Hemingway’s short stories

His life:
Ernest Hemingway, in full Ernest Miller Hemingway, was born July 21,1899 in Cicero,
Illinois. He was an American novelist and short-story writer, awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1954. He was educated in the public schools and began to write in high school.
On graduation from high school in 1917, he went to Kansas City, where he was employed as a
reporter for the Star. He was repeatedly rejected for military service because of a defective
eye, but he managed to enter World War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red
Cross. Skiing, bullfighting, fishing, and hunting was part of his life too and formed the
background for much of his writing. All of his life he was fascinated by war. He also travelled
widely, and, on a trip to Africa, he was injured in a plane crash, that also inspired his writing.
He suffered from anxiety and depression, therefore he was twice hospitalized at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he received electroshock treatments. Two days after his
return in July 2, 1961, he took his life with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho.
His writing style:
Hemingway’s stories and novels are uncompromising. The language is short, direct, and to the
point. His style was semi-revolutionary. He stripped away everything he didn’t need from a
sentence or paragraph. He created a new way of writing dialogue and descriptions that got to
the heart of the story much quicker. His characters and storylines are complex and multi-
layered. He hid, within the dialogue of his characters, their personalities, quirks, and secrets.
One of the main features of his style is his use of short, one, or two-syllable words. The words
are easy to understand but when strung together, they can create skilful images and lines of
dialogue. He also chose to do away with extraneous adverbs and always chose the simpler
word over the harder word. In most of his writing he used the “Iceberg Theory”, which is a
method of writing that suggests writers should focus on a simple, minimalistic style. The most
important parts of the story, those which Hemingway did not spell out, are beneath the
surface. This is compared to the way that the bulk of an iceberg is also hidden from view.
Indian Camp:
One night, Dr. Adams is summoned to help an American Indian woman who has been in
painful labour for two days. The doctor takes his young son, Nick, and his brother, George, to
the American Indian camp on the other side of a northern Michigan lake. There, the doctor
performs impromptu, improvised caesarean with a fishing knife, catgut, and no anaesthetic to
deliver the baby. Afterward, he discovers that the woman's husband, who was in the bunk
above hers, silently cut his throat during the painful ordeal.
This story is a good example of the "initiation story," a short story that centres around a main
character who comes into contact with an idea, experience, ritual, or knowledge that he did
not previously know. Hemingway wrote a number of this kind of stories. In this story, the
main character is Nick Adams, a very young boy in the Michigan north woods, accompanying
his father, Dr. Adams, and his uncle George to an American Indian camp on the other side of a
lake. Hemingway’s father was also a doctor and they also spent lots of time in the Michigan
north woods. This suggests that he drew inspiration for the story from his own life. Although
this very short story deals with violence and suffering, birth and death, sexism and racism,
Hemingway does not focus on the shocking events, but on the impact of birth and death on
young Nick Adams. Nick's progression in this short story is vividly portrayed in
polarities. For instance, on the way to the camp in the boat, Nick is sitting in his father's arms;
on the way back, Nick sits on the opposite end of the boat. The fact that he sits across from
his father in the boat on the way back after this experience can indicate a pulling out from
underneath his father's influence. The story also gives two possibilities as to why the husband
committed suicide: the first is Nick's father's behaviour towards the pregnant woman. During
the story, Dr. Adams tells Nick that the woman's scream is not important, the husband then
turns to the wall as he is later found after his death. This whole scene could imply that the
husband took the doctor's behaviour as racism and therefore killed himself. Another
possibility is that he was not the real father, but Uncle George who handed out cigarettes after
the birth. Also, when Nick and his father leave, he stays at the camp. This also leads to the
conclusion that he is the real father and that the husband committed suicide because he could
not come to terms with his wife's betrayal. At the end of the story, as Nick and his father are
going home, they talk about what happened, and it turns out that he feels quite safe because he
feels he will never die. He vows never to give in to fear because he believes it caused the
man's death. His determination to never be afraid is so strong that even death cannot touch
him.
Cat in the rain:
An American couple are staying at a hotel in Italy. It is raining heavily one day, and the wife,
looking out of their hotel room window, spies a cat under one of the tables outside, trying to
shelter from the rain. She wants to go and get the cat and bring her indoors. She goes
downstairs and go looking for the cat when the maid who looks after their hotel room appears
with an umbrella, telling her she mustn’t get wet. The wife fails to find the cat, and returns up
to her hotel room, disappointed. She tells her husband that she wants a cat, as well as other
things: she wants spring to arrive, and she wants some new clothes. But the husband is not
paying attention. Then, at the end of the story, the maid knocks on the door and when she
enters, she is holding the cat in her arms. She tells them that the hotel-owner told her to bring
the cat up for the wife.

In keeping with Ernest Hemingway’s signature style, ‘Cat in the Rain’ is written in spare,
clear prose, using short sentences and plain dialogue. The cat in the rain is not just a cat: she
clearly symbolises something more to the wife, who wishes to rescue her from the rain and, in
doing so, rescue a part of herself. In other words, we might analyse or interpret the cat as a
site of desire for the wife: the cat represents desire itself, all her wants, becoming a tangible,
physical manifestation of her desire. We want what we can’t have, of course: the wife’s initial
failure to find the cat when she goes outside is also, we might say, significant: having seen
what she wants, the object of desire, she then fails to attain it. Many things we do are
motivated by other desires, drives, wants, fears, anxieties. This is especially true of American
culture. The cat cannot be separated from this mentality: it embodies it. Although the wife
initially wishes for a "cat in the rain", she later expresses her desire for a cat: any cat will do.
This shows that although helping an animal in distress may have been part of her initial desire
to save the animal, her actions were also driven by more selfish and materialistic desires.

Snows in Kilimanjaro:

Harry, a writer, and his wife Helen are stuck in Africa on safari. Harry's feet have gangrene.
While waiting for a rescue plane, Harry reviews his life and realises he has wasted his talents
on procrastination and luxury in a marriage to a rich woman he doesn't love. As Harry lies on
his bunk, he is aware of vultures prowling around the makeshift camp and a hyena lurking in
the shadows. Knowing he will die before he wakes, Harry falls asleep and dreams that the
rescue plane is taking him to the snow-covered summit of Kilimanjaro. Its western peak is
known to the Masai as the House of God, where he sees the legendary leopard. Helen wakes
up and goes to see Harry. She sees that his feet are dangling by his bunk and that his bandages
are off, so she calls his name repeatedly. She listens to his breathing but hears nothing. Harry
is dead. And outside the tent, a hyena whines, sounding more like a human cry.

Hemingway opens his story with an epigraph, a short, pithy observation about a lone leopard
who sought the tip of Kilimanjaro. The African safari was Harry's attempt to get his life back
on track. Harry, the protagonist, had been living a life of laziness, luxury and procrastination,
so he thought this safari would bring him back to his old self. Also, interesting to note is that
both Harry and Hemingway were of the "Lost Generation" of World War I who had to rebuild
their lives after being wounded in combat and seeing the horrors of war. Thus, as in Indian
Camp, Hemingway drew inspiration from his own life. Hemingway divides the story into six
sections and within each of these sections inserts a flashback. The flashbacks themselves
centre around concerns about the erosion of values: lost love, loose sex, drinking, revenge,
and war. Here, in this story, the symbolism of Kilimanjaro is contrasted with the symbolism
of the plains. Harry is dying in the plains from gangrene, a stinking, putrid, and deadly
infection, causing his body to rot and turn greenish black. Against Harry's background of
dark, smelly horror and hopelessness, Hemingway contrasts Harry's memories of the good
times that he had in the mountains. Hemingway ends his story with Harry's spirit triumphant,
as when Harry dies, his spirit is released and travels to the summit of the mighty mountain.
During his otherworldly flight over Kilimanjaro, Harry sees the legendary leopard. The dead,
preserved leopard can be seen as a symbol of immortality, a reward for taking the difficult
road. Harry himself was a "leopard" at certain times in his life, as were some of his
acquaintances in his own stories. Specifically, Harry can be seen as a leopard during

 His youth, when he lived in a poor neighbourhood of Paris as a writer

 In the war, when he gave his last morphine pills for himself to the horribly suffering
Williamson
 On his deathbed, when he mentally composes flashbacks and uses his intention to
write
 When he stays loyal to his wife and does not confess to her that he never really loved
her
When Harry looks at Kilimanjaro, he sees it as a symbol of truth, idealism, and purity. When
he dies, tragic irony exists. The leopard died in a high, clean, well-lighted place; Harry, in
contrast, dies rotting and stinking on the plains, lamenting his wasted life and his failure to
complete his desired projects. In his novels and especially in his short stories, Hemingway
often uses mountains to symbolize goodness, the purity, and cleanness, and he uses the plains
as a symbol of evil and confusion. This story is a perfect example for that.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber:
The story is about a young man, Francis Macomber, who goes on an African safari with his
wife. Macomber proved to be a coward during the hunt, but the camp's inhabitants think of
him as a hero and celebrate him, except for the gun carriers who know the truth. Next we
learn that they are actually rich Americans and this is their first safari and that Macomber,
when faced with his first lion, bolted and fled, earning the contempt of his wife. She makes no
secret of this as she slips off in the middle of the night for a date with the safari guide, Robert
Wilson. Next day, as she observes Francis gaining a measure of courage as he engages in a
standoff with a charging water buffalo, she realizes that if Francis continues to prove himself
strong and wilful and courageous, he might leave her. As the standoff with the second water
buffalo becomes more intense as the water buffalo's horns inch closer and closer to goring
Francis, Margot takes aim at the water buffalo, shooting Francis in the back of the head, and
he dies at the most courageous moment of his "short happy life."
In this story, the situation of the hunter and the hunted takes on far more significance than
merely humans hunting for African lions and water buffaloes. Consider who is stalking whom
in this story. Francis knows that Margot is stalking Wilson, and Wilson realizes that Francis
knows who Margot's prey is. Hemingway's sympathy in this story is not with the victim
Macomber or the huntress Margo; instead, it is with Wilson. Wilson makes his own rules: if
he illegally flogs the natives, it is not because he is sadistic; he simply knows they would
rather suffer than lose money. It's a simple exchange. Likewise, if he thinks he can sleep with
a woman, who hires him as a safari guide, he takes a double-wide cot on safari. Wilson
likewise does not abide by conventional rules for hunting game during safaris. Although
there's a law against hunting game from vehicles, he thinks that it's far more exciting and
dangerous to chase game at high speed. Later, after Macomber wounds a lion, his innocence is
contrasted with Wilson's knowledge and experience. When Macomber learns that facing the
wounded lion is extremely dangerous, he makes all sorts of excuses as to why he is not
participating in the hunt. When the lion attacks him, Macomber runs away in panic towards
the river, while the others kill the lion and look at him with contempt. Thus, Macomber's
cowardice in this scene is the central driving force of the whole story. Making his
embarrassed cowardice all the more painful, Macomber watches as Margot makes out with
Wilson. Margot dominates Macomber in this scene, revealing Macomber's enormous
cowardice and defeat. The fact that he cannot control his wife's behaviour foreshadows what
will happen that night... Margot is cheating on him. At first, Margo is ashamed of her husband
and uses his cowardice to control and intimidate him; she uses her new-gained control over
him to justify her having sex with Wilson and also to remind Macomber that he is a coward.
In the last part of the story, a huge metamorphosis takes place in both Macomber and Margot.
Seeing the water buffalo, Macomber shoots and Wilson congratulates him. He has never felt
so good in his life. In contrast, Margot realises that Macomber is changing and is afraid of this
change. Francis Macomber's short, happy life begins when he shoots the water buffalo - and
then dies himself - killing Margot. His short, happy life lasts only a second or two, but he dies
the master of his own life. Of all of Hemingway's short stories, this one capture Hemingway's
genius for combining suspense with death.