An Analysis of “the Snows of Kilimanjaro”

An Analysis of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

During his life, Ernest Hemingway has used his talent as a writer in many novels, nonfiction, and short stories, and today he is recognized to be maybe “the best-known American writer of the twentieth century” (Stories for Students 243). In his short stories Hemingway reveals “his deepest and most enduring themes-death, writing, machismo, bravery, and the alienation of men in the modern world” (Stories for Students 244).

“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is a proof of Hemingway’s artistic talent in which the author, by portraying the story of a writer’s life self-examination, reveals his own struggles in life, and makes the reading well perceived by the use of symbolism. The reader learns about Harry’s attitudes toward death, war, artistic creation, and women, which are concepts of what Hemingway writes about.

“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” tells the story of a dying writer who is on a safari in Africa with his wife, Helen. The plains of Africa in the vicinity of Mt. Kilimanjaro are also places that attracted Hemingway in the past. Furthermore, Carlos Baker reveals in his book Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story the events in the author’s life that determined him to write this fiction. It all began in 1934 in New York when a rich woman offered “to stake” Hemingway to a safari in Africa. He refused, but then he started to think about what would have happened if he had agreed. Baker also adds: “The dying writer in the story was an image of himself as he might have been. Might have been, that is, if the temptation to lead the aimless life of the very rich had overcome his integrity as an artist” (289).

In the story, the writer has received a scratch on his leg, but he failed to take care of it. Therefore, he has contracted gangrene; the infection is painless, but he knows that it is too late to be saved. Harry is going to die of his infected leg, but he is spiritually dead already. He had destroyed his artistic talent when he married Helen, who is a rich woman. Since then, he started to live a comfortable life, which finally lead to his moral disintegration. The narrator tells in the story how “each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did not work at all” (“The Snows” 44). In this way, the gangrene becomes a symbol of his failed aspiration, a concept which is discussed in Critical Survey of Short Fiction: “…the gangrenous wound and the resultant decay parallels the decay of the writer who fails to use his talents” (Farrell and Jacobs 1176). His physical death is caused by a scratch on his knee, which he has neglected in the same way he has failed to take care of his artistic work that led to the death of his soul. However, Harry’s attitude toward writing describes Hemingway’s feelings about artistic creation. In a critical analysis, Greg Barnhisel claims that one of the “demons” which “haunted” Hemingway was “the unfulfilled promise of a vastly talented writer” (Stories for Students 251).

Furthermore, the concept of death has obsessed Harry for many years and it is a theme which has also fascinated Hemingway (Stories for Students 244). As Harry lay in his bed, he feels death come as a rush “of a sudden evil-smelling emptiness,” which rests on his chest (“The Snows” 47). In his last conversation with his wife, Harry describes death as “two bicycle policemen,” or “a bird,” or the “wide snout” of a hyena. Moreover, in his last meeting with death Harry observes, “[death] had no shape any more. It simply occupied space” (“The Snows” 54).

At the same time, Harry’s thoughts are flying to the past, recalling memories in which the truth dominates: memories of war, his earlier loves, his happy times in Austria and Bulgaria, his beautiful days in Paris, his fishing and hunting excursions. This past life is of a man who has not yet been defeated. In addition, the critic Marion Montgomery claims that it is the life “he lived before he began living the lie,” and in this way, “death is Harry’s chance of self recovery” (83). Hence, all of Harry’s fragments of autobiography he recalls are actually subjects on which he could write, but he never did. In like manner, Greg Barnishel states in Stories for Students that Harry’s wartime trauma “ left him unable to write truly, fully, and honestly about experience because he simply could not face the horrors that he saw there” (255). He has seen too much pain, too many people suffering, and his memories of war are still alive. Moreover, all the memories Harry recalls are actually moments from Hemingway’s past life: he was also a war correspondent in the Greco-Turk war and saw violence and human pain; he had vivid memories from the time he lived in Paris; he