"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway first published in August 1936, in Esquire magazine. [1] It was republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories in 1938, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories in 1961, and is included in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition (1987).
The story opens with a paragraph about Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, whose western summit is called in Masai the "House of God." There, we are told, lies the frozen carcass of a leopard near the summit. No one knows why it is there at such altitude.
The reader is introduced to Harry, a writer dying of gangrene, and Helen, who is with him on safari in Africa. They are stranded in the camp, because a bearing in their truck's engine burnt out. Harry's situation makes him irritable, and he speaks about his impending death in a matter-of-fact, sarcastic way that upsets Helen. He quarrels with her over minute things, from whether he should drink a whiskey and soda, to whether she should read to him. Helen is obviously concerned for his welfare, but Harry's frustration makes him talk unpleasantly towards her.
Harry then begins to ruminate on his life experiences, which have been many and varied, and on the fact that he feels he has never reached his potential as a writer because he has chosen to make his living by marrying wealthy women. In italicized portions of the text that are scattered throughout the story, Hemingway narrates some of Harry's experiences in a stream-of-consciousness style. Harry's first memories consist of traveling around Europe following a battle: hiding a deserter in a cottage, hunting and skiing in the mountains, playing cards during a blizzard, and hearing about a bombing run on a train full of Austrian officers.
Harry then falls asleep and wakes in the evening to find Helen returning from a shooting expedition. He meditates on how she really is thoughtful and good to him, and how she is not to blame that his talent as a writer has been destroyed. Helen, he remembers, is a rich widow who lost her husband and a child, was bored by a series of lovers, and eventually "acquired" Harry because "she wanted some one that she respected with her"; she loves Harry "dearly as a writer, as a man, as a companion and as a proud possession", while Harry makes it clear that he does not love her. Harry then recalls how he developed gangrene two weeks earlier: they had been trying to get a picture of some waterbuck, and Harry scratched his right knee on a thorn. He had not applied iodine right away, and the wound got infected; because all other antiseptics ran out, he used a weak carbolic solution that "paralyzed the minute blood vessels", thus the leg developed gangrene.
As Helen returns to drink cocktails with Harry, they make up over their quarrel. Harry's second memory sequence then begins. He recalls how he once patronized prostitutes in Constantinople "to kill his loneliness", pining for the very first woman he fell in love with, with whom he quarreled in Paris and broke up. Harry had a fight with a British soldier over an Armenian prostitute, and then left Constantinople for Anatolia, where, after running from a group of Turkish soldiers, "he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse". Then Harry recalls that upon his return to Paris, his then-wife inquired about a letter that was actually from Harry's first love—a reply to the letter he wrote to that woman (mailed to New York, asking to write to his office in Paris) while being in Constantinople.
Helen and Harry eat dinner, and then Harry has another memory—this time of how his grandfather's log house burned down. He then relates how he fished in the Black Forest, and how he lived in a poor quarter of Paris and felt a kinship with his poor neighbors. Next, he remembers a ranch and a boy he turned in to the sheriff after the boy protected Harry's horse feed by shooting and killing a thief. Harry ponders: "That was one story he had saved to write. He knew at least twenty good stories from out there and he had never written one. Why?". Then he felt once again that he'd prefer to be in a different company rather than with Helen, as the "rich were dull". Next, his thoughts wander to beating the fear of death, and the limits of being able to bear pain. He remembers an officer named Williamson who was hit by a bomb, and to whom Harry subsequently fed all his morphine tablets. Harry considers how he does not have to worry about pain in his current condition.
As Harry lies on his cot remembering, he feels the overwhelming presence of death and associates it with the hyena that has been spotted running around the edge of the campsite. He is unable to speak. Helen, thinking that Harry has fallen asleep, has him moved into the tent for the night. Harry dreams that it is morning, and that a man called Compton has come with a plane to rescue him. He is lifted onto the plane (which has space only for him and the pilot) and watches the landscape go by beneath him. Suddenly, he sees the snow-covered top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and knows that is where he is bound. Helen wakes up in the middle of the night to a strange hyena cry, and finds Harry unresponsive on his cot. It is not specified whether or not Harry is already dead. [2]
A film adaptation of the short story, directed by Henry King, written by Casey Robinson, and starring Gregory Peck as Harry, Susan Hayward as Helen, and Ava Gardner as Cynthia Green (a character invented for the film) appeared in 1952. The film's ending does not mirror the story's ending.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. He is known for the economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, who admired his adventurous lifestyle and public image. Most of Hemingway's works were produced between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, during which he published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of these became classics of American literature, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Margaux Louise Hemingway was an American fashion model and actress. She gained success as a supermodel in the mid-1970s, appearing on the covers of magazines including Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Time.
The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. It portrays American and British expatriates who travel along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work" and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century.
Green Hills of Africa is a 1935 work of nonfiction by American writer Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's second work of nonfiction, Green Hills of Africa is an account of a month on safari he and his wife, Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, took in East Africa during December 1933. Green Hills of Africa is divided into four parts: "Pursuit and Conversation", "Pursuit Remembered", "Pursuit and Failure", and "Pursuit as Happiness", each of which plays a different role in the story.
True at First Light is a book by American novelist Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 East African safari with his fourth wife Mary, released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. The book received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding how, and whether, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics in the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition to his canon of later fiction.
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine concurrently with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". The story was eventually adapted to the screen as the Zoltan Korda film The Macomber Affair (1947).
"Soldier's Home" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It was included in the 1925 Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers and published by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's 1925 New York collection short stories, In Our Time.
To Have and Have Not is a 1944 American romantic war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks, loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's 1937 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan and Lauren Bacall; it also features Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael, Sheldon Leonard, Dan Seymour, and Marcel Dalio. The plot, centered on the romance between a freelancing fisherman in Martinique and a beautiful American drifter, is complicated by the growing French resistance in Vichy France.
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories is an anthology of writings by Ernest Hemingway published by Scribner's on October 14, 1938. It contains Hemingway's only full-length play, The Fifth Column, and 49 short stories.
The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly.
The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of American writer Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s. The house is situated on the island of Key West, Florida. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern coast of the island. Due to its association with Hemingway, the property is the most popular tourist attraction in Key West. It is also famous for its large population of so-called Hemingway cats, many of which are polydactyl.
"Cat in the Rain" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), first published by Richard Hadley of Boni & Liveright in 1925 in the short story collection In Our Time. The story is about an American husband and wife on vacation in Italy. Critical attention focuses chiefly on its autobiographical elements and on Hemingway's "theory of omission".
In Love and War is a 1996 romantic drama film based on the book, Hemingway in Love and War by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel. The film stars Sandra Bullock, Chris O'Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, and Margot Steinberg. Its action takes place during the First World War and is based on the wartime experiences of the writer Ernest Hemingway. It was directed by Richard Attenborough. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
Vivienne Florence Beatrice de Watteville was a British travel writer and adventurer, author of two books based on her experiences in East Africa in the 1920s, Out in the Blue (1927) and Speak to the Earth (1935). She is best remembered for taking charge of and continuing an expedition in the Congo and Uganda at the age of 24, when her father was killed by a lion.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic adventure film directed by Henry King from a screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the 1936 short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. It stars Gregory Peck as Harry Street, Susan Hayward as Helen, and Ava Gardner as Cynthia Green. The film's ending does not mirror that of the short story.
The Sun Also Rises is a 1957 American drama film adaptation of the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name directed by Henry King. The screenplay was written by Peter Viertel and it starred Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer, and Errol Flynn. Much of it was filmed on location in France and Spain as well as Mexico in Cinemascope and color by Deluxe. A highlight of the film is the famous "running of the bulls" in Pamplona, Spain and two bullfights.
"Fathers and Sons" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway published 1933, in the collection Winner Take Nothing. It later appeared in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories and The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
"Cross Country Snow" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine Transatlantic Review in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories In Our Time in 1925. The story features Hemingway's recurrent autobiographical character Nick Adams and explores the regenerative powers of nature and the joy of skiing.
