Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Themes

Nature
Nature, in the form of beautiful landscapes and wholesome surroundings, is a
constant presence in Hemingways short fiction. Hemingway was a great believer
in the power of nature, both in terms of its beauty and its challenges, to improve
ones quality of life. He was a lifelong outdoorsman, an avid hunter, fisherman,
camper and boater, and he believed that overcoming natural obstacles using only
ones intelligence and skills made one a better person. In addition, Hemingways
characters look to majestic landscapes and other manifestations of natural beauty
for hope, inspiration, and even guidance during difficult or challenging times.
In many Hemingway stories, the ability to conquer nature by hunting and killing
animals is the test of masculinity. For example, in The Short Happy Life
of Francis Macomber, the title character comes into his own by shooting buffalo.
In Up in Michigan, Jim Gilmore is marked as masculine and therefore desirable
to Liz Coates because he goes on a deer hunt.
In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the protagonist Harry looks to a frozen leopard on
the summit of the mountain as an example of how to attain immortality.
Death
Also a near-constant presence in Hemingways stories is the theme of death, either
in the form of death itself, the knowledge of the inevitability of death, or the
futility of fleeing death. Clearly evocative of death are the stories in which
Hemingway describes actual deaths: the war experiences of The Snows of
Kilimanjaro and In Another Country; the suicides of A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place and Fathers and Sons; and the accidents of The Capital of the World
and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
Hand-in-glove with the theme of death is another Hemingway favorite: fatalistic
heroism or heroic fatalism. This attitude entails facing ones certain death with
dignity.
Fatalistic Heroism
Also known as heroic fatalism, this attitude was a Hemingway favorite. Fatalistic
heroism derives from the belief that death is certain to come and that resisting it is
futile; one may as well face death with stoicism and resignation. This belief and its
accompanying stoic behavior patterns appear in several short stories.
In A Days Wait, a 9-year-old boy believes he is dying based on a mix-up
between the Fahrenheit and Celsius thermometers; he holds his feelings in all day
until his father disabuses him of the notion that his death is imminent. The

presence of fatalistic heroism in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is debatable because

there is disagreement over whether Harry the dying protagonist meets his death
willingly or unwillingly. At his last moment of consciousness, Harry seems
peaceful, but he subsequently has a dream that he is rescued and flies to the top of
Mt. Kilimanjaro. What he is actually doing is drawing his last breaths on his cot.
Disillusionment
Disillusionment and the depression that results from it are recurrent themes in
Hemingways short stories. Hemingway himself suffered from feelings of
disillusionment and dislocation following his harrowing experiences during World
War I. In this respect, he was a representative of The Lost Generation, the
generation that came of age during the Great War and arguably lost faith in many
of the values, ideas, and beliefs that gave life meaning before the war.
Hemingways clearest expressions of this bleak and depressing disillusionment are
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and The Capital of the World.
Up in Michigan describes a different kind of disillusionment: romantic
disillusionment. Liz Coates, long obsessed with Jim Gilmore, quickly loses her
regard for him when he drunkenly rapes her one evening on a misty boardwalk.
Masculinity
Hemingway, it is often noted, was enamored of a particular notion of masculinity.
Hemingways heroes are often outdoorsmen or hunters who are stoic, taciturn, and
averse to showing emotion. Real men, according to Hemingway, are physically
courageous and confident, and keep doubts and insecurities to themselves. In
addition, there is always an emphasis on the necessity of proving ones manhood
rather than taking it for granted.
In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, the title character goes from
emasculation to full manhood just by shooting buffalo. In A Days Wait, Schatz
proves his masculinity by stoically holding his emotions in check even as he
believes he is dying while his father proves his by going shooting in spite of having
a sick son at home. The Killers describes Nicks heroic physical courage in
defying hit men to warn their target, and Fathers and Sons describes Nicks
coming of age in terms of hunting and killing black squirrels.
Ambivalence
Many of Hemingways characters have ambivalent feelings toward each other; in
Hemingways universe, people are not wholly good or bad. In Fathers and Sons,
for example, Nick Adams recalls his fathers admirable qualities, namely the
ability to see like an eagle and an outstanding knowledge of hunting and fishing,
and his undesirable qualities, principally cruelty and ignorance. The story is

devoted mainly to Nicks memories of his father, which are mostly painful, but
Nick insists that he loved his father for a long time.
Animals as Symbols
Animals in the Hemingway canon, whether they are game, pets, or wild,
sometimes serve as symbols for their human hunters, caretakers or observers. In
The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the frozen leopard on the top of the mountain
represents immortality, which is the quality Harry strives for even as he is dying.
The hyena in that story, conversely, represents Harrys impending death. In Hills
Like White Elephants, the white elephant of the title is Jigs unborn baby, a
cumbersome, largely useless thing that is on the brink of driving the relationship
apart.
Many of Hemingways short stories appeared in various magazines before being
anthologized in his short story collections. The first of these collections, and his
first major published work, was Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923); this
collection included the story Up in Michigan. He published his second short
story collection, In Our Time, in 1924, with a revised edition appearing in 1925.
Hemingways third collection,Men Without Women, appeared in 1927 and included
Hills Like White Elephants, A Simple Enquiry, and Nick Adams stories In
Another Country and The Killers. Hemingways fourth collection published in
1933 and entitled Winner Take Nothing, included A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,
and Nick Adams stories A Days Wait and Fathers and Sons. His next
collection, The Fifth Column, and the First Forty- Nine Stories, was published in
1938 and, in addition to re-publishing his earlier works, introduced The Capital of
the World, Old Man at the Bridge, and well-known African stories The Snows
of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
Up in Michigan is one of the earliest stories Hemingway wrote after arriving in
Paris in 1921. The setting of the story and indeed, the content of it recalls
Hemingways boyhood summer vacations in Michigan. The story is about sexual
awakening, and Hemingway biographers have posited that Hemingway
experienced his own sexual awakening during one of these summers in Michigan
at Little Traverse Bay. The names Jim and Liz, the storys two main characters,
were taken from a married couple Hemingway knew in Michigan, and the physical
details of the landscape undoubtedly recall the authors adolescent enjoyment of
the area surrounding Little Traverse Bay.
Hemingways semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams appeared in a number
of his stories, eventually becoming Hemingways fictional alter ego. In Another
Country, which featured Nick, grew out of Hemingways experiences as a Red
Cross ambulance driver during World War I and his recuperation from shrapnel
wounds in a Milanese hospital. The Killers dealt with gangsters from Chicago,

where Hemingway lived after the war, and is one of his most memorable Nick
Adams tales, inspiring a number of film noir adaptations. Hills Like White
Elephants was inspired by Hemingways early married life as he and his wife
Hadley traveled around Europe, notably Spain and France.
Hemingways next stories showed a new level of maturity as their author aged. A
Clean, Well-Lighted Place and The Capital of the World both feature Spanish
waiters and are set in a caf and a hotel, respectively. They explore ideas of
existential angst, nihilistic despair, and disillusionment, themes that Hemingway
had taken up following the war and arguably become an expert at depicting in
fiction.
Hemingway continued and concluded the Nick Adams saga with A Days Wait
and Fathers and Sons, both of which portrayed Nick as a father with a young
son. Left with deeply ambivalent feelings toward his own late father, Nick does his
best to raise his son in the stoic, taciturn, outdoorsy tradition with which he grew
up. The parallels between the lives of Hemingway and Nicks in these stories are
quite marked; the Nick Adams stories are often said to provide readers with a
window into Hemingways own life.
Two of Hemingways best-known stories are The Snows of Kilimanjaro and
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, which grew out of Hemingways
experiences on safari in East Africa in 1934. The Snows is highly
autobiographical as Hemingway contracted amoebic dysentery during the safari
and had to be airlifted to hospital in Nairobi. The famous epigraph to the story
concerning the frozen leopard on Mt. Kilimanjaro was taken from an anecdote told
Hemingway by his hunting guide during this safari. Short Happy Life deals with
Hemingways familiar themes of masculinity, courage, and cowardice in an exotic
setting and in a highly dramatic way; it has always been one of Hemingways most
popular stories.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro traces the final hours of Harry, a writer dying of
gangrene on safari in Africa. Most of the story consists of Harrys self-critical
ruminations on how he has not fulfilled his potential as a writer, instead choosing
to make his living by marrying rich women like his current wife Helen. Harry has a
series of delirious memory-dreams in which he recalls the adventures of his youth,
from skiing in the mountains to patronizing prostitutes in Constantinople, from
living in Paris to giving all his morphine tablets to a fellow soldier during World
War I. Harrys final dream is that he is flying to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro; this

desirable series of events evaporates as shortly afterwards he is found dead on the

cot where he has been lying all day.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is a tale about a weak husband,
Macomber, and his domineering wife Margot on safari in Africa with their
guide Robert Wilson. Macomber runs away from a wounded lion and incurs the
wrath and scorn of Margot, who promptly and openly has an affair with Wilson.
Macomber finds redemption during a buffalo shoot and begins to gain confidence,
only to be shot down by his wife in an allegedly accidental attempt to finish off a
wounded buffalo.
Hills Like White Elephants is the story of an afternoons conversation between a
man and a woman waiting at a train station in Spain for the express train to
Madrid. The man is pestering the woman, Jig, to get an abortion so they can
continue to enjoy a carefree life of travel. Jig is reluctant to do so, and seems to
consider the issue of her pregnancy from many different viewpoints, unlike her
partner.
Old Man at the Bridge is the nonfiction account of Hemingways encounter with
an old man sitting by the Amposta Bridge over the Ebro River on Easter Sunday in
1938. As he encourages the man to get up and flee the advancing Fascist army, the
old man explains that he has spent his life caring for a menagerie of defenseless
animals, and that he is too old and tired to get up and save his life.