The Snow of Kilimanjaro - Research Paper Example

? The Snow of Kilimanjaro Hemingway was one of the best known who was in front of the literary renaissance that took place in America in the second decade of the twentieth century. He contributed enormously to the d development of modern fiction. Hemingway, as writer, tried to depict his own life experience in a direct and powerful way. He depicted a profound view of life and this can be appreciated only if the mystery of irony and symbolism in his fiction is intelligently unraveled .’The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ is one of such stories, through which he articulates his literary style. The story tells you the decay of his protagonist, Harry, who wished to reach the top of the mountain of Kilimanjaro. . Harry is the protagonist of the story. Hemingway’s depiction of the character Harry is amazing. The way in which he ruminates about his past life experience and the sudden retrieval to the present to quarrel with his wife is skillfully drawn. His conscious effort to correlate himself with the character Harry is obvious. He made his character realistic with his own ‘professional resume to give him a journalistic background’. The wife of Harry, Helen, resembles Hemingway’s second wife. Harry never calls his wife by name. Helen is more advanced character made by the writer. Harry sees Helen as wealth itself. It exposes the outlook of Harry which causes his decay. The protagonist of the story is a writer, who is on a safari in Africa with his wife Helen. Harry is scratched on the leg by a thorn and the infection slowly becomes gangrene. Helen is trying to make him comfortable and gives him hope to live. But he seems to be a person waiting for death and that distresses his wife. Helen’s concern and anxiety never vibrates the mind of the protagonist. He is addicted to disappointment and self pity which leads him to languor and laziness and also exhibits distasteful attitude to his wife. The rest of the story is his rumination on his wide ranging and scattered life experience. He feels the disappointment of reaching nowhere as a writer because he spent most of the time with wealthy women by marrying them. The whole story is a stream of consciousness of the protagonist that he jumps to the past and present. Hemingway uses flash backs to tell the story. In the first flash back he remembers about World War 1 and the diverse scenes. His first memories are of journeying through Europe during the war, hiding, hunting and his skiing excursions. He also listens to the bombing. When the flashback finishes he comes back and engage in verbal battle with Helen. Harry then falls asleep and wakes up at evening to see Helen returning after shooting an animal for them. Then he slips to think about her as a wife. He recognizes with pain the time he spend with a series of women neglecting his true talent as a writer. Helen is a rich widow who had already married and had two children among them one had died in an air crash. Because of her admiration in his writings and they share some common interests, she got married to Harry. After drinking together, he again slips into sleep. In between he reflects on the process by which he has got gangrene. He was trying to take the photograph of some water buck and had a scratch on his knee. He did not apply iodine and it became gangrenous. In the second memory he remembers his life in New York with prostitutes and his journey to Paris after a quarrel with an American soldier for a prostitute to have the new wife Helen. Then we see they both take dinner and again Harry ruminating on his grandfather’s house, his fishing in the Black forest, his relations with the poor neighbors and thus he continues in his ponderings. Along with the reflections in his mind Harry slowly feels the approach of death when he hears the hyena crying. Helen takes his cot to the tent and he feels death close to his heart. Harry dreams of a rescue in the form of a man called Compton. He was taken by that man to the top of Kilimanjaro where he saw the white snow, a new experience where there is only white and frost. After some time he embraces death at the middle of the night. The readers can easily recognize the theme of death, an incontrovertible reality in human life, in the story. The story is the external reflection of fear lingered in the mind of the writer about death and dying. We know that Harry faces death several times. The writer use the technique of stream consciousness through which he express his ‘very real moments’ (Chaman 111). According to Mac Donald the italicized portions where the flashbacks are given, are the unfulfilled desires of Harry, which would have been, if depicted in a fiction, produced a good fiction. So Mac Donald says about Harry as a ‘failed artist’. The theme of death is developed through an internal conflict in the protagonist .The realization that he reached nowhere as a writer leads to a dissatisfaction and that is revealed in the lines “ he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well “( Hemingway 5”) . When he recognizes the gangrene on his legs he could go for a treatment. But the failure to accept the reality leads him to fear of death. He himself caused the collapse of his writing career by “drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and prejudice, by hook and crook” (Hemingway 11). Thus a conscious effort to embrace death is shown by the laziness and lethargy of the leading character. The smooth approach to death is paralleled by his descend in his writing talent. Harry was an ardent lover of writing. At the last moments of his life he shows this tendency to be poetic. But he attributes all the blames on his wife and the other women with whom he spend his earlier life. The writer uses enormous symbols to represent death. The white, mysterious top of Kilimanjaro is one symbol. The story tells that the name of the mountain is “The house of God “. Towards the end it becomes the resting place of Harry. The white colored snow and the coolness that covers the top of the mountain, stands for disinfected death itself. The purity of the snow may represent the heaven. Of course the white stands for virtuousness and purity. But the readers can understand the stains on the snow as his failure to write. He misused his talents for money and comfort, “It was a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it “. Hemingway uses different animals and birds as symbols to denote death. The vultures are the anticipation of death in the coming story .The hyena that hovers throughout is another dominant symbol of death. Hyenas feed on dead bodies of other creatures. At time of death Harry listens to hyena’s cry which even wakes Helen,” The women heard it and stirred uneasily “. Thus the story is abundant with symbolism. The implication and significance of the symbols has been disputed by famous critics, but they have a common opinion that the leopard on the top of Kilimanjaro stands for death, immortality and redemption. At the end, Harry dreamt of being rescued by a plane that goes in a different path. He was able to witness the white square summit of the mountain, unbelievably white in the sun, “and then he knew that there was where he was going “. It surely implicates that his journey is to the same sacred place. Thus the mountain itself stands for heavenly afterlife. The other landscapes described throughout story are the hardships and painful episodes in the life of Harry. It is obvious that the use of symbols and italicized memories portray the clear mind of the protagonist. At the top of the mountain, when near to death, Harry has no other choice instead of thinking and reflecting on his past. The mindset of Harry is well displayed by the symbols , the writer used. He realizes the need of change, or the journey is also a chance for him to change .His intention is to complete this journey successfully, or ie, to reach the top of the mountain. Thus the story is elevated to the high rank. The writer fully achieves his purpose by the use of different techniques, styles, symbols and metaphors. The mindset of a human at the end when he is near to death is not fear or anxiety but a realization that he reached his goal, through the life journey. Hemingway gives this peace of mind to his protagonist and allows him to be one with the white snow. The realization is a slow process here in the story. A the end Harry wishes to quote his own affected life , the joy , the emotional confusion he suffered in his first love , the relation to the old loyal friend etc. But towards the end he learns that every moment and every day is unique, it will not return and also tomorrow is a hope. Thus the story is a tough prompt to the readers also. The way in which the writer travels to tell truth is realistic and believable. The reader is forced to think about the passageway he comes to this final point. It is a piece of meditation which gives strength for the readers to analyze their own life. . Work Cited Nahal, Chaman. “The Short Stories “, The Narrative Pattern in Ernest Hemingway’s Fiction. Madison: Farleigh, 1971 Shuman, R . Bard. “Ernest Hemingway. “ Magill’s Survey of American Literature Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol 3 , New York : Marshal , 1991 . Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” New York: Scribner, 1987. Print Macdonald, Scott,” Hemingway’s ‘ The Snows of Kilimanjaro’: Three Critical Problems ,”Studies in Short Fiction , 1974. Short Story Criticism, ©1997 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright Read More