The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a short story collection by Ernest Hemingway. Many of the stories deal with classic Hemingway themes, such as death versus life well lived. Hemingway uses the stories collected here to examine the ways that people misunderstand each other’s pain and loss.

In the title story, a man lies dying on a cot in his camp on an African Safari. He and his wife are unable to leave the camp because of trouble with their vehicle, and as Harry lies there, he remembers events in his past interspersed with his current troubles.

He begins to associate death with the circling of an unseen hyena. As he falls asleep, he dreams that he is rescued in a plane with only room for him and the pilot. This plane ascends to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro where Harry sees the legendary carcass of a frozen leopard, and he knows that this place is where he is going. His wife is later woken in the night by the sound of the hyena’s cry and finds Harry unresponsive in his cot.

From this story, Hemingway moves to a subtler examination of the human condition. In “A Clean, Well Lighted Place,” an old man sits alone at a restaurant at night. Two waiters, young and old, are talking together, and when the man orders another brandy, the young waiter expresses a desire for him to finish and leave. The older waiter is more understanding of the old man’s plight, but the second time the man orders brandy, the younger waiter tells him the cafe is closed.

The young waiter wants to get home to his wife, but the older waiter understands that sometimes all people need is a clean, well-lighted place to go. The emptiness of his own life makes him feel a kinship with the old man in that he finds himself wanting a place to stay, such as this cafe, in his older age now that youth has left him.

Hemingway continues the theme of misunderstandings with “A Day’s Wait,” in which a young boy develops a fever, and due to a misunderstanding believes that this fever is fatal. The father is unable to understand the source of his son’s fear and remains detached from his suffering. Just as the young waiter in the previous story was unable to understand the old man’s need for connection, so too, the father in this story is unable to understand that he could alleviate his son’s suffering.

In “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio,” Cayetano lies recovering from a gunshot wound in a small hospital in Montana. The main characters, a nun, Cayetano, and another ill man, Frazer, deal with issues of loneliness and connection. Though Cayetano is physically suffering much more than Frazer, at heart, he’s an idealist and believes in man. Frazer is more critical of man’s philosophies and characters, but he listens to the radio to help him make sense of his own internal suffering. The three of them ponder the need to have a support system in order to make sense of existence.

The next story, “Fathers and Sons,” focuses on the themes of relationships and role models by following three generations of fathers and sons through the memories of the main character, Nick Adams. Nick and his son discuss hunting, which makes Nick think of his own father, and his relationship with him. This was the first time that Hemingway alluded to the suicide of his own father in any of his writings.

Nick makes another appearance in the next story, “In Another Country.” Here, an ambulance driver for WW1 is making a recovery in a hospital filled with cutting edge machines for rehabilitation. Although he is making a recovery, he wonders about the purpose of life. He starts a friendship with a major whose wife has unexpectedly died. Through these conversations, Hemingway explores the pain of loss and whether it is worth it to love at all.

“The Killers” finds Nick Adams crossing into adulthood from his teenaged years. He is caught in a cafe where two hit men are looking to kill a Swedish boxer. When the boxer doesn’t show and the two men leave, Nick decides to warn the boxer. However, the boxer simply says that nothing can be done and tells Nick to forget about things. In this story, Hemingway reaches the peak of his minimalist style, with little plot line and a passive protagonist.

Hemingway revisits Nick one more time in “The Way You’ll Never Be,” in which he recovers from his experiences in WW1. He is plagued by nightmares and trauma, and despite his valiant attempts to deal with his memories, the other characters of the story worry about his grasp of reality.

Hemingway’s love of boxing shows in “Fifty Grand,” the story of a boxer in a fixed match that doesn’t go the way it was intended. A boxer fixes a fight by allowing his brutal opponent to win on a foul after temporarily gaining the upper hand. The emphasis on the boxer’s silence suggests that he finds solace in doing what is right for his family by allowing himself to lose the fight regardless of what the rest of the world might think.

In the last story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Hemingway returns to Africa, where two men and a woman are on a big game safari. Macomber had panicked the previous day when charged by a wounded lion, and his wife and the guide made fun of him. The next day, Macomber wounds a buffalo, and although he manages to stand his ground this time and kill it, his wife also fires a shot from the car killing him.

This collection represents Hemingway’s interest in loneliness and quiet dignity. The characters deal with difficult but wordless struggles of loss as they fight to understand connection, and what death and life really mean.