Macomber and Kilimanjaro

Of the stories contained in Ernest Hemingway's anthology The Fifth Column and 49 Other Stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is most frequently cited by Hemingway scholars as an exemplar of Hemingway's credo on writing. This is not a stretch of the critical imagination, as Hemingway more or less states these things directly in the story through Harry's statements and thoughts. What is less remarked upon, and more troubling, is how the unfolding story arc parallels, in places, not only Hemingway's life but his own perception of it.

We see the story's central character examine his life repeatedly throughout the story: perhaps most tellingly, after the first argument about Harry drinking whiskey and soda, he muses that "Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either" (Hemingway, p. 54). More than any other passage, those two sentences show not only Harry's state of mind, but the pervading despair, egged on by sickness, that would undoubtedly contribute to Hemingway's suicide roughly thirty years later. TSOK is widely considered to be a somewhat autobiographical story (in a You Are Here sense), but if looked at closely, it appears to have been a prophetical piece as well.

In his critical essay on TSOK , Kenneth Johnston observes that Harry's "failure to care for a thorn scratch on his knee two weeks ago fits into the pattern of his small neglects, over the years, of his artistic talent" (Johnston, p. 197). While the story is not overt in the accusation, the constant introspection and tone of Harry's memories suggest that, at some level, the neglect was intentional, that Harry allowed the life of money and ease with his wife (disparagingly referred to as the "rich bitch" several times) to overshadow his artistic conscience. Hemingway was not one to use terms like soul in his work, but it seems clear that Hemingway considered artistic conscience to be on a level with such terms, given his frequent statements on the subject.

If this interpretation is accepted, then, it almost begs the question of how much did Hemingway believe he fit into this? After all, at the time TSOK was written, there was still much in Hemingway's future: a couple of novels, several short stories, a couple of wives and a world war. Over time, one would almost expect that a man of Hemingway's talents and work ethic would, in Harry's words, "work the fat off his soul" (Hemingway, p. 60) and redeem that "gnawing at his soul" (Johnston, p. 197). Still, he had no way of knowing that works like For Whom The Bell Tolls were in his future, and if the themes of TSOK are any indication, he certainly had to wonder just how close to the summit of his personal Kilimanjaro he had climbed, as Carlos Baker once observed.

It would be far easier to discount this idea than give it weight; Hemingway spent his last few years suffering from a variety of illnesses and fallout from his boisterous life, and most people would not have to look much further afield than that to explain his death, which Hemingway himself did not. However, there are too many hints and portents of his fate to come for this reader to ignore, and wonder.

Works Consulted

Hemingway, Ernest. The Short Stories. New York: Scribner Paperback. 1995

Johnston, Kenneth G. The Tip of the Iceberg: Hemingway and the Short Story. Greenwood: Penkevill Publishing Company. 1987