Reflections on Death in The Snows of Kilimanjaro

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Reflections on Death in The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro is stereotypical of "The Lost Generation" and their values. They were a generation of expatriated US writers that lived and wrote between the Great Wars and thought of themselves separates from the postwar values and "above" the materialistic western society and continuously question morality and philosophy in their work. They tended to think very little of the rich people. These reflections on life are clear during Harry's retrospectives all throughout the story. In this all around depressing story, Harry is in Africa with his wife and a few days back scratched his leg and it got infected to the point of gangrene. Since the begging of the story Harry is well aware he is going to die and reflects back on his life and his failure as a writer and to some point as a human being.

"I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them in a story. That's funny now."1 In this sentence Harry reflects on the buzzards that are attracted by the odor of impending death and how as many other things he wanted to write about and thought he would, he never will now. There are several anecdotes throughout the story that all by themselves could be whole stories, but Harry just never got around to writing about them probably because he did not have confidence in himself as a writer. "But he had never written a line of that, nor of that cold, bright Christmas day with the mountains showing across the plain that Barker had flown across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers' leave train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and ran." 2 This is one of the many experiences the narrator has during his life...

... middle of paper ...

...that at the end would be something welcome as a weight lifted off his chest.

Bibliography:

Endnotes:

1 Hemingway, Ernest, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," in The Norton Anthology: American Literature, fourth edition-volume 2, page 1635.

2 Hemingway, page 1638.

3 Hemingway, page 1637.

4 Hemingway, page 1637.

5 Hemingway, page 1639.

6 Hemingway, page 1640.

7 Hemingway, page 1640.

8 Hemingway, page 1634.

9 Hemingway, page 1643.

10 Hemingway, page 1651.

11 Hemingway, page 1650-51.

12 Hemingway, page 1650.

Other Referenced material not cited.

13 Wilson, M. (2000, October 23). The Hemingway Resource Center (Online). Available: http://www.lostgeneration.com/hembio.html

14 Ogunsuyi, Dr. Austin (2001, September ). African Culture (Online). Available : http://africancultures.about.com/cs/customs/

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