat, right?

There is no possible way to romanticize Hemingway, either in analysis or in trying to write an ending to his story. His writing is lean, often harsh, and always realistic.

Mal

These are wonderful thought out endings ladies.

Eloise, why don't we cast OJ beside Margaret?

Newvoyager: "He (Wilson) never initiated any action that effected the relationship between Francis and Margot... the story could have been written using an unseen narrator in his place...." You would have to explain that to me because I also thought that Wilson was the bond of this story. Don't you think that Hemingway, by making Wilson the narrator, makes the story more compelling?

Jan.E, Astute narration giving us an awareness of what an animal might be 'thinking' if there was such a thing. I like your short ending.

Mal: "There is no possible way to romanticize Hemingway" right, Hemingway is not very romantic but a lot of women still enjoy the virility of his novels. He is among the best American novelists and it is easy to see why, with scan explanations we immediately understand his characters point of view and start making assumptions as to the outcome of a particular situation.

Hunting accidents are very common. In Quebec the small town where I lived was surrounded by deep woods and everybody had a rifle for target practice and small game shooting. I was walking in the woods less than a mile from town with a friend and I heard a 'crash' at the same time I felt a bullet whiz close to my head. I turn around and saw no one. I am sure no one wanted to kill me, it was just someone aiming at something moving, it could have been a kid too, but the rifle was not a toy believe me with the noise it made.

This story, to me, is about a hunting accident and I would say that Margaret didn't want to kill Francis but not being an experienced hunter, she missed her shot as she was trying to protect him from being gored by the buffalo.

Of course we all have our own interpretation of what goes on in a novel, after all the author creates his own situations just as we can create an ending. If Hemingway left the ending pending like this, he might have been as perplexed about the ending of this story and decided that leaving it pending would make it even harder to forget.

I read this short story when I was young and I forgot many of the books I read over the years, yet this one remained in my memory.

Éloïse

ELOISE, did we ever discuss YVONNE'S comments about using "macomber" as an adjective? I must have missed it if we did.

Jan

Jan.E, you are right, we didn't discuss macomber as an adjective but we can now. I am sure it would be interesting to learn about it.

I want to say that I am very please with the interesting ideas that were exchanged here we are learning a great deal about African safaris and most of all about Ernest Hemingway who seems to be able to stir strong emotions in all his writings.

I found this quote very moving "In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and leaving the car they stalked one old ram with long, widespread horns and Macomber killed it with a very creditable shot that knocked the buck down at a good two hundred yards and sent the herd off bounding wildly and leaping over one another's backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable and as floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams

I can picture a herd of impala jumping over another as they are fleeing from the hunters and this leg-drawn-up bit makes it even more vivid.

Somehow hunting with rifles seems so unfair to the animals in the wild, they all have natural defenses against predators, but a gun is not a natural defense. Now if they were hunting them with a sword or a knife, that would be another story. It would give a chance to the animal to defend himself. Before guns were invented, the balance between humans and animals was more equal. Is the balance between humans and animals so unequal that humans will kill what feeds him in the long run.

Nature needs balance to survive.

Éloïse

What does Macomber (adj.) mean?

Well, after a brief hiatis with somw minor out patient surgery(and I not read all your posts still) I think I understand my adj. confusion.I first read this story nearly 60 years ago. At that impressnable age this short story was very, very macabre--impending tragic doom as a result of one persons' maturing growth--in my vocabulary stash I subsituded macomber for macabra.Either others did too or were to politically correct that no one challenged me until under the scurtiny of this discussion I challenged myself.I do not like Hemingway as a person and I can take his realism in small doses but as this confession indicates his short stories are powerful-Yvonne

We toured Hemingway's home in Key West several years ago and our tour guide told us the following story. (At least to the best of our joint recollections). Hemingway liked to swim. In order to please him his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway had a swimming pool built in their garden while he was away on a trip. ( By the way the house they lived in was bought by her father). The pool was blasted out of the rock at great expense. When Ernest saw it he flew into a rage saying something like, “you are spending the money from an advance check that I expect to receive shortly from my publisher. Here’s what I think your $10,000.00 pool is worth.” He gave her a penny which is embedded into the pool cement to this day. He never used the pool.

Mr. and Mrs. Newvoyager

Yvonne, now you have solve the mystery of macomber as an adjective. Sorry to hear about your surgery and happy to see you back. Come and join us tomorrow as we will all continue discussing with Snows of Kilimanjaro by the Great Hemingway.

Mr. and Mrs. Newvoyager, how come his second wife knew him so little as to having a pool installed on their property in Key West at his expense? Apparently he was not in the chips, or perhaps he gambled? I don't know, but he seemed not to have been an easy man to live with, to say the least. But then, extremely talented people seldom are, it seems to me.

Eloïse

Pauline Pfeiffer was an editor of Vogue Magazine and had a large trust fund. She had plenty of money on her own. To give Hemingway a break I'll say I wouldn't be too pleased if my husband installed a swimming pool in the garden without talking about it with me first.

Mal

ELOISE, does "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" discussion start today?

Mal

Mal, The heading says we start Snows of Kilimanjaro tomorrow, I think for administrative purposes and if you feel like posting about it today it's okay but some participants might not join us until tomorrow and they might miss your post. That is why I will post the first post only tomorrow. At first I thought it started on the 15th, but the heading indicates the 16th.

Don't you think though, about the swimming pool, that Hemingway resented Pauline taking that responsibility without first consulting him. Hemingway, being the man he was, would not take too kindly to his wife's independence, as we will see in Snows of Kilimanjaro, but he still liked to marry wealthy women.

Éloïse

ELOISE I think you're going to have to steer me to the "Snows" discussion as I can't seem to pull it up anywhere on the SeniorNet web site. I see where it's scheduled but there's no clickable link to get me there.

Jan

To all participants: The "Snows..." discussion will start here in the morning. The heading will be changed tonite and will have a link to the first post in that discussion. This discussion will be renamed and continued with the monthly Short Story until it reaches approximately 1000 posts.

Theron (Tech Team)

Thanks Theron.

See how efficient Seniornet is? We don't have to do anything except discuss in Books and Literature, the rest is all done by our very devoted Tech Team. Now that's efficiency for you.

See you all in the morning for THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO. It promises to be a fantastic short story. I have read it already three times to absorb it. The more I read Hemingway, the more I appreciate his writing.

Love to all,

Éloïse

"Introduction

In ‘‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro,’’ Ernest Hemingway presents the story of a writer at the end of his life. While on a safari in Africa, Harry, the protagonist, is scratched on the leg by a thorn, and the infection becomes gangrenous and eventually kills him. Where most of Hemingway's stories feature protagonists who speak little and reflect nothing at all about their motivations and inner lives, in this story, the main character ‘‘sees his life flash before his eyes’’ as he realizes that he is dying. Many readers have seen Harry as a self-portrait of Hemingway himself. Reading the story this way, the reader can look into Hemingway's struggles with himself: his insecurities, his machismo, his need and disdain for women. But it is not necessary to read the story through the lens of Hemingway's biography. The story is a gripping look at a man who is facing death and regretting many of the choices he has made in his life, as well as being a memorable glimpse inside the head of a writer who is reflecting on his craft and the demands it has made on him." SOURCE

After discussion The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, can we say that we have a better understanding of Hemingway?

Eloïse

came away with more questions than anything else, such as the point of this story. I admit that it eludes me. As usual with Hemingway's main characters, I did not like this one and felt he treated his woman, who was very accommodating and reasonable, very badly right up to the end. I can't say I was sorry that he died. I don't care in the least for the type of men he generally writes about, and as far as I can see Hem has no insight at all into the female psyche, or even cares enough to make an effort.

Even though I think Hemingway writes exceptionally well, to me his writing is like a nihilistic Roman Polanski movie that is brilliantly photographed and directed, but has nothing much to say to me as a person because of it's dark life viewpoint. Please understand this is simply a personal opinion and nothing more.

And once again, I'm looking forward to all the other opinions.

"As soon as America decided to enter the Great War, Ernest Hemingway, a young reporter for the Star newspaper in Kansas City, tried to join the army. He was repeatedly rejected for military service because of a defective eye, but finally he managed to sign up for ambulance duty in Italy as a member of an American Red Cross Field Service unit.

"He was 18 years old, and on the day of his arrival in Milan a munitions factory blew up. Together with the other volunteers in his contingent Hemingway was assigned to gather up the remains of the dead.

"Only three months later, in July, he was injured near Fossalta, on the Austro-Italian front at the Piave river, north of Venice.

"On this river the front had stabilized after the Austrian breakthrough at Caporetto in 1917 - an event that caused an almost total collapse of the Italian army. In the period 15-24 June 1918 the Austrians again tried to push through the Piave defenses, but this came to worse than nothing (they crossed the river but were beaten back), the attackers losing 100,000 men. Hemingway endured most of this battle.

"On July 8, 1918, shortly after midnight, when Hemingway was passing out coffee, cigarettes and chocolates to Italian troops in a trench, an canister from an Austrian Minenwerfer (trench mortar) exploded, lodging 227 metal fragments in his feet and legs. It was six days before his nineteenth birthday.

"Later, in a letter, Hemingway wrote: 'There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew all around and then came back and went in again and I wasn't dead any more.'

"He crumpled up and two Italian stretcher bearers started over the parapet with him, knowing that he needed swift attention. Austrian machine gunners spotted the party and the three went down under a storm of machine gun bullets, one of which got Hemingway in the shoulder and another ripped through his right knee.

"According to Hemingway one Italian was killed instantly, while the other stretcher bearer had both his legs blown off. A third Italian, who had been standing a few feet away, was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dugout. He later wrote he did not remember how he got there, nor that he carried the man, until the next day, when an Italian officer told him all about it and said that it had been voted to give him a valor medal for the act."

Souce: (If you go to this site be prepared to see pictures of corpses of soldiers in varying degrees of decay)

Hemingway's early encounters with death

I kept wondering how such a young man as Hemingway was when he wrote this story knew so much about death; then I read the article I linked above. Hemingway knew death. He knew what it is like and how it feels to die. He drew on his experiences, described on the page I linked, to write this story.

It interests me that he had Harry die of an infection that had become gangrenous. I am now going to confide something I've told very few people in my life. Since I was ten years old I have had chronic infections in my left leg, which has very, very poor blood circulation. As I have grown older, it has been a fear of mine and of doctors that either osteomyelitis and/or gangrene would set in. I have often imagined what it would be like if I had gangrene, and much worse, had to have my leg amputated. Because of this I have some understanding of the condition Harry was in, mentally and physically.

At this early point in this discussion I'll say that I think this is a story of death and dying and things that will never be finished. I believe everyone has variations of these thoughts at the end of his or her life.

Harry knows he's going to die, and his mind goes back over his life and his relationship with people -- women. There's so much that is never accomplished, so much that is never done. I think there's a natural tendency to want to blame someone besides oneself for this incompletion and lack of realizing one's goals in life. Harry's wife, herself no angel, was a convenient scapegoat.

In my opinion, this is a remarkable piece of writing. Listen to this:

". . . .that time to buy presents, and the cherry-pit taste of good kirsch, the fast-slipping rush of running powder-snow on crust, singing 'Hi! Ho! said Rolly!' as you ran down the last stretch to the steep drop, taking it straight, then running the orchard in three turns and out across the ditch and onto the icy road behind the inn. Knocking your bindings loose, kicking the skis free and leaning them up against the wooden wall of the inn, the lamplight coming from the window, where inside, in the smoky, new-wine smelling warmth, they were playing the accordion."

For writing like this, I can forgive Ernest Hemingway every one of his earthly mistakes.

Mal

What an interesting link you've provided. I've been surrounded by death and dying my entire life and I can detect a "dying man's contemplation and introspection."
Harry's sinking quickly and he recognizes that fact that his death is eminent. Reading his humiliating story of the nurse he loved and the rejection that he faced magnifies his disdain for his wealthy wife in this story. Poor Ernest never forgave this mortification, did he?

Welcome all to this new day and this new short story. The Snows of Kilimanjaro is different from the previous one and in many ways it is the same. Hemingway's obsession with death is shocking and yet we want to know more about Harry and why he acted this way with his wife who apparently was very devoted and loving.

We should avoid coming to quick conclusions about this short story and accuse Hemingway of being heartless and cruel but after reading Mal's link about Hemingway's first-hand experience with death, it becomes easier to understand his motives. Not that it is an excuse, but it must have marred his already difficult past and it seems that his own close brush with death at that young age continued to haunt him throughout his life.

In the previous short story, love was never mentioned. In this one it fills the pages, but Harry's impending death makes him angry, resentful that those around him will live and him not. He unhappily hovers over his past as he is sorry not to have accomplished what he really wanted to accomplish while he was still young and able.

There are several lessons to learn in this short story and Hemingway perhaps wanted to tell readers never to postpone doing important things till later because later might never come.

Éloïse

This is a tale of brooding regret. The two principal animals, the leopard in the introduction and the hyena frequently mentioned in the story are symbols of how the author sees himself. The leopard is a true hunter, genuine in his existence. The hyena, as a scavenger who lives off the prey of other hunters, is false and despised.

The author has become a “prey”, “killed” by the easy life that his wife’s wealth has provided. In his life instead of “hunting” for the truth using his talents he has settled for posturing as a writer (hunter) and now he despises himself. His shabby treatment of his wife reflects his own lack of self-esteem

He regrets several periods and things in his life: the snow, Paris, lost loves, war experiences. All of these things he had “held for later use” but never dared to write of them because of his easy existence and the fear of the possibility of not writing about them well enough.

The hyena is seen several times in the story, always associated with the writer’s death. First it is just as a foreshadowing, then he even smells it’s foul breath as from death itself. (Hyenas are noted for their repulsive odor). Notice that the hyena never laughs? In fact, that word never appears in the text. But it does make a human sound after the writer’s death.

The pilot in his dream represents the angel of death. He refers to him as “old Compi”, a friend who looks out for his welfare and “guides” him to the right place, mount Kilimanjaro. The author had referred to mountains as the place where people go to “train” which in this case alludes to his wish to regain his courage to use his talents again and risk failure as a writer.

The point of the story: exercise your talents while you can. Don’t leave your ambitions to atrophy and die like the “dried, frozen carcass of a leopard”.

We all know what the leopard was seeking at that altitude, don’t we?

What do you think?

Incidently, my post #189 was intended as a segue into “Snows” in that his actions during his second marriage foreshadowed the resentment toward wealthy wives he expressed in this later work. Also his decaying leg served as a symbol of his decaying life and talent.

Newvoyager

An interesting post Newvoyager on the first day of this discussion.

We will try to go slowly by examining each line to determine the different meanings it is inspiring us.

Do his flashbacks represent the true character of Harry or is the real Harry the one who is unkindly abusing his devoted wife?

How would we feel if, while fully conscious, we knew we were going to die in a few hours? How would it affect our reaction to those around us?

I came across this LINK showing the Simplon-Orient Express. I was once standing next to that train in London and was in awe of this luxury rail liner and immediately visualized the movie "Murder on the Orient Express".

In this link, while passengers go through the Swiss Alps enjoying dinner in evening clothes, wonderful Alpine scenery unrolls before the eyes.

Harry is dreaming of the good times he had during Christmas season in Austria, the exhilarating experience of skiing fast and arriving at the bottom of the hill safely.

Maybe Alf can tell us about people who are near death, what do those who are conscious talk about? do they have flashbacks like Harry had? how do people cope with impending death?

The leopard and the hyena are symbols of Harry, the principal character in this story, not Ernest Hemingway.

I think it is a mistake to think what Hemingway wrote was autobiographical. He drew from his experiences just as many writers do, but that does not mean he wrote about himself and his own life in his short stories and novels.

I believe this story is more imagined than it is autobiographical. In 1936 when this story was published, Hemingway was 37 years old. He wrote "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," and at the same time he was working on To Have and Have Not, which was published in 1937. His career was rolling right along, and this is scarcely representative of a writer whose life and skills are deteriorating.

He and his wife, Pauline, were at the L Bar T Ranch at the time he was doing all this writing. They were four years away from a divorce when Kilimanjaro was published. Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn were married in 1940.

If people are to succeed in any area of the arts, they must be subsidized, or they end up working at McDonald's or waiting table somewhere and not doing their art. (Ask me. I'll tell you.) Hemingway was very fortunate to marry women of independent means who were willing to support his art when he had a slump of not being published.

Just as the leopard and the hyena are symbols, so, indeed, does the wife symbolize all the things that kept this writer named Harry from his work, including himself.

What about the vultures? Do they symbolize greedy publishers, I wonder?

Mal

Good that we see different things in Hemingway's short stories perhaps because of our very different backgrounds too and different perspective. Reading everybody's points of view broadens my own.

What was the leopard's carcass doing up there? I have no idea

Éloïse

when Harry asks for a drink his wife replies "It said in Black's to avoid all alcohol." What is Blacks?

Black's is a medical dictionary, ANDY. I just accessed it on the web.

I think it is wise to remember that when "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" was written, a lot of things Hemingway did or that happened to him, which we, in our superior knowledge of much time passed, might think of in reference to the story, had not yet happened. I'd love to get my hands on a 1936 review of this story.

Mal

Aha, I just found a suggestion that the character of Harry in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" was based on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. In reading A Moveable Feast it becomes clear that Ernest Hemingway did not have too high an opinion of Fitzgerald as a man, and that he thought Fitzgerald's fascination with wealth and all its trappings damaged his writing. I'll see if I can find more on this.

Mal

Don't you like Harry's flashbacks? They seem to me more like the real Harry than what goes on with his wife during the last hours of his life where he is lashing at whoever is around for revenge on the unfairness of his fate.

It seems to me that if he had been like that all the time he was married to Helen, she would have left him, but no, she still loved him and she understood his state of mind. At any rate this was not the moment to leave him now was it?

"She (Helen) had gone to kill a piece of meant" and Harry reveals his thoughts about women: "How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth."

I wonder what Harry saying the truth to women would be like if lies were more successful? Is this a common happening between men and women, or is this an exception? Are women more gullible than men? Is love that blind?

Fiction is the "damnest thing, really the damnest" hahaha I am plagiarizing. We can add or substract situations, attribute it to this or that, we can tear it apart. It's all in the game and is it not a lot of fun?

We have a love/hate relationship with Hemingway. He was a colorfull character and as a writer he didn't give a damn about what people thought. When he had enough of life he just ended it and if he had lived longer, he might not have written another word because he had nothing else to say. He died the way he lived without hope.

Éloïse

Watched the film -- made in the days when there had to be a happy ending. My Blacks is a Law Dictionary.

Watched a documentary on Kilimanjaro. The glaciers are melting on the mountain and soon there won't be any Snows.

Didn't I read that Hemingway suffered continual and often intense pain from the injuries he suffered in the plane crash in Africa in 1954? His wife, Mary, listed his injuries as "two cracked vertebra and impacted disks, one kidney and the liver ruptured, some injury to the spleen, his right arm and shoulder dislocated, a paralysis of the sphincter muscle, a severe wound on the leg, a bruised or broken nose, hearing impairment in one of his ears which had been burned and, probably the most serious, a cracked skull, with a large hole in the scalp which continually leaked a clear fluid." (See Source below)

These terrible injuries incapacitated him and also decreased his ability to see and hear. It took 22 months for him to heal. After that he had serious problems with his kidneys and suffered other aftereffects from these injuries. Under those conditions, I might have felt that life was hopeless and not worth living, too.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings said this about Hemingway when she met him:

"Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of SOUTH MOON UNDER, GOLDEN APPLES and THE YEARLING, all published by Scribner's, was staying aboard a yacht at Bimini. Hemingway'd heard she was there and surprised her by striding aboard the yacht to pay a call. Majorie, an ardent reader of his works, expected a `Fire-breathing Ogre.'

"He destroyed the image at once by taking her hand in his `big gentle paw' and telling her he greatly admired her writings. She found him a problem in paradox. A gentle, compassionate man who still sporadically and mercilessly knocked people down.

"He seemed to her `so great an artist' he didn't need to be on the defensive, a man `so vast, so virile' he had no reason to prove it with his fists. The clue to his character must lie, she thought, in some sort of `inner conflict between the sporting life and the literary life; between sporting people and the artist.' "

Source:

Hemingway

I listen to Harry's wandering thoughts about all he has done and failed to do. I listen to his verbal attacks on his wife and his demands to his servant. And in all this, I find only a very selfish man who has no thought, no concern, for anything or anyone beyond himself. Harry obviously was able to be charming, as he snagged himself a rich wife whenever he needed one. But underneath the surface charm he is quite contemptible.

Babi

Nowhere in this story do I see mention of more than one wife. Hemingway is not talking about Hemingway here. What I do see in this story is a dying man who is very, very angry about dying, and lashes out at anyone who comes near him.

I believe it was Dylan Thomas who said,

"Do not go gentle into that good night
. . . .
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

When Harry's wife says he might think about someone else besides himself, he replies:

"'For Christ's sake," he said, "that's been my trade.'"

And hasn't it? Isn't it the trade of every author of fiction to think and write about somebody else besides him/herself?

When I read this story I am reminded of the Parsis in India who put their dead on top of a hill or a mountain so vultures can pick the bones clean. I wonder if Ernest Hemingway had that in mind?

Mal

I agree with what Babi had to say. Harry is selfish,with no thought of anyone but himself. He, to me, is like Hemmingway, in that he also didn't seem to give a damn about what people thought of him or anything that he did. Harry's "Use" of the women in his life showed his selfishness more than anything else that he did. bimde

What in the world is a leopard doing on the western summit of a 19,000+ foot mountain? Is he an analogy of our Harrry? They are both capable of an angry roar

"For Christ's sake," he said, "that's been my trade."

They are both roamers. Harry's wife had enough $$ to allow that : "You never would have gotten anything like this in Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We could have stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I'd have gone anywhere. I said I'd go anywhere you wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could have gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable."

They say that leopards never change their spots even though they adapt to the difference in their environments. It sounds as if Harry, too, has spots and stains on his character and like the leopard Harry is adapting to his location. The leopard will favor forests and trees for camoflague, protection and observation. Harry chooses to look at the mountain as he becomes introspective waiting angrily for his own demise. Leopards are opportunistic feeders as Harry himself was by the fact he lived off of his wifes fortune:

"If you hadn't left your own people, your goddamned Old Westbury Saratoga, Palm Beach people to take me on. "

It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter's house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the room." -- and then--"Your damned money was my armour. My Sword and my Armour."

There was always gambling then. When there was no snow you gambled and when there was too much you gambled. He thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling.

A cat is true to his dish, is he not? Why does he dislike this woman so much if it's not for the opportunistic ready cash? "Love is a dunghill," said Harry. "And I'm the cock that gets on it to crow."

"If you have to go away," she said, "is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and your armour?"

Leopards breed then split with their mate.

The Snow Leopard lives on mountains at high altitudes. The article linked below gives you some information about some of them, including the black-footed cat of Africa.

Snow Leopard

Boy1 Isn't he a beauty?

Now for my question-- does our protagonist display the same features?

Bimde, welcome to this discussion. It is a pleasure to have your company. I do think also that Harry has always been selfish, but has he always been so cruel toward her before this?

If Harry had really wanted to live for his art, he could have been another starving artist rather than marrying wealthy women who provided him with the luxurious lifestyle he craved for all his life.

Alf, "If you have to go away," she (Helen) said, "is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind?" Then Harry says: "I don't like to leave anything behind" and perhaps he was being nasty exactly because he wanted her to forget him after he died because he knew that she loved him. I wonder if she could ever have forgotten him though?

Interesting comparison between the leopard and Harry? Food for thought here.

I cringe when he tells calls her "rich bitch". After all that is what he married her for. "Your damned money was my armour. My Sword and my Armour." I would say: "Make up your mind fella".

Éloïse

Mal, What a beautiful specimen. Lovely leopard.

We have already had several good posts on the leopard and the hyena. But what role does Compton fill? Why does Compton not take Harry to the original destination mentioned? Why is the new destination the mountain? Does the thorn prick that became infected because it was not treated properly have any significance? Why is Harry so quickly resigned to death when he might be rescued? Does he really prefer death to his current state? Is he feeling sorry for himself or is someone else to blame?

I contrast, note that Harry is still observing things even at this late and (he thinks) hopeless time. Speaking of the vultures in an early paragraph he says he is observing them "... in case I wanted to use them in a story". Really? When?

What do you think?

We really have a long way to go!

Newvoyager

"It's trying to kill to keep yourself alive.'

******

" 'I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought."

"It's a bore," he said out loud.

" 'What is, my dear?'

" 'Anything you do too bloody long.'

" 'Never believe any of that about a scythe and a skull,' he told her. 'It can be two bicycle policemen as easily, or be a bird. Or it can have a wide snout like a hyena.'

"It had moved up on him now, but it had no shape any more. It simply occupied space.

" 'Tell it to go away.'

"It did not go away but moved a little closer.

" 'You've got a hell of a breath," he told it. "You stinking bastard.'

"Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its breath."

Newvoyager, how can you ask about Compton when you have already said he's "the Angel of Death" in your Post #203? Through Hemingway, Harry says death could be anything, and finally that it has no shape at all.

Compton never came. Harry was mortally ill and very close to death when Compton's name is mentioned in this story, and he's hallucinating then. His wife finds him dead, his leg hanging down off the cot with the bandages off.

The wound was so morbid that the nerve endings had been eaten up by gangrene, and he felt no pain. There was no hope for Harry, and he has known he was close to death since the pain stopped.

I'll offer here that the flashbacks are hallucinations, that Harry was in and out of reality, and that half the time he didn't know what he had said.

If anyone here has ever been really, seriously ill with a very good chance that you might die, you know that one slips in and out of reality. An illness as severe as that affects the function of the brain. It's very hard to know what is true and real and what is not.

Though I was very young when it happened, I can remember this drifting back and forth. The memory of that time was very vivid when it happened to me again much later in my life.

I recall that when writing my autobiographical novel more than twenty years ago, I had to be very careful when describing these experiences because I didn't know what truly had happened and what had not.

This story is surreal, and I believe it must be approached and analyzed with that in mind.

Mal

I'll remind you of what Hemingway said about being hit July 8, 1918 when a canister from an Austrian trench mortar exploded and severely wounded him:

"Later, in a letter, Hemingway wrote: 'There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew all around and then came back and went in again and I wasn't dead any more.' "

Source:

Hemingway's early encounters with death

Scroll down to see a picture of the frozen leopard on Kilimanjaro

Having read the new posts (some of them extraordinarily emphatic and persuasive) with care, and having RE-read the story with great attention to every detail, I retain the impression I formed after my very first reading, DECADES ago.

Whether the story is autobiographical or not (though ALL of Hem's writing is said to be), and no matter HOW magnificent/meaningful/ exemplary the writing, I as a reader (and struggling writer) still find the character of Harry, the writer in this book, monumentally, even monstrously selfish. In sum, I agree with Rose's # 198.

In light of what is known of Hem's ife, the description of Harry's unforgivable cruelty to his wife rings true; but whether true or not, it makes my skin crawl.

I have no idea WHY Hemingway considered THIS story his best, could it be because it most eloquently represents his own (macho) experience and longed-for achievements as a writer?

Hemingway's books and stories, which I read in translation decades ago when I was still in Europe and now have in collected works in English, made me acutely uncomfortable, and I felt instinctively (then and now) that Harry is the ultimate misogynist - exactly like the protagonists in his other works and, ultimately, the author himself. THAT was the point for me --- LONG before the feminist movement.

And it still is.

It seems as if I'm one of very few here, if any, who like Ernest Hemingway, and about the only one who thinks Hemingway was not writing about himself in this story.

Hemingway has always reminded me of my father. Ed Stubbs was a big, strong, tall handsome man who had the ability to make people laugh with his stories. He was full of zest for life, energy, vitality, and virility. Women were charmed by him as much as he was attracted to them. Like Hemingway, he loved wine, women and song, but unlike Hemingway he didn't have the means, nor was he subsidized so he could pursue them in the way this author did.

When I was small, all I heard from my paternal relatives was how badly my father treated my mother. They didn't like her much, and said she wasn't good enough for him and that she robbed the cradle (she was 7 years older than my father), but in their eyes he was worse. They had no understanding of my father at all.

The two never should have married. Mama became pregnant (with me). In that day and age there were no alternatives; they had to get married. My father was barely past 20 when I was born. He was not a good husband and wasn't home enough to be a good father.

My mother was not a strong and independent woman like Hemingway's wives. She nagged my father and put impossible demands on him; didn't allow him to be himself, so he turned elsewhere for comfort and peace. He had a marvelous singing voice, but couldn't get the kind of education he needed to make a career in music because he was forced by his father to leave school and go to work at the age of 12.

He had to grow up early, but this didn't stop him from being what he was, an adventurer, a man who worked hard, lived hard and loved hard. Was it selfish of him to want to be himself? Was it wrong for him to rail at life once in a while for what it had brought to him, or punch someone because he was so frustrated?

I loved my mother dearly, even though I lived with her only 7 years of my life. I really didn't live with my father much at all, but I know him far better than I ever knew my mother. Did I love my father? Not until I was grown up enough to see both sides of the coin.

Now, with your indulgence I'd like to say something about Hemingway's story.

Mal

Harry thinks:

"So this was the way it ended, in a bickering over a drink. Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it. For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity.

"For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it."

Harry says about his treatment of his wife:

" 'Do you think that it is fun to do this? I don't know why I'm doing it. It's trying to kill to keep yourself alive.' "

It's a fight for survival just as much as facing the lion in Africa, who'll kill you if you don't attack first, is.

This man is dying. I took care of a dying man once. This person who had always been kind to me turned on me as if I were every enemy he'd ever had in his life. He was brutally cruel with his tongue. He was trying to kill me and everyone and everything else in his life off in order to keep himself alive, just as Harry was.

He's not the only person I've known who did this. Another man wasn't as cruel to me in his final days, but his prediction was that the world and everyone in it were coming to an end -- just because he was.

Do you think we will face imminent death sweetly and graciously, or will we become angry and rage at everyone around us because of the hopeless feeling that we haven't accomplished what we wanted to? That our lives were essentially meaningless?

Mal

Newvoyager, "Speaking of the vultures in an early paragraph he says he is observing them "... in case I wanted to use them in a story". Really? When?"

Vultures to me are are the first ones to feast on a dead animal. Quite a symbol of the inevitable don't you think? Nothing wasted.

Mal, if we didn't like Hemingway, then I don't think we would be discussing his short stories. As far as the author himself, well I would have to take extensive courses in literature before I could pronounce myself on whether I like him or not and I am not that interested in him for that. I loved his novels as far back as I can remember. I think he extirpates the essential in his male characters and as you say once, they might not necessarily reflect his own, but the protagonists he portrays seem to match exactly his personality and we can't help but make comparisons.

I have seen three people die. My mother, my brother and a neighbor. All of them had fallen in a coma and none of them became angry and lashed out at those they loved before that. My mother was happy to finally die at 95 she said, my brother accepted it with even humour and my neighbor was a happy married man who died peacefully.

Then will we assume that Harry (Hemingway) he had always been like that and only then did he show his mean, selfish and cruel personality? If the author, instead of shooting himself, had died in the same way as Harry, I feel he would have been the same.

Éloïse

ELOISE, obviously your mind and the minds of others are made up. Hemingway was "mean, selfish and cruel", and all his male characters portray himself. As I said elsewhere, "Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong", so I'll back down and out.

Mal

MAL, we ARE allowed (aren't we?) to freely expess what we feel about any author and his work at any time.

To discuss a work by whatever author does NOT automatically mean that we are bound to wholeheartedly EMBRACE without question either the work or the author and praise both to the stars, or does it?

We are not - last time I heard - about achieving a consensus about any of the books we discuss here. This means to me that no one opinion, no matter how eloquently presented, needs to be universally adopted as the last word.

Regarding our transitory life, I have found Elisabeth Kübler Ross's On Death and Dying a great deal more helpful than Hemingway's self-centered speculations penned when he was still in the prime of life - solely for the sake of literature, of course.

Unfortunately, Mal seems to falls into the same categotry as some in office now--"My way or the Highway". We do still have the right to our own opinion, and to express our own thoughts, at least the last time I looked, we did. At any rate, Traude S is right, we are discussing here a work of Literature, and each one of us may have a different opinion of said work, and the Author of same, right? Isn't that what "Discussion" is all about?

a very self-centered point of view at that---even an immature point of view, because I think a truly mature male has more sensitivity than he seems to show. A mature male allows the sensitive and warm parts of himself just as much room as the machismo parts. That does not mean he isn't a brilliant writer, because he is, in the way he strings words together and his dialogue. But neither does that mean we have to like him or his characters.

Regarding these interesting comments:

Mal - Was it selfish of him to want to be himself? Was it wrong for him to rail at life once in a while for what it had brought to him, or punch someone because he was so frustrated? --- One can be oneself without being cruel to others. Life doesn't give most people what they really want, always falls short, but most people are still loving and kind in spite of that. So yes, I think it was selfish. There are some people who should never get married and inflict themselves on others to make them miserable. Most people don't know that when they are young and the hormones are coursing and society has expectations of them, so some become miserable and make everyone around them miserable. But most people also figure out that life is just what it is, and just because we haven't gotten what we expected doesn't mean we can run roughshod over everyone else, including our children. Thank God, most people realize that and they "settle" in and accept and do the best they can. Your mother probably never got what she expected either, but she probably didn't allow that to interfere with her responsibilities to others and I bet she never punched anybody in frustration. That's maturity.

Mal -Do you think we will face imminent death sweetly and graciously, or will we become angry and rage at everyone around us because of the hopeless feeling that we haven't accomplished what we wanted to? That our lives were essentially meaningless? --- First of all, no life is meaningless in my book. Just because we might not understand how we fit into the big puzzle doesn't mean there is no meaning. And No, the day I face imminent death I will try to still be decent to those around me. It isn't their fault if I didn't accomplish with my life what I wanted. It is my own fault. I cannot punish others for what I failed to do. And I know how I will react, because I have had a near death experience and was not only accepting of it, but remember thinking, "It's a beautiful blue and white day, a good day to die." This was an auto accident on a winter highway. I don't recall feeling like I hadn't accomplished what I wanted, or being angry at anyone I knew---just acceptance of what was happening after my initial feeling of surprise that it was the end.

Traude - Regarding our transitory life, I have found Elisabeth Kübler Ross's On Death and Dying a great deal more helpful than Hemingway's self-centered speculations penned when he was still in the prime of life ---- Yes Kubler-Ross has some wonderful insights into the process of dying. One can die gracefully and with love for the life one had and the people one met along the way.

. . . what Harry is saying, because as an artist I've been in the same boat. When I was raising a family and had no time for art I was often resentful of all my duties. And once I retired and had plenty of time for my art, I was often too comfortable and kept saying "tomorrow". That's what Harry has done when he married a rich woman. The comfort of that has made him lazy, but instead of being mature and admitting that, he seems to blame his wife for her wealth when in fact he was LAZY and undisciplined.

We all have some of that in ourselves. The mature thing is to be able to admit it, and thus try overcome it, and not blame everyone else for our own shortcomings and lack of discipline. In my own case, I know I could have done and can do more than I do, but I don't have the drive or the self-discipline. I'm disappointed, but I have no right to blame anyone but myself for that---or I can just accept it AS IT IS, or I can swallow the bitter pill of disciplining myself. In no case can I blame others for what I lack.

. . . and I'm sure if I met him in real life I'd find something about him that I liked. I just don't like his characters, and his lack of insight into the female. His stories are a bit like Hollywood, where the men get the juicy parts and the females are there as background or decoration, or someone for the male to relate to, but seldom as true complex human beings in their own right. He has a perfect right to write his stories in that way, but I don't have to like them. It's just his point of view which isn't the same as mine.

And just because our parents were not perfect doesn't mean we can't love them. I don't think it's ever black and white. My father was a bastard in some ways, with a bad temper, and a wise and wonderful man in other ways. So I love him. My mother was very narcissistic in some ways and unbelievably courageous in other ways. So I love her. My children have their flaws and their good points, and I love them. We are all human beings, with good points and some character traits that aren't so good, and we still need to be loved.

I always feel that as long as the good outweighs the bad (from my point of view) I can overlook the bad. The trouble with Hem's story here is that I see very little good to balance the scale of who Harry is. All I see is selfishness and blaming and anger. If Hem wanted us to see Harry as a more complex human being, he should have written him as a more complex human being. And just maybe Hem couldn't do that because he himself was a rather shallow machismo male who had no further insight into deeper levels of living, especially where females were concerned???????

OK, just my opinions for the day.

BIMDE and TRAUDE, I am not saying "My way or the highway", or saying that anyone here is wrong. I'm suggesting taking a look at the other side of the coin. We ARE allowed to do that in a discussion, aren't we?

It is interesting that today I found the PBS site about the Michael Palin programs about Hemingway. On one of those pages he shows a picture of Harold Loeb, who Palin says "served as the model for Robert Cohn in A Sun Also Rises." I have seen on other sites that Hemingway used F. Scott Fitzgerald as the model for characters in two of his books, if that means anything. In other words, I am suggesting that Hemingway did not always write about himself -- the other side of the coin.

MOUNTAIN ROSE, I didn't say my father never "settled in". My mother died when I was 12 years old. My father married another woman then and provided for and raised my two younger sisters very, very well.

ROSE, I know what you're talking about. In the almost 30 years I was married I had no time for my music, my art, or my writing, and I resented it. I resented more the fact that my husband put down everything I did when I did squeeze in time to paint a picture or write a couple of poems.

Yes, Harry was lazy and undisciplined. He puts the blame for his unproductivity on himself in this story after he blames his wife. I am neither lazy nor undisciplined and have accomplished a great deal in art and writing since my marriage ended.

I never could have written as much as I have in the past 20 odd years, nor would I be able to publish three electronic literary magazines on the web -- one for 8 years, the other two for 7 -- if I did not discipline myself and work very hard every single day. This is something neither Harry nor Hemingway seemed able to do.

Mal

I think, when you say your husband put down everything you did creatively. Mine did the same thing. It was a form of jealousy and interfered with his "machismo" and seeing the female as merely a sort of appendage for his pleasure. As far as he was concerned I had no right to be myself or to take time away from him.

Actually my parents did the same thing for different reasons. They had a peasant mentality who had no real understanding of the arts even though my father was a musician when he was young, and so it was simply never something that anyone encouraged, and my father even got enraged when I wanted to study art, thinking it was a "useless" thing for a anyone to do, let alone a female who was only good for "changing diapers" as he put it.

And all of that can leave you with resentment and anger, and for a while I did feel that way. But there comes a point when every adult has to take control over his/her own life, at which point blame has to be discarded, and we have to do what we can under our own steam power. Obviously you have done that, and done it very well under difficult circumstances. And just as obviously Harry never did. I've not reached your level of self-discipline myself. I make an awful lot of excuses for myself, but I know it and don't blame anyone else for it, and the day I die I may have regrets for what I didn't do, but they will be MY regrets, not the fault of anyone else. I think that's what I don't like abour Harry in this story. He never does grow up.

You may or may not agree, but now I'm going to suggest that Hemingway's changes from gentle and kind to rough and cruel were at least partially caused by his abuse of alcohol. Some perfectly nice people can be changed into demons when they abuse alcohol. Some can get quietly drunk and show no changes at all. I've been a recovering alcoholic for a long, long time, and I've had enough experience with alcohol abuse by myself and others I've known and helped to know this is true.

Hemingway's alcoholism and not a conflict between the sporting life and the literary life, as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings suggested, is what got Ernest Hemingway into trouble, I believe. Add this to unresolved conflicts in him because of his hatred for his mother and the fact that she tried to raise him as a girl. This alcohol abuse compounded could lead to all kinds of negative things, including the awful depressions he had, especially at the end of his life. Alcohol is first a stimulant and then a depressant. I've often thought that might be part of the reason why people go back for more. They're looking for that impossible initial high.

You might add to that the fact that Ernest Hremingway had worldwide fame. Fame is very, very difficult to bear sober and a terrible burden when drunk.

Mal

Below is a link to Michael Palin's programs about Hemingway on PBS. There are many pages on this site, and it is worthwhile to take the time and read every one.

Michael Palin on Hemingway. PBS

My connection came off for a few hours. In this house we have a network connection and many computers are on the same connection and my son-in-law says the main computer is too old and he would have to change it.

It seems to me we have said everything we wanted to say about Hemingway as we all have our own opinion about the man that is not likely going to change. But we have not said everything yet about The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Helen's husband is dying of gangrene and she is still hoping that a rescue plane would arrive any time now even if Harry doesn't seem to believe he will live long enough. She seems genuinely in love with him.

He is recalling what touched him the most in his past. I keep looking for a sign in this story where Harry shows genuine love for a woman:

"He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having quarreled in Paris before he had gone out. He has whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her,the first one the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able to kill it..."

How lonely this macho man is feeling and now he is dying. He was with a woman in Paris, (wife?) whored the whole time, yet failed to kill the love he still felt for the first woman in his life. (not his wife?)

So Harry has feeling? He can fall in love and never forget a woman? That emotion seems unreal in a man who treats his wife the way he treats Helen. Could it be that the Harry mistreating Helen is not the real Harry?

Éloïse

Eolise:

Bingo! You have got us back on track.

The Harry who is abusing his wife is doing so as a result of his own low self-esteem. He lashes out to her and only occasionally does he realize the unjust nature of his words. Did he ever love her? (or anyone else?) I cannot really answer that question. It is unfortunate that so often a truly kind person like his wife nurtures her husband hoping that he will return some of that love. In Harry’s case, It looks doubtful. He has grown accustomed to dishing out this treatment and only something like her death or her leaving him would change him. But I would not bet on it. It may be that he considers people like her to be disposable and replaceable. Also note that he does not appreciate the fact that she shot that animal in a way not to disturb him.

Does anybody think that there are any other significant people, animals or events in this story?

I think it would be great fun to have us all in the same room for this discussion!

What do you think?

Newvoyager

Famous Artists with Bipolar Disorder from Kay Redfield Jamison’s, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961)

American novelist and short-story writer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 and one of the most well-known authors of the 20th century. Author of The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bells Toll, and The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway was fascinated with war. By 1960, he had been hospitalized twice at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he received electroshock treatments. Two days after his return, he committed suicide.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (April 2, 1805 - Aug. 4, 1875)
HONORE DE BALZAC (May 20, 1799 - Aug. 18, 1850)
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (April 9, 1821 - Aug. 31, 1867)
WILLIAM BLAKE (Nov. 28, 1757 - Aug. 12, 1827)
EMILY DICKINSON (Dec. 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886)
T.S. ELIOT (Sept. 26, 1888 - Jan. 4, 1965
WILLIAM FAULKNER (Sept. 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962)
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (Sept. 24, 1896 - Dec. 21, 1940)
HERMANN HESSE (July 2, 1877 - Aug. 9, 1962)
VICTOR HUGO (Feb. 26, 1802 - May 22, 1885)
JOHN KEATS (Oct. 31, 1795 - Feb. 23, 1821)
EDGAR ALLAN POE (Jan. 19, 1809 - Oct. 7, 1849)
MARK TWAIN (Nov. 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910)
CHARLES DICKENS (Feb. 7 - June 9, 1870)
MARY SHELLEY (Aug. 30, 1797 - Feb. 1, 1851)
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (Aug. 6, 1809 - Oct. 6, 1892)
WALT WHITMAN (May 31, 1819 - March 26, 1892)
VIRGINIA WOOLF (Jan. 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941)
EMILE ZOLA (April 2, 1840 - Sept. 28, 1902)

And then drinking and drug using authors are legend in there numbers.

Thanks, BARBARA. Many alcoholics are diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

Mal

ELOISE, when I read the passage you quoted, I immediately thought of Agnes von Kurowsky, the nurse who took care of Hemingway. After he was injured in Fossata, Italy July 18, 1918, he was taken to Treviso; then transferred to Milan after five days. By August he was wildly in love with Kurowsky, who was 7 years older than he was. They had a relationship mostly by mail, and it wasn't too long before she rejected him, saying he was just a kid, and she was too old for him. (I found the rejection letter on the web.) He never got over loving her or the rejection.

Here I definitely see Hemingway writing about his own experiences. I can picture his having done what he has Harry do in Paris, in his misery, as he tries to cure himself of his first, and perhaps only, love.

Hemingway wrote about Agnes von Kurowsky, in Three Stories and Ten Poems ( Hemingway's first published book -- 1923) and again in A Farewell to Arms. (Published in 1929)

Hemingway has portrayed Harry as a man who is jaded, who has already lived his life. At the time we meet him in this story, he seems not to have much of anything left to give to anyone.

"It was not her fault that when he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth.

"It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell. He had had his life and it was over and then he went on living it again with different people and more money, with the best of the same places, and some new ones."

Why were Harry's lies more successful with women than when he had told them the truth, do you suppose?

Mal

Harry's lies were more successful than the truth because he could be unfailingly positive. Telling the truth was probably always a mixed bag and thus not as appealing to the women in his life.

I'm just now catching up on all the Snow posts. This group is amazing! I find it remarkable because Hemingway was only 37 when he wrote this story, yet it could have been the story of his own death. I recently finished A Life Without Consequences, excellent, and you couldn't possibly have read this biography without feeling that Hemingway was telling the story of his own life, right down to the last detail. I can't think of a single aspect of Harry that was not like Hemingway. He is petulant, talented, and driven by his desire to get all the stories he has inside of him down in writing. If you read some of Hemingway's letters, he talks about this often. I think at about this age he figured he had two or three novels and a dozen short stories left in him.

Hemingway thought Snows his best work. Maybe that is because it best said who Hemingway was. I find his writing and his life compeling even if I don't wholly approve of him.

Incidentally, the quote about the rich having more money was originally referring to Scott Fitzgerald. Later Hemingway changed the name to Julian because it upset Scott when he read the quote.

Harry does seem cruel, but ultimately he is honest with himself. He admits he hasn't treated the women in his life fairly, and he knows he can blame no one but himself for anything he regrets having not accomplished. I think the bottom line with Hemingway as nothing was as important to him as expressing himself through his writing. His women took a back seat, and he changed women when he needed new stimuli for work.

Certainly this story makes us think about regrets. When my time comes, I hope to have no regrets. My expectations are not as high as Hemingway's were of himself, so maybe I'll succeed. I have health problems right now, and reading this story makes me realize I haven't done all I can do to overcome them - which would definitely be a regret, maybe my only one. So Hemingway is excellent food for the soul!

Pamela

Hemingway's leopard is an African leopard -- out of his element at that altitude on the mountain. Was it chasing something -- searching for something when it got caught in a snow storm and died? It never reached its goal -- frozen in time.

Insightful post SCAMPER. Do you think that ‘regrets’ is the message and why is it presented in this shocking manner that would make any woman who read it resent the author the way we do in this discussion?

NEWVOYAGER, ”Also note that he does not appreciate the fact that she shot that animal in a way not to disturb him.”. Men like Harry resent their wife’s ability to surpass his own in anything they do. He can’t forgive a woman to be as good or a shot as he is or better.

Is Harry’s bitterness a result of his alcoholism or a result of a lavish lifestyle that his wife provided him with? Did Helen marry him because he was handsome, an adventurer like her, and she liked his talent as a writer hoping, with her help, he would become world famous. Did she use him as much as she was used herself?

The leopard is in the story for a reason but once more, we are left with no follow-up. Perhaps Hemingway had something in mind about that when he started to write this novel, got tired of it and had it published as a short story.

I like the mention of the mountain and I am wondering what it represents too. Is it that we have mountains to climb and sometimes while we are making attempts at reaching the top, we just give up, perhaps too easily, without giving it our best shot.

Éloïse

ELOISE has said:

"Do you think that ‘regrets’ is the message and why is it presented in this shocking manner that would make any woman who read it resent the author the way we do in this discussion?"

I have a question. If this story were written by a relatively unknown writer like Lily Tuck, who just won the National Book Award for The News from Paraguay, or by any other writer instead of Ernest Hemingway, would you resent the author, or would you be much more likely to resent Harry, the character the writer dreamed up?

Why should we resent the person who wrote this story? Stop and think about it. If he hadn't written it, our lives would be less than they are. We never would have had it to read, and we wouldn't be here together talking about it today.

What is the main theme of this story?

I think the main theme of this story is the dying and death of a man whose talent and life have been corrupted and wasted. He never reached the top of the mountain he set up for himself. He allowed his life and his art to be frozen in the time and space he had until they weren't any more, just as the leopard froze never accomplishing what it had set out to do.

I think the relationship between Harry and Helen is a secondary theme. This author has used the character of the wife as a device through which the life and nature of Harry, the artist, are shown.

I think this is a story of self-reproach and futility more than it is a story about regret. The self-reproach has come too late. I think this writer is saying it always does, and that is the futiity.

The author of this story is saying the artist's life stands in the way of his or her art.

What do you think, ROSE?

Mal

Something struck me while I was driving home on a slow moving congested highway.

Does reading Snows of Kilimanjaro make you feel good? I heard from a psychologist on TV lately that in order to be happy in life you have to be with people who make you feel good.

The same goes with the characters in this story. Is there anyone in this short story who makes you feel good? So far I have not heard much good said about the author, who, after all, received the Nobel Prize for Literature, READ HIS ACCEPTENCE SPEECH HERE where Hemingway reveals a lot about himself.

It says that in order to surpass the work of renown excellent writers, he has to write better than they do to captivate their attention. Certainly he did this in most of his writing and the cost was to expose all his demons and in the same process antagonizing ALL OF US here in this discussion about him.

In the next ten days, we should try and uncover some of his literary genius, not only if we like him or hate him because he didn't give a hoot about being a wonderful loving man.

I want to learn from everybody, but I also would like to give everybody an equal chances at posting. Perhaps I should wait until I see ALL our wonderful participants posting before I utter another word, not just one or two because it is not fair to everybody.

Éloïse

I shouldn't come in so soon, but I have to say that Ernest Hemingway doesn't antagonize me. People say never to judge a book by its cover. Well, I don't judge genius by the package and wrappings it comes in.

Mal

I found MAL's summation of the theme of the story (Post #250)very satisfying. It rings true; it fits. The symbolism of the leopard also falls fittingly into place. I have to agree with what she is saying. ..Babi

. . . these:

MAL - I think the main theme of this story is the dying and death of a man whose talent and life have been corrupted and wasted. He never reached the top of the mountain he set up for himself. He allowed his life and his art to be frozen in the time and space he had until they weren't any more, just as the leopard froze never accomplishing what it had set out to do.

I think the relationship between Harry and Helen is a secondary theme. This author has used the character of the wife as a device through which the life and nature of Harry, the artist, are shown.

I think this is a story of self-reproach and futility more than it is a story about regret. The self-reproach has come too late. I think this writer is saying it always does, and that is the futiity.

The author of this story is saying the artist's life stands in the way of his or her art." ---- Yes, I pretty much agree with all that was said above in Mal's post. But I have to say that because we are human and have bodily needs, material needs and psychological needs, life will ALWAYS stand in the way of art, and all any of us can do is the best we can. Some artists excel better than others, but often at a sacrifice of their human needs. I think what Harry reproaches himself for is the lack of self-discipline he has had now that death is near. Frankly, I can understand that, since I'm not as disciplined myself as I think I ought to be either. So I have empathy for that aspect of his thinking; but I have no empathy for his meanness to his wife right up to the end and for still trying to lay some of the blame on her and her wealth instead of accepting responsibility. I admit that it's easy to do that, but at death one ought, at last, to reach that "moment of truth" and admit ones own failures. I also believe if one has a strong belief in a loving God that one can do that and be at peace and without needless self-blaming (personal opinion once again). Harry had nothing really, except the feeling of not having completed his ambitions, with no comforts anywhere.

ELOISE - Does reading Snows of Kilimanjaro make you feel good? I heard from a psychologist on TV lately that in order to be happy in life you have to be with people who make you feel good. --- Well no, the story does not make me feel good, but it does make me think, and to me that's more important than feeling good. I disagree with the psychologist. I myself value people who don't necessarily make me feel good, but who tell me the TRUTH, even when it hurts. But it has to be truth, not just negativity. I do believe we should avoid people who radiate only negativity, unless we are willing consciously to make the sacrifice to be with them for reasons that we understand, and I think that's a necessary prerequisite because otherwise we might be sucked into their negativity. I also prefer people who make me think, and even though I may not like what Hem says in this story or his characters, Harry has made me think. So has this discussion.

I've always believed that people should have all sorts of friends----those who will tell you the truth and whom you trust, those to just have fun with but whom you wouldn't necessarily trust with your bank account, those you might not like very much but who have proven they can be trusted about certain things, those who callenge us intellectually, those who show us simplicity or a sense of adventure, and those who give us joy, and I think one ought to be clear about the differences in the relationships so things don't get wishy-washy with hurt feelings when someone doesn't live up to our expectations. I have friends I play poker with or go shopping with, and I don't expect them to be readers or intellectual giants. I have other friends who are readers and intellectual giants, though, and I don't expect them to go shopping with me or play poker. If a person has friends who have those positive character traits, when a negative person comes along once in a while who can't be avoided, one can handle that person and not let it pull us down; for example, if one has a very negative family member who simply can't be avoided. The positive people balance out the negative one. I don't think a family member should ever be discarded or ignored just because "they don't make us feel good". I think we should just deal with them in positive ways, without being sucked into their negative view of life.

I also believe if we have a good solid self-image, we do not need other people to make us feel good, although we can be appreciative when it happens. A good self-image comes from within; not from outside.

Traude re #233 and Bimde #234. Of course your are entitled to your opinion and if they are different from the others, that's fine. This is not a contest. Please continue sharing your thoughts about this passionate author.

Yes, I suppose this story is about the last mountain not climbed. I think I feel more benevalent towards Hemingway in this story than some of you do, though. He DID admit that he really couldn't blame anyone but himself for his regrets, even if he lashed out at his wife from time to time. And how many wouldn't lash out if you're laying there knowing you are dying because you were too stupid to put iodine on a cut!

Also, it is not as if Harry accomplished nothing - he just didn't get to accomplish EVERYTHING that he wanted. I remember once thinking I was about to be diagnosed with cancer (false alarm), and my first thought was, "****, I thought I had more time!" It's not that I thought I had left so much unaccomplished, but I wanted to squeeze out everything I could from this life. Don't you think Harry feels the same way?

Any chance we can keep on reading Hemingway short stories on this thread after Novemvber? He wrote about 60 of them, and it is so much fun to hear what everyone has to say about them!

I'd like that, too, SCAMPER.

ELOISE, TRAUDE posted in WREX that she's been very busy having work done on her house. I imagine she'll be in when she can.

Mal

At one time Hemingway was one of my favorite authors. His style of making every word count must have been a part of my enjoyment of his work. His skill with words will keep his work being read evey year by College English Majors. However, he has slipped way down in my esteem as a man. As a man he embodied so much of what I now find objectionable. Hunting just to kill, womanizing, drinking to excess.

I am finding it difficult to reread The Snows of Kilimanjaro because it is so depressing.

Why is it that I do not find this story depressing?

It is so in tune to to life and death. Perhaps Harry was a bit of a curmudgeon but is he any different than most men/women who are unhappy in life and facing death? Let us not judge Harry too harshly. He is reviewing his summit as we all will.

Thank you for speaking for me, MAL. I was just about to do that, coming on line for the first time since this a.m., when I took my car to be serviced.

The symbolism of the mountain, the summit, and the leopard is hard to miss (perhaps even a wee bit obvious). That Hemingway was a very good writer is not in dispute. But are there any more treasures to be mined from this sad story?

Eons ago, in my first life, I started a journal- not about myself, but for jotting down noteworthy, poignant or beautifully-turned, even lyrical phrases as well as aphorisms I treasured. However, nothing by Hemingway is in my private canon of authors, which has held up quite well over the decades.

This particular story is remarkable because of its prophetic nature: in the last few years of his life, as he drifted into and out of mental darkness, Hemingway simply could not organize the stories he felt he still had to tell, could not write them down and was in despair. Mary Welsh, his last wife, wrote about it. And those last stories, the reminiscences of life in Paris, were published posthumously.

I felt infinite sadness about such waste when I first read the story, such deliberate self-destruction. He aged as we all do, but did he MATURE, emotionally, mentally ? Did he age gracefully? (no to that) I liked the film, as I said earlier. Gregory Peck made it easier. The women were dutiful and reverential, especially the late Susan Hayward as Helen. There were also more flashbacks than in the book, which made the movie more visually attractive.

Hemingway's obsession with guns and rifles and hunting prey in exotic locales; his yearly, well-publicized runs with the bulls in Pamplona; his hedonistic life abroad; his unending quest for ever greater thrills and adventures in the company of women of all stripes sound dreadfully empty and futile to me (even puerile, to be candid).

As for the Nobel Prize: as we have seen in these past few years, the Swedish Academy has its agenday and looks (from all appearances) toward rewarding a candidate from a different country each year, a sort of geographically determined munificence.

When I was in Europe in 1997, the papers openly predicted that a Portuguese author would get the prize --- and that turned out to be José Saramago (for "Blindness", essentially), though a different Portuguese author, a physician, had already been given the nod by the papers !!!

This year there was a great shock when the Austrian Elfriede Jelinek was the winner, and she got it for her "attitude" (political, feminist, combative novels); the audience audibly gasped, for many in-the-know had thought the honor would go to an American, e.g. Philip Roth, or Cynthia Ozik. Jelinek for her part did not (even) attend the ceremony. So much for that!

MAL, this year there was intense (and bitter) speculation about the nominees for our National Book Award, none well known. One of them defensively said (don't remember who), 200 (two hundred) (!) copies of her book were published. The reader wonders about the juries, what they are looking for, and who pulls the strings behind these events. Just how "meaningful" or representative are they?

The title of Lily Tuck's prize-winning "The News from Paraguay" is a little misleading at the outset: the novel is based on the story of an Irish woman in the 1850s who became the lover of the future dictator of Paraguay.

Traude

I am in here early because I heard last night that a friend from Australia is coming to visit next spring, and I've been wandering the Outback in my sleep all night long. Don't ever send exciting, sad, really really happy emails to an imaginative person at midnight. just before she's going to bed.

What good posts in here yesterday! I'm impressed! I have to agree with Nurse ALF Ratchett that Harry was a real curmudgeon who was no different from a lot of people in this world, except for one thing -- he was a writer.

He lived in his mind a good part of the time, plotting, intriguing, manipulating characters he created in and out of situations he creates. A writer is all powerful. He/she has the means to kill people off or make them live. He/she has all the capabilities of a god. If he's a good writer and a hard, hard worker, he uses them all.

Creative people are never really happy unless they are creating, working with their art. They curse anything and anyone they think stands in the way, their husbands, wives, kids, friends, the weather, among other things, and themselves and death.

In this story we have a dying writer who cannot write, who will never write again, and he's furious. He's mad at his wealthy wife whose parties and social life he was swept up in rather than staying in training like an athlete or mountain climber, living sparsely and lean, focusing and using his mind and body only for one thing, writing.

Writers are selfish in ways that I see. They won't give up their alone time and what they do to be good husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends. They won't come to your party when they're writing, go to football games or movies or plays. "Leave me alone, don't bother me" is the logo of their trade.

After the book is finished, and they come up for air, they can be as nice as can be, except for the fact that they have a tendency to go overboard when it comes to breathing fresh, free air, celebrating, tasting every bit of life that they can and more.

Hemingway is right. Each new book is a new adventure with a new beginning where the writer tries to go places and do things he's never done before, and nobody else has. It is a lonely life. When it isn't, the writing and the writer deteriorate.

We forget that Harry was a writer, and that swashbuckling, hard-living Ernest Hemingway was, and that hours and days and months and years of their lives were spent alone in their minds quietly writing. It's a love-hate relationshp. Writers love it when they're writing, and they hate it when they are not or can't.

Mal

GINNY ANN has said Hemingway embodied a lot she now finds objectionable, hunting, womanizing, drinking. This story is about a very different time from the time in which we now live.

I don't know how old any of you are, but I'm old enough to remember when HE MEN were the kinds of men women idolized and adored. Clark Gable, "I don't give a damn, Scarlett", oh, wow. Errol Flynn, the swashbuckling pirate. Cigarette-smoking, tough, drink-in-his hand Humphrey Bogart was dangerously attractive.

There wasn't money enough for most people when I was growing up to travel, go to far off places and have adventures. Woman's place was in the home while she sent her man off to war. Women were taught that men should and would dominate them, and that was okay.

Little boys tried to be like Charles Atlas. I remember that my brother used part of his paper boy money to buy yeast, so he could eat it and get big and strong like Atlas.

Big game hunting was out of my economic league, but there were plenty of people who did it. I grew up seeing pictures of them and their kill, Teddy Roosevelt, who was before my time, epitomized them all.

Franklin Roosevelt was never photographed wearing his leg braces or using crutches because that wasn't manly. The leader of our country had to be strong and powerful, a real man.

Our heroes were generals in the Army like Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur. We preferred them and the Clark Gable type to the kinder, gentler Leslie Howard or any poet type we ever heard of.

We grew up in one of the biggest wars that ever was fought, which followed the bloodier one Hemingway knew firsthand as not much more than a boy. Killing innocent human beings was okay because their country and their soldiers were the enemy, and so was killing animals so we could wear fur coats.

We didn't want anything to do with the "girly men" intellectual type Governor Movie Star Arnie in California, himself a strong, big-muscled representative of manhood, talks about.

I don't think we can put today's standards on yesterday.

And, hard as we might try, we'll never make a Boy Scout out of Harry in this story, or his creator, Ernest Hemingway.

Mal

Did H just want to catch our attention with the leopard? to urge us to read on about what it was doing at that altitude, because he doesn't say.

Hemingway, in his speech for the Nobel Prize said: "For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

And he was lucky, or he was good. It is like a silly ad on television. You look at it because it seems so weird.

Good work everybody, I am happy.

Éloïse

Was lurking through and wanted to comment on the author.

When I recall reading "For whom the bell tolls", I felt he was drawn to the French nihilist attitude of the time, imitating the Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

Albeit even if we speak French in Canada, we are very different from our cousins. Perhaps we belong more to the optimistic surviving kind on this side of the ocean. Our morale is indestructible!

Françoise

A follow-up on what I posted this morning about writers and writing:

"Despite his need for these boon companions, male or female, Mellow’s* Hemingway was, perhaps like every writer, a profound loner who didn’t want to be touched. Only his art could finally matter.

"Hemingway wanted his art to partake in that which survives the inevitable transience of human relations. Wanting to write well and truly about what really happened required him—like the matador Romero—to risk his life in holding 'the purity of his line through the maximum of exposure,' despite the horns of death bearing down upon him. Most of the time Hemingway failed. And Mellow finds 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'—with its embittered writer Harry—to be an allegory of Hemingway’s sense of lost possibility and failed effort:
'only another writer, perhaps, would appreciate how close to the truth Hemingway had come to that sense of failed ambition and the terrible, fixed preoccupation, the irreducible selfishness of the writer’s life; how the dogged practice of the craft takes hold—the time spent, the time wasted—with few things, other than war or marriage or a love affair, nearly as real or compelling or of more consequence than what was on the page in front of him.'
"But if Hemingway’s later years were, with one or two exceptions, marked by wasted experience and failed stories, there are still those surviving masterworks that I have mentioned—visions of the way it was in a pure style that revolutionized modernist fiction. Hence, there is still that dried and frozen carcass of the leopard, up close to the western summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, a preserved once-living figure that nobody in the Modern Language Association seems able to explain. But Mellow’s portrait makes a clear case, it seems to me, for Hemingway’s having scaled a rather high point on the slopes of Parnassus.

James R. Mellow, author of Hemingway, A Life Without Consequences

Source:

Hemingway Unbound by James W. Tuttleton

"But if Hemingway’s later years were, with one or two exceptions, marked by wasted experience and failed stories, there are still those surviving masterworks that I have mentioned—visions of the way it was in a pure style that revolutionized modernist fiction."

pure style that revolutionized modernist fiction.

That's a lot to say about any writer.

Mal

FRANÇOISE, bienvenue ma chérie. In case you all don't know it, Françoise is my daughter. I totally agree with her that French Canadians are different from their European counterparts especially for being optimistic and yes, yes, indestructible too, look at me. hahaha.

I read l'Étranger de Camus but I don't remember him as much as I remembered Hemingway, come to think of it, J.P.Sartre is an existentialist, do you think that of Hemingway also? I am not an expert on the matter but it is worth consideration. Hemingway lived in France for a while but I don't remember him mentioning the two French authors who certainly influenced the thinkers of their time.

Éloïse

There are some nihilistic and existential themes in some of Hemingway's work, but I don't believe Ernest Hemingway was a true existentialist. He was too much of a Romantic in many ways ever to qualify for that.

"Romanticism: An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions."

Mal

"but I don't believe Ernest Hemingway was a true existentialist". I would have been surprised if you had said the opposite Mal and we are all entitled to state our own opinion.

What made me think that Harry was still in love with the woman who had left him is this when he was in Paris with his wife: "So then the letter in answer to the one he'd written came in on a platter one morning and when he saw the handwriting he went cold all over and tried to slip the letter underneath another. But his wife said, "Who is that letter from, dear?" and that was the end of the beginning of that"

Could Harry be the sort of man who could carry a torch for a woman this long I wonder?

Éloïse

I"m not being perverse, ELOISE. I did quite an extensive study of Existentialism at one time, which included much research and reading of Sartre and Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and other Existentialists, plus talking to French friends who lived in France at the time of this movement. Based on that, in my mind Hemingway as a person just doesn't fit. You're right. It's just an opinion formed by a foundation I've described above.

Mal

"In the Black Forest, after the war, we rented a trout stream and there were two ways to walk to it... The other way was to climb steeply up to the edge of the woods and then go across the top of the hills through the pine woods, and then out to the edge of a meadow and down across this meadow to the bridge. There were birches along the stream and it was not big, but narrow, clear and fast, with pools where it had cut under the roots of the birches.

Traude, I think you can answer my question. Can someone can rent a trout stream in Austria?

In his retrospection, Harry shows extreme sensitivity and tenderness in contrast to his verbal abuse to his wife. The narration is excellent sometimes poetic, sometimes vivid and clearly expressed.

Then this: "He knew his neighbors in that quarter then because they all were poor." It's true that in France in small towns all the neighbors not only know each other well, but they never pass a neighbor on the street without exchanging a few words. Too much contrast between Harry the married man and Harry in flashback.

ÉLOïSE, regarding your question,

sorry, I never heard of anyone renting (or wanting to rent) a trout stream. The idea sounds slightly absurd to me, but I will give it more thought and ask my old school friend in my next letter.

Of course, "anything is possible and attainable with money, even things that are not for sale." From Aphorisms by Marie Baronin von Ebner Eschenbach, Austrian novelist, 1830-1916.

These words are heavy with meaning. "Wouldn't you like some more broth?" the woman asked him now. "No....." Here the text is in the first person, then: "When she goes, he thought. I"ll have all I want. Not all I want but all there is." The text now is in the third person: "Ayee he was tired. Too tired, He was going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not there. It must have gone around another street. It went in pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements."

Why does the author change points of view mid-way in the paragraph, Is it to indicate that there was a separation between what Harry was feeling about his wife and what Harry was feeling about death?

What do you think about the author's comparisons and relations with death and bicycles? What does it mean? Does it mean that he was not feeling pain as it approached?

I have never read many such novels about death before and I don't know how a person feels of course. Some people claim that when they were on the verge of death they were sure that they died, them they became alive again. For them, it was death and resurrection.

Éloïse

. . . the character is thinking, NOT the author. It makes perfect sense to me that way anyhow.

Regarding "renting" a trout stream, yes, in Europe that would make sense. One has to remember that Europe is small, that ALL property is privately owned, and that some of the holdings are still owned by landholders who are "the gentry". The gentry, after WWI had a lot of money problems, just like in England, and so they often rented out parts of their estate or even their homes to the wealthy who could afford it and wanted the experience of living in a castle. Hunting laws are also different there, since any game is owned by the person who owns the land. There are few to no areas where hunting by just anyone is allowed the way it is in this country.

Even here the hunting is getting more and more restricted, with dates set where hunting is legal (and NOT outside of those dates), and in the state of California there is even a lottery these days for hunting licenses during the season, and the number is limited---although when I go out wandering during hunting season I see a lot of hunters out there and I'm sure not all of them have a license.

I have been reading Hemmingway in "The Hemmingway Reader" and I must admit that most of the time I have no idea what he is saying, and most of the time I don't like the sort of people he writes about. But since he is such a revered author, I am subjecting myself to his writing just for the experience. He is sort of like Picasso to me---someone whose work I don't particularly like, but where I can see the genius because they break new pathways for the arts, whether we like the outcome or not. They have a brand new way of seeing something and constructing their art around a new vision, and even if we don't like the outcome (and I don't in particular) they have broken through, made us all see the new vision, and have given other artists a new pathway for expression. That's why some artists/writers, etc. are considered more "genius" than others. And Hem was definitely a genius. I can, however, see why publishers were slow to accept what he wrote.

MountainRose, I see what you mean about 'renting a stream' and as you say perhaps it is rather obtaining a permit to fish on someone else's property, so to speak. That makes more sense as water cannot be contained and cannot be 'owned' by anyone.

I also have the book Hemingway Reader and now I want to read the other short stories in it. The others in the book are excerpts for the most part, but The Sun Also Rises is not. In the preface Page 88 near the end, something struck me as typical of this author. "The persons in them stand their gaffs, take their falls, win, lose and draw, show their prejudices and cowardices and valor as they truly are, not as we might wish them to he always."

Isn't this what we have been reading all along? Hemingway not following the rules. His characters are not 1) A protagonist, 2) an antagonist, 3) a plot, 4) a denouement, and we expected this, especially from an author of Hemingway's caliber. He is a renegade. He likes to bring out the worst in his characters and perhaps he has seen enough to know what he is talking about among all the men he has had a contact with during his travels and the war. He knows how they really are and his so-called failure to show women in a favorable light is his own perception of women.

I loved the comparison with Picasso Rose, if two artists could be alike, they certainly come out to me that way also. They wanted to break the mold, shape another one and didn't care if the new mold pleased people or not. Picasso had business acumen where Hemingway didn't if he was always looking for a rich wife.

Has anyone found other interesting things about The Snows of Kilimanjaro? Is the story worth the popularity it has had, enough to have a movie made from it? Did anyone see the movie? I know the story was changed but it seemed to have been very popular, is it because of the movie stars in it, or because of Hemingway popularity.

Come and tell us, it will be very interesting I am sure.

Éloïse

Radio stations in Europe in the thirties had their own special signal with which to bridge gaps, short or not so short, between programming. We called them "Sendepause" (a pause in broadcasting) or "Funkstille" (radio silence). The BBC, to which we listened clandestinely, observed it too.

The temporary silence here has reminded me of those long-ago days. Of course we are all busy (frazzled, in my case) before this sequence of holidays; we anticipate them with such eagerness, invest so much thought, endeavor and work ... and in between there are unexpected minor emergencies.

One such befell me late this afternoon - at a time when I usually sit down before the computer and indulge ... By the time I came home, there were many e-mails to read and the 6 o'clock news imminent. So this is my first chance to reply to he last posts here.

-------

ROSE, your comparison between Hemingway and Picasso is very à propos. Both were totally self-absorbed; Picasso a greater genius - but that is just my opinion. Both needed women, used them for their respective purposes (as models, lovers, "muses", respectively) and treated them abominably. Both of them must have been absolutely irresistible, or ... ?

I was still in Europe when Hemingway burst on the literary scene in the thirties. At that time I had no conception of just how "revolutionary" his style was. Then I read him in translation, and I vividly remember that I didn't like him at all. Now I have his collected works in English at my fingertips. But my original impression/reaction is unchanged.

It is incomparably wonderful to exchange impressions of books here in this forum freely, candidly, amicably, without feeling pressured to "convert" - one way or the other.

ROSE, regarding the "renting" of a trout stream, oh yes, there ARE publicly owned lands in Austria and in Germany, and the "renting" is probably more like getting a fishing permit, as ÉLOÏSE has reasonably suggested.

Also, such a permit, if per chance issued on the property of a nobleman, would most certainly NOT have included lodgings in the castle, provided it was still even habitable, unless the applicant were ... well, Hemingway.

In Germany for example, both the left bank and the right bank of the Rhine river (which is no longer as limpid as I remember it) are dotted with ruins of medieval castles on steep hills covered with vineyards, and some of them are beyond repair.

A few have been restored and became a tourist attraction. A ride on an Intercity Express on either side of the river from, say Bingen to Mainz and beyond, is an unforgettable experience. The much-promoted "thing" to do these days is to book a leisurely, luxurious river cruise - one of them on the Rhine.

. . . down the Rhine with my sketchbook and camera! What a wonderful thought! If they all started singing I'd sing right along because I remember all those songs even though these days I'd get out of breath if I danced all those dances. LOL

I totally agree with you that Picasso was the greater genius and that both men used women for their various purposes. Personally I don't think I would have minded being used as a muse even if treated badly. Anything for the sake of art!!!

And when I got tired of it I would have left.

I just want to tell about a little vignette out of my life. When I was about 8 or 9 we went to a dance at the local village where we were visiting my aunt. We children were having so much fun on the dancefloor when all of a sudden everything became so silent one could hear a pin drop. The band stopped, the talk stopped, it seemed like even the birds outside quit chirping (I'm exaggerating, but it sure seemed that way to me. LOL). Since I had grown up in a fairly democratic household I didn't know what was going on and asked my aunt. She shushed me and told me that "the gentry" had arrived and that we must all stand still until they had done their entrance and officially begun the dance. I thought that was the funniest thing I had ever heard and began to laugh and ask more questions---like, just because they have titles given to them by birth instead of accomplishment we are supposed to scrape and bow? Just because they come in all their finery we are to be properly quiet and pay our respects? It just tickled my funnybone and auntie had to take me outside so she wouldn't get into trouble with my giggles about the silliness of it all.

Sure hope they don't do that anymore. Sure glad I'm an American and don't have to put up with that sort of nonsense anymore!!!

Traude, both Picasso and Hemingway loved Paris, well who doesn't and I had the pleasure of spending a week there twice and that was not enough. I can only imagine Hemingway living on the Left Bank, in the artistic community. How much he must have loved to consort with other artists who created major works of art.

I once took a day cruise on the Danube and while we were cruising down the river the Straus waltzes were piped in. I loved it even if we have lovely rivers here that I cruised on which are very spectacular. Naturally the water was not crystal clear on the Danube, but at least the green banks were reflected on the water and we had the pleasure of not hearing rock and roll music piped in.

MountainRose, I guess from your post that you were born in Europe. Interesting about the Gentry. They must have been high ranking for the whole room to stop everything. A Prince no doubt, not a mere Count or Baron. Aristocracy is changing, now they are the well heeled, well established financiers and they stick to one another just as the Aristocracy used to do. Blue blood has to contain a certain amount of gold to count now.

Éloïse

ELOISE, I hope you don't mind. You know Paris, so probably you know these places and where they are.

When Ernest Hemingway and Hadley first went to Paris in mid-December, 1921, they stayed at the Hotel Jacob, now the Hotel d'Angleterre, on the rue Jacob, off the rue Bonaparte.

They moved to an apartment at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, in a working-class neighborhood, described in A Moveable Feast. Is that in Montparnasse?

Hemingway says in A Moveable Feast:

"All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of witner, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife -- second class -- and the hotel where Verlaine had died where I had a room on the top floor where I worked." (Page 4)

He also says:

" . . . I walked on in the rain. I walked down past the Lycée Henri Quartre and the ancient church of St. Etienne du Mont and the windswept Place du Panthéon and cut in for shelter on the right and finally came out on the lee side of the Boulevard St. Michel and worked on down it past the Cluny and the Boulevard St. Germain until I came to a good café I knew on the Place St. Michel." (Page 4-5)

Does this give you an idea of where he was in Paris?

Mal

Below is a link to a street map that shows you where Hemingway lived on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine. To the left of the Red M in the center you'll see a purple D. That is where Hemingway and Hadley lived. You'll also see some of the streets he mentions in the quotes above.

Street map, Paris

Oh! this brings back so many memories. I was in Paris four years ago. I stayed close to the Gare de Lyon. I forget the name of the two star hotel, they are all the same. The Left bank where Hemingway lived is near the Sorbonne on the Left Bank that you can see in Mal's link. Montparnasse is a hill a little way from the center, I was there in 1975 and still have a small painting by an American artist I was watching paint at the Place du Tertre.

The local bus No. 24, near the Gare de Lyon takes you all around the city core, past Notre Dame, around the Arc of Triumph follows the posh 9th or 10th arrondissement and the bus driver, when we reached the end of the line, noticed I was not getting off started to point out interesting things, where the SS headquarters used to be during the war and the bullet holes on the side of the building.

To walk around the Arc of Triumph takes an hour and a half it is so big. Everything was a source of wonder for this Montrealer who thought she would never see Paris.

The corner of Boulevard St. Michel and Boulevard St. Germain is the very heart of Paris. Coming out of the underground with my suitcase, walking on Boul. St. Michel I stopped at a tiny booth on the sidewalk where crèpes were sold to ask my way to my hotel. The man wouldn't have told me had I not bought the crèpe. A smile will get you everywhere you want to go.

Éloïse

Hemingway lived in the Latin Quarter, the Sixth and part of the Fifth Arrondissement, as far as I can tell from maps I've looked at. When I was in Paris in 1975, my husband and I stayed at the Princesse Caroline Hotel, a small hotel of only 53 rooms on the rue Troyon in the Tenth Arrondissement.

The brother of a man from France, who worked for my husband as a chemist at that time, lived in Paris, and he drove us, his wife and Henri around. He drove us to the Left Bank near the Sorbonne on May Day, and we ended up in the worst traffic jam I've ever seen. I don't know how he ever got us out of it.

ELOISE knows that the first of May is a very big day in France. All the flower sellers were selling lilies of the valley -- Fleurs-de-Lis.

This brother of our friend took us to all kinds of places tourists usually don't see. He took us to a restaurant that was like a cave (cellar) in not too great a neighborhood where we had rare steaks marinated in wine served on boards. On the way up the stairs a man grabbed me. I was soon rescued by the three men I was with.

I spent most of my time alone in Paris because my husband was there on business. I must say the French were wonderful to me. The taxi driver who took me to Le Jeu de Paumes practically drove up the outside stairs so I wouldn't have to climb them. Inside, after I'd looked at Max Ernst paintings because I couldn't find the Monet Nymphéas (waterlilies), a security guard spoke to me in French from across the gallery. I couldn't understand him. He came over and took me by the arm, and I was sure I'd done something terrible. Mais non, he led me to an elevator so I wouldn't have to walk down the flight of stairs. When the elevator door opened up I was right in the middle of the Monet Nymphéas and completely enthralled. That was not the only kindness shown to me while I was in France. I was surprised because I'd been told so often that the French are aloof to tourists, especially Americans.

On a Sunday while we were there, Henri's brother drove us into the country. He drove on a highway faster than I'd ever seen anyone drive except at the Indianapolis Speedway. We went to the home of his and Henri's parents and were served an unbelievable meal of many, many courses, all accompanied by the proper wine. It was a pleasure to be in a French home with charming people.

My sister and her professor husband lived in Paris a year on one of his sabbaticals. One of their daughters studied that year at the Sorbonne. So, indeed, has Robby Iadeluca studied at the Sorbonne.

Mal

MAL, the First of May is a BIG day, a HOLIDAY in fact, in all of Europe, not just in France. It is the truest form of Labor Day when unions organize peaceful marches, and companies hold family picnics for their employees.

The firm for which I worked in Frankfurt before coming to this country paid its employees one month's salary as a bonus on May first, AND the same bonus at Christmas. What a tremendous help after the devastation of the war years!

My first Christmas bonus at the patent law firm in Washington, D.C. was $5 -- five decades ago.

LA LA LIBÉRATION DE PARIS.

Click on the old map dated August 24, 1944 where they indicate on the left side of the page the barricades, the points of resistence, the itinerary of the 2nd Armoured Division, the combat zone, and the American Division.

Hemingway arrived in Paris only two years after that and he must bave seen the devastation first hand.

Éloïse

You have all probably noticed that the author, Harry, framed all of his first set of recollections of situations he had not written about in an area covered with snow. Is this only because the snow on the distant mountain was the most striking object he could see? Or were these several unwritten themes that mention snow the reason that the author, EH, chose to call the short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” rather than “The Snow of Kilimanjaro”? The use of the plural I am sure was carefully chosen as were all of his titles. If so, then was the visible snow a rebuke directed toward his wasted opportunities? And did this recollection then trigger the following sets of recollections of other missed opportunities?

Yes, I am familiar with the construct of calling a single representative instance by the plural, such as "the fields of home", etc. But doesn't it make an interesting theory?

What do you think?

Newvoyager

snow is white and blinding and cold --- like death! ??????

I am 60, thus a war baby. My ideas of what is a 'real' man have changed as I have gotten older. I find I like to read about alpha men - in mysteries, romance and historical fiction. While I was in college (when I was a traditional age student) I loved reading Hemingway's work. I also liked John Wayne and took Brett's side in Gone With the Wind. But as I got older and more of a feminist, I began to dislike Wayne for the way he treated women. Hemingway has joined Wayne in my estimation because of their amoral attitudes toward women. A man can be alpha and strong and still treat a woman with respect and not be a 'girlie man'.

ROSE, a good point. Snow has often been used as a symbol of death in literature, most notably in Joyce's short story The Dubliners ; reviewers and lecturers on Joyce have said as much.

The symbolic meaning of snow as an omen was brought out after John Kennedy's assassination, when it was remembered that, on the eve of his inauguration, unprecedented massess of snow fell in Washington. At the end of the working day, traffic was not moving

From our unopenable windows on the thirteenth floor of the Pennsylvania building we had a view of 14th street, E Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. We stayed int the office and kept watch. Two colleagues finally decided to walk home. We lived in Arlington, Virginia then. I called home but there was no answer. So I knew my husband was on his way to pick me up, accompanied most likely by our daughter and the German Shepherd.

Some time later I too considered walking home, along Pennsylvania Ave, across the 14th Street Bridge - In desperate situations we tend to consider all kinds of things.

Then the stalled cars on those three roads started inching forward at last. I grabbed my things, took the elevator to the lobby and, right there, in front of the entrance was my husband in his intrepid blue VW bug; the child and dog hudled in the back. We made it home.

We did not have to report for work on Inauguration Day, which I remember as sunny and cold.

"A man can be alpha and strong and still treat a woman with respect and not be a 'girlie man'."

Yes, I agree, but alas, they are so RARE that I've pretty much given up. Like finding a needle in a haystack or a contact lense in a river. At least that's been my experience. LOL

Traude, interesting about the snow on Kennedy's inauguration eve. Thanks for sharing that.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL AMERICANS

May the Christmas festivities begin as Thanksgiving ends my friends.

Éloïse

ELOISE thank you for the nice holiday greeting. My participation in this "Snows" discussion has been non-existent, not because the comments in the discussion weren't interesting, but because I didn't find the story all that interesting. The discussion of "Francis Macomber" seemed so much more enthusiastic, and having had some "sick time" the last 2 weeks, I've tried to analyze the difference in the two stories and why one of them elicited so much more response than the other.

Back when "Snow" was written, it probably was fairly innovative to have the flashbacks woven into the story, but this technique has become so over-used and popular with more modern novelists, that it's ceased to be unusual and has become almost tiresome (at least to me). So, perhaps this would mean that H was definitely an innovator, but this particular story doesn't seem to have "aged" very well and turned out to be fairly predictable. The story really didn't do much for imagination.

"Macomber", on the other hand, still has the nice little hook at the end, we can't really predict the end, the story fires up our imaginations, and even though most of us didn't particularly like the characters in "Macomber", we certainly found a lot to talk about in regard to them. I think "Macomber" just has "aged" better. Also "Macomber" is a story that I would re-read and expect to find some things I missed the first time around. I would NOT re-read "Snows". Maybe the re-reading part is the acid test of a good book or story????

Jan

gaj, allow me to say that I found the term "girlie men" extremely offensive and take a very dim view indeed of the man who said it recently. Just my humble opinion.

JAN, I appreciate your good summation.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Newvoyager, Hemingway’s love for drama perhaps, Snows of Kilimanjaro is more effective than (The?) Snow..... You can sense his journalistic experience for making his mark with a catchy title. Recollection of missed opportunities yes, good point.

Gai, Funny that we become more ‘feminist’ as we get older. When I talk to women my age, almost all of them have lost their romanticism. Watching an old movies now I have to laugh at the way men flip their cigarettes on the floor, push women to the floor. They had this fixation with the floor in old movies.

Traude, I was working on the 22nd floor when we had a major black out a few years back and we had to walk all the way down, then I walked two miles to where my sister worked for her husband to pick us up, no transportation system either. We depend so much on electricity.

JanE. "So, perhaps this would mean that H was definitely an innovator, but this particular story doesn't seem to have "aged" very well and turned out to be fairly predictable."

I don’t think that Snows of Kilimanjaro would have a large readership if it was published today. But I find that when an author has become an icon, he/she stays there.

"Maybe the re-reading part is the acid test of a good book or story." I have to say that there are very few books I read twice.

Éloïse

I recently read The Old Man and the Sea and feel it is a classic. Its theme can be understood by each generation as they come of age.

Did Hemingway ever write a "happy" story?

Will we be reading another of Hemmingway's short stories?

I was off my Internet connection since yesterday, sorry about that my friends.

On the spur of the moment, is there something in these two short stories by Hemingway that you liked?

Writing about death is never easy but why did Hemingway base those two stories on death? Is it his morbid thoughts about his own death and did he have thoughts of suicide when he wrote those two short stories?

Do you feel that Hemingway was very depressed or angry and wanted to let off steam by lashing out at life in general in his work?

Ginny Ann, “The Old Man and the Sea”, even if I never read it, I know what the story is about and it would be interesting to make a comparison between that one and the two short stories we just discussed, please give us your assessment on it.

Alf, even if I would like to tackle another Hemingway short story I can’t because of commitments at home, but perhaps someone else can offer it. It would be interesting to discuss one of his popular novels, such as The Old Man and the Sea.

Eloïse

", is there something in these two short stories by Hemingway that you liked?"

Yes, first of all I agree with Jan that Macomber was a better story. It was actually quite a good mystery with the reader left to his own imagination about the ending.

I also liked the way Macomber matured in that story, even though he died, and I did not like the "hunting" environment. Seems to me that reaching the point in life where suddenly the meaning and courage and insight of it all come together like pieces in a puzzle is a good point at which to die. I'm not surprised the word "Happy" was used in the title.

MountainRose, "I'm not surprised the word "Happy" was used in the title.

Funny that Hemingway leaves us with something to ponder and the word "happy" really does that, no? I guess Macomber was really happy in the short time after he was successful at killing his animal, until he died. Does Hemingway envy his early death I wonder?

Today, we don't consider hunting to be worthwhile sport anymore or I am not in the know. I never hear of men going hunting as much as when I was younger. Is there something that replaced this need for power that men seem to need? Power over women, power in business, in movies? Is there another kind of power that I not aware of?

If we don't enjoy the machismo in Hemingway anymore, what kind of men do women like today? Has anything changed since the story was published?

Éloïse

. . . a man hunting for food. But the man hunting for sport, killing for the sake of killing when he doesn't need the food is not my cuppa tea. There are still A LOT of hunters where I live, and that's the only time of the year I don't venture into the back woods because some of those guys shoot at anything that moves. They scare the heck outta me.

As for what sort of men women like today, I can only speak for myself. I like a strong man who does what he has to do for himself and his family to survive without cheating and maiming others along the way, and without false sentimentality. I like a man who is bold in his moves against the world or in business (but honest and ethical), but is gentle and loving with his woman and his family. To me "manly" has never meant drinking, or killing a living thing except self-defense or for food, or hanging out with the guys, or ogling women, or watching endless vicarious sports, or yelling or swearing, or telling dirty jokes, or watching violent movies, or needing control over a woman. That's a child playing at being a man. A "manly" man has dignity, knows when to be aggressive and knows when to be gentle, and most of all, he is not embarrassed to show he loves his woman to the world even when other guys tease him about being henpecked, or worse. Such a man looks at his woman as the true other half of himself and has a deep respect for that other half of himself. I know they exist because I've met some---but they are a rare bird indeed.

And the ones I have met that fit the description were: two Europeans, one French-Canadian and one South American. That doesn't mean there aren't any American men like that, but I have personally never met one.

At the point when Harry sees Death drawing very near he realizes that he will never fulfill his ambition to write well the scenes he remembered. So he panics and wishes for just one more chance to do it before he dies.

“There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right”.

This is the high point of the story, the urge to “get it right”. (his life) But there are no more chances left and he knows it. Sad. He never writes that paragraph.

Will we all be able to write our own paragraph?

Newvoyager

NEWVOYAGER your point was well taken about writing the "last paragraph" and "getting it right". That's why this story is so depressing.

Dying is usually not happy, but how much worse it must be to be dying and have regrets about our life (usually for things we haven't done rather for things we DID do).

And, Harry's death is doubly sad in that, even though he knew he was dying, he had no one to say goodbye to. His wife was part of his regrets, and he obviously didn't feel very close to her emotionally. He really died quite alone AND unhappy AND in a strange place AND with no friend or loved one with him - all of which must have been desperately frightening.

JUST LIKE THE LEOPARD!

Jan

"Will we all be able to write our own paragraph?"
I don't know about you, but I am writing mine. I don't know which one it will be, of course, but it certainly will have been written.

I agree with most of what ROSE has said about manly men. I feel fortunate to be friends with a couple of them right now.

I first became a true feminist in the early 60's, though the seeds had been sown in the 40's at the women's college I went to. By 1960 I was married; had three children, and something was wrong. I had a good brain which wasn't being used. I was well-educated, had had a brief career as a musician; was a skilled artist, and was using none of that.

My life revolved around helping my husband further his career. This meant bearing full responsibility for my kids while my husband was away. He traveled a lot. It meant washing diapers and floors on my hands and knees, cooking like a French chef because my husband demanded it, and cleaning up the mess afterwards with comments about what I hadn't done as my reward.

There was no room for me, I felt, though I sneaked in time for writing. One of my little boys came to me one day and said, "It's all right if you write, Mom, and don't watch television like the other mothers." My husband didn't think so.

Simone deBeauvoir's The Second Sex, first published in translation in 1949, reopened my eyes, as did other books I read.

It was the beginning of the collapse of my marriage, though I didn't realize it at the time. That marriage went on for another fifteen years, and when it ended I was next to nothing. It took years to regain what I'd lost while I was married to a man who thought women were not just the second sex; they were lower than that.

Aging has mellowed my view some, but offhand I'd say I am more of a feminist today than my 27 year old granddaughter is.

Mal

Ernest Hemingway considered "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" the best story he wrote. He said that at the time he wrote it he didn't realize how prophetic it was.

Using the device of flashbacks was not the only way Hemingway's writing was different. Writing like that of Henry James and Edith Wharton had dominated American fiction with its long sentences and descriptions and romanticized, almost Victorian views. James died in 1916. Wharton died in 1937, so they were around when Hemingway came along.

Ernest Hemingway began as a reporter and journalist. He used what was in the Kansas City Star's copy style guide about short, tight sentences and terseness and clarity as his guidelines for everything he wrote.

No more were there flowery descriptive passages. Hemingway made it possible for fiction writers to write realistically about hard material (like death). His influence on fiction writing can be seen today.

I think it's interesting that Hemingway was such a realist when he wrote and such a romantic about the way he lived.

About Mt. Kilimanjaro today:

"About a foot and a half of the summit’s glacial ice is lost each year due to rising surface temperatures. There is concern that the loss of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap could impact both the local climate as well as the availability of fresh water for local populations who depend upon the glacial melt runoff, particularly during the dry seasons."

Source:

Pictures and information about the Melting Snows of Kilimanjaro

. . . their "death poems". Most of them are very beautiful. Since I write haiku I have also written mine. No need for a paragraph. Seventeen syllables work just fine and say everything I wish to say.

Here is a site to read some famous ones: http://www.geocities.com/jisei/haiku1.html

Newvoyager

Why not try and write this paragraph. We can use our imagination and the wonderful writing skills of participants in this forum as if we were in Harry’s shoes, wouldn’t that be something? Getting it right is the key as you say!

Jan,

It is sad indeed to die without someone you love close by and for those who have loved ones around it is a precious gift. It is not uncommon for elderly people to die alone in care facilities.

Mal,

and the ice cap in the North Pole is also melting fast we are told which will have huge repercussions worldwide.

MountainRose,

If you feel like posting your Kaiku I would love to read it. I started to take poetry courses and I had never heard of it before. That shows how much I don’t know. Death is only sad for the loved ones left behind and for some it is a blessing. My mother wished to die 25 years before it happened. She felt that she had lived long enough, she had never suffered from depression and she had great faith. She was convinced that life on earth didn't bring much happiness. She died surrounded by her 5 living children. While she was in a coma before the end, we sang songs she used to play on the piano and she sighed heavily.

I look forward to reading wonderful prose and poetry as we go to the last lap of Snows of Kilimanjaro. I think it is fitting for the few days we have left don’t you think?

Éloïse

"All the love went into fishing and the summer.

"He had loved it more than anything. He had loved digging potatoes with Bill in the fall, the long trips in the car, fishing in the bay, reading in the hammock on hot days, swimming off the dock, playing baseball at Charlevoix and Petoskey, living at the Bay, the Madame's cooking, the way she had with servants, eating in the dining room looking out the window across the long fields and the point to the lake, talking with her, the fishing trips away from the farm, just lying around.

"He loved the long summer. It used to be that he felt sick when the first of August came and he realized that there were only four more weeks before the trout season closed. Now sometimes he had it that way in dreams. He would dream the summer was nearly gone and he hadn't been fishing. It made him feel sick in the dream, as though he had been in jail."

"The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long, deadly purple filaments traiing a yard behind it in the water."

I don't know for sure Mal, but it seems like Hemingway to me. The Old Man and the Sea?

"There was a box of wood in the hall outside the living-room and I kept up the fire from it. But we did not stay up very late. We went to bed in the dark in the big bedroom and when I was undressed I opened the windows and saw the night and the cold stars and the pine trees below the window and got into bed as fast as I could. It was lovely in bed with the air so cold and clear and the night outside the window. We slept well and if I woke in the night I knew it was from only one cause and I would shift the feather bed over, very softly so that Catherine would not be wakened and go back to sleep again, warm and with the new lightness of thin covers."

ELOISE, all of the quotes are by Ernest Hemingway.

The first one is from "On Writing" from The Nick Adams Stories.

The second is from The Old Man and the Sea.

The third quote is from A Farewell to Arms.

Mal

In The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway tells a very simple story with many layers of meaning. The story has stayed with me. If we are going to discuss it I will have to get it from the library. This site has study questions http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/

GINNY ANN, why don't you suggest The Old Man and the Sea for a future discussion? It's a very short novella with a great deal in it, as you have said. My copy is only 125 pages.

Mal

Here are three comments for your consideration.

Several people have commented on Ernest’s obsession with death as seen in many of his works. I think that this is easier to understand when you consider his experiences while still at the impressionable age of his late teens or early twenties. Then as an ambulance driver in a war zone in Italy he must have seen the results of many horrible gunshot wounds and artillery shell explosions. And he certainly saw many people die in their youth as he could have. Today we would term this obsession a form of post traumatic stress disorder. And it could have been much more acute in a person with his imagination and recall ability. Are there any people reading this with professional training in this field who could evaluate this proposal? Is there another medical or psychological way to describe it? Whatever it was, I believe that it was there.

Mountain Rose:

The type of person that you described as being an admirable man in post number 300 can be found in an other work by EH. It is “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. Please check it out sometime. His characters were not all “macho men.” The leader in this work was a skilled, decisive warrior, brave in battle and a college professor of languages. And I believe he meets all your criterion. Pay special attention to how he treats the two principal women in the novel and their relationships with him. Are there any others in the group who are familiar with this character?

And as for writing "the paragraph" that Harry wished to leave us as the testament of his life... that is far beyound my capabilities. But I will think about it.

What do you think?

Newvoyager

Where do I go to place the suggestion?

GINNY ANN, click the link just above these posts under Eloise's name that says, "Suggest a Book for Discussion."

Mal

MAL, I went to the link you suggested to GINNYANN to recommend books/stories for discussion. I reached the big green "PROCEED" arrow and proceeded. I then got the First Page Cafe page and didn't have a clue how to proceed further. I'd like to see some discussion of Alice Munro's stories but don't know how to suggest it. I'm not experienced enough to act as a discussion leader and don't know, either, if Alice Munro has already been discussed on SeniorNet.

Jan

Newvoyager,

Hemingway has given us a thirst for more of his work I see. I like this author, perhaps not all his short stories, but certainly "For Whom the Bell Tolls". You can certainly suggest it for discussion.

Gej. and Jan,

After clicking on "Suggest a Book for Discussion" and "PROCEED" you reach The First Page Café, this is where you suggest a book for discussion, in the Message Box like you do here. It is then brought to the table and if a Discussion Leader wishes to do it, he/she will start the process. First the book is proposed, when there is a quorum, three or more participants who want to join, it goes public. That is how a discussion starts.

I don't think we ever had a book by Alice Munroe discussed. Go to "Archives" on the Books and Literature Main Page and look through all the 416 books that were discussed before. I have not read any of her books yet.

Éloïse

JAN, that is almost telepathy: the mention of Alice Munroe, I mean. I have been thinking about her, have long been a fan and avid reader. A new collection has recently been published, and the NYT Sunday magazine carried an excellent write-up about her work. To my mind she is the short story writer par excellence .

There's no shortage of old and new short story collections, and they well deserve to be taken on, seriously. After the in-depth Hemingway experience, wouldn't it be only logical, even necessary, to read a short stories by a woman next? It may be well worth our attention.

TRAUDE, it's actually exciting to find someone that even knows about Alice Munro. She's such a marvelous writer but manages to remain in the shadows for most of the reading public. Her "Open Secrets" I think, is probably one of her best - I liked "Lives of Girls and Women" but still prefer her short stories.

The Times' article was quite good, and another short piece with a wonderful picture of her also appeared in the Portland, Oregon, paper on Oct. 31. There is so little written about her that I devoured and saved both pieces.

Perhaps if some of us suggested a discussion - it might happen???? Could you lead the discussion???

Jan

JAN, thank you for your post, it is much appreciated.

I'd love the opportunity to lead a discussion of Alice Munroe's short stories, but our modus operandi requires, first, the presentation of a formal proposal for a time slot that fits the overall agenda, next a quorum and - last but not least - sufficient time for potential participants to read/re-read and prepare.

Again, many thanks. T

I believe you're talking about Canadian author, Alice Munro with no E at the end of her name, aren't you? I read a chapter of her latest book in the NY Times recently that didn't make me want to read more, unfortunately. Just found a story by her in the New Yorker. Click here to read it.

People who are going to the Books at the Beach gathering in South Carolina are reading The Beach House by American writer Mary Alice Monroe in anticipation of the event.

Sure gets confusing, doesn't it?

Mal

TRAUDE, as I mentioned before, I'm a neophyte on SeniorNet so I'm not familiar with the MO. Who makes this formal presentation, and the "quorum" is a majority of what exactly? The prep time I understand. Should I make any sort of suggestion to anyone about considering her writings for discussion?

MAL, I haven't read her new book nor am I familiar with the story you posted the URL for....but I will be soon as I'll be reading it tomorrow. I'm sorry you didn't much enjoy what you read of her. Your comments on this discussion site have been so insightful and your knowledge of writers and writing so apparent that I know you would come to love her writing as most of her stories are written for "thinking people". I keep a book of her stories by my chair always.

You'd never know that I'm an Alice Munro fan, would you????

Jan

The Old Man And The Sea has been suggested in The First Page Café. That is all that is needed for now and that suggestion is being examined by Discussion Leaders. A quorum is at least three participants committed to join in the discussion, but some prefer a higher number.

All you have to do JAN, is to suggest a book in the First Page Café and if a Discussion Leader wishes to lead the discussion, then he/she will start the process as Traude has explained.

Back later with more about Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Éloïse

JAN, I haven't read enough of Alice Munro's writing to know if I like it or not. I've only read one chapter of a book online and the short story I posted, which I think is very good. Here's a link to another Alice Munro story online.

I very much agree with Newvoyager that Ernest Hemingway's experiences as an ambulance driver in World War I were indeliby engraved on his young, impressionable mind. He must have witnessed and experienced some awful things, including the falling in love with and the rejection by Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway came to the hard realization of death very early. He mentions in one of the Nick Adams Stories that as a boy in Michigan Nick realizes that one day he will die.

I do not agree that the paragraph Harry wanted to write in "Snows of Kilimanjaro" was to be a testament to his life. He wanted to write all the things he had made excuses not to write about before. As he lay dying he knew he'd never write them; therefore, no one would write them. Nobody else could (or can).

Mal

The Nick Adams Stories are a collection of short stories. They are fiction based on what Hemingway had seen and experienced.
In "On Writing", one of the stories in this collection, Hemingway says:

"The only writing that was any good was what you made up, what you imagined. That made everything come true."

and

"It was hard to be a good writer if you loved the world and living in it and special people. It was hard when you loved so many places. Then you were healthy and felt good and were having a good time and what the hell.

"He always worked best when Helen was unwell. Just that much discontent and friction. Then there were times when you had to write. Not conscience. Just peristaltic action. Then you felt sometimes like you could never write but after a while you knew sooner or later you would write another good story."

and

"There were so many tricks.

"It was easy to write if you used the tricks. Everybody used them. Joyce had invented hundreds of new ones. Just because they were new didn't make them any better. They would all turn into clichés.

"He wanted to write like Cézanne painted.

"Cézanne started with all the tricks. Then he broke the whole thing down and built the real thing. . . . He, Nick, wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cézanne had done it in a painting. You had to do it inside yourself. There wasn't any trick."

and

"People were easy to do. All this smart stuff was easy."

In this story Hemingway goes on to say that Nick could actually see how Cézanne would paint a stretch of landscape when he looked at it. He says that he becomes part of the picture.

I believe the reason we think Hemingway is always writing about himself in his fiction is because he becomes part of every picture he wrote, including his pictures of death.

Mal

In my Hemingway Reader the preface by Charles Poole we read this about the author:

The clarity, the intensity, the humor, valor, grace and love of life in an age that happens through no particular fault of Hemingway to be much concerned with death, were always there. The rough passages of our day's hallowed and unhallowed forages, pilgrimages and crusades are rendered as scrupulously as the smooth ones along the way. These are qualities that have given him his place as the outstanding storyteller, the finest stylist, of his time.

That is what I like about Hemingway, through finely chiseled dialogs, he reaches deeper than what is on the surface even if the words seem cruel for the victims. He expects his reader will seek deeper and search reasons for his character's resentment or anger. All this without writing out long-drawn paragraphs explaining what is so obvious to the reader. He was not writing pulp fiction.

His settings were unusual and they reflected the era in which he lived, his recent exposure to two wars and the effect they had on his writing. His life was one long aggression on his fragile sensitivity and in the long run, he just gave up.

I have deep respect for Ernest Hemingway and I would like everyone to post their final assessment of the two short stories that we discussed in November.

Éloïse