Conflict, Character Change and Stasis

Conflict, Character Change and Stasis in Ernest Hemingway's Short Story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Comparison of man/woman conflict in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and other works by Hemingway

Harry's conflict with Helen brought about by his dying while he is still unsatisfied with his work and blaming her.

Reason for Harry's impending death; why Harry falls into despair and blames Helen.

Harry's hostility toward Helen deepens as he comes closer to death. Helen feels increasingly helpless and accepts his verbal abuse.

Harry's self-pity; parallels to Hemingway himself.

F. Paragraph 6: Harry's further self-reflections; blame of himself; blame of Helen as they wait for the plane to rescue him.

G. Paragraph 7: Harry's loss of physical capability causes him to look progressively deeper inside himself for ways to blame both himself and Helen.

H.

Paragraph 8: Harry despairs that he has not written enough about interesting" individuals, due to his instead being surrounded by Helen and her rich friends.

III. Conclusion

A. Plane comes too late, and Harry does en route to medical help.

B. Harry dies bitter and unsatisfied, blaming both himself and Helen (mostly

Helen), for her ruining him, as a writer, since their marriage.

Conflict, Character Change and Stasis in Ernest Hemingway's Short Story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) which was originally published within his collection the Fifth Column and Forty-Nine Stories ("The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Literary Encyclopedia, 2005) has as its main characters a dying American writer named Harry who has been on safari in Africa, and Harry's wealthy wife Helen, who has accompanied him here and no looks on helplessly as Harry dies from an infected wound before help can arrive by plane. In "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Harry clearly blames Helen for his own distractedness and lack of recent accomplishment as a writer. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is therefore unique within Hemingway's work, in that it suggests albeit [perhaps very unfairly] that Helen, rather than Harry on his own due to his decision to marry and live like Helen, has played a central role in his overall artistic neglect and failure since the marriage. Therefore, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro suggests (or blames or admits) female significance and influence in ways that other Hemingway works characteristically do not.

Typically, in most of Hemingway's literary works (e.g., the Sun Also Rises, 1926; a Farewell to Arms (1929); the Old Man and the Sea (1953)) a main male character's psyche may be slightly influenced (or tampered with or interfered with) by a woman or women. For example, in Hemingway's first novel the Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's main male character, the wounded World War I veteran and journalist Jake Barnes, is made miserable (as are various other male characters in the book) by Lady Brett Ashley. Still, Jake does not blame Lady Brett Ashley for his lot in life as a disaffected, lonely, and asexual war veteran; to do so would be less than "manly." Therefore, in this first novel and most other works by Hemingway, a main male character's psyche is never given over to a woman, as it is within in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Nor is a male character's fate or destiny ever blamed so very much, and unrelentingly, on a woman, explicitly, as it is within Hemingway's short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

The key conflict between man and woman as shown within Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," then, has to do with Harry's progressively feeling, as he lies helplessly dying in the African savannah as Helen looks on, also helplessly (and accepting Harry's verbal abuse),l that Helen has kept him from being the writer he might have been, had Harry not become seduced, against his own better judgment, by Helen's wealth and irresponsible lifestyle, her wealthy friends, and their relatively feckless and non-ambitious ways. In better or less desperate or extreme circumstances, Harry, having these same thoughts, might still have been able to have these same realizations and still had time to change the direction and focus of his life. But in fact his life is now ebbing away, and Harry realizes, and expresses to himself and Helen, with extreme bitterness, that he has wasted what are to be his last years of writing in meaningless and unrewarding ways.

Harry is dying now because he has been badly infected here in this remote area of Africa by a scratch from a thorn. This wound, having now become dangerously gangrenous, threatens him with sure death, unless he can be rescued very soon by plane, and his infection treated in time at a hospital. But rescue, if it is to come in time, so far shows no sign of doing so. Therefore Harry's mood rapidly descends into one of greater and greater despair, as he continues to think to himself about all the good and authentic writing he might have done, when it was not yet too late, that his wife Helen, and Helen's wealthy friends, have in fact kept him from doing. Harry blames himself for this, but he blames Helen and his marriage to her as the catalyst for his non-productivity, even more.

The conflict between men and women as shown within Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" emerges most starkly and vividly as Harry continues to make Helen aware, cruelly, of all that their relationship has cost him artistically. Harry changes within the story as he comes to recognize, with ever-increasing clarity and certainty, all that Helen's and her friends' bad influence has cost him as a writer. However Helen, for her part, does not change all that much within the story,

Instead Helen is from beginning to end the hurt and bewildered wife who recognizes but does not fully understand the deathbed changes in attitude and outlook that overcome Harry. Facing death, Harry is brutally honest, perhaps for the first time ever, about how and what he realizes that his marriage to Helen has cost him in terms of what matters to him most: his writing and the integrity of his writing. Clearly, then, Harry changes recognizably as a character within the story: in the sense that Harry realizes, and admits, that his creative energy has been squandered, now irretrievably.

As the story progresses we learn through a combination of Harry's internal thoughts and his generally acerbic and hostile comments to his wife, that he believes Helen and her wealthy lifestyle have been what has spoiled his writing, and spoiled him as an honest and conscientious writer. While most of Hemingway's works feature strong, silent, male main characters (e.g., like Jake Barnes in the Sun Also Rises (1926), who suffers miserably yet does not complain, and who considers it unmanly to complain) the main male character in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "sees his life flash before his eyes" and then comes to feel very regretful of how he has spent his time while married to Helen, as he realizes that he is in fact dying. Further,

Many readers have seen Harry as a self-portrait of Hemingway himself.

Reading the story this way, the reader can look into Hemingway's struggles with himself: his insecurities, his machismo, his need and disdain for women.

But it is not necessary to read the story through the lens of Hemingway's biography. The story is a gripping look at a man who is facing death and regretting many of the choices he has made in his life, as well as being a memorable glimpse inside the head of a writer who is reflecting on his craft and the demands it has made on him. ("The Snows of Kilimanjaro':

Introduction")

For example, as Harry thinks mournfully to himself, as he and Helen wait for a plane to come and lift him to safety where his infected leg might be treated:

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

The article "Snows of Kilimanjaro, the," further states:

Waiting for a rescue plane he knows will not arrive in time, Harry reviews his life, realizing that he has wasted his talent through sloth and easy luxury, bought by a loveless marriage to a wealthy woman. Knowing he will die before he wakes, Harry goes to sleep; he dreams the rescue plane has taken him to a summit of Kilimanjaro called the House of God.

Before that, however, as he lies dying and helpless, Harry reviews the events of his life with Helen and realizes that it has been wrong for him to become seduced by the temptation to spend time with rich people like Helen and her friends, especially those (perhaps Helen herself) who are most happy and satisfied with him when he is not writing. He blames himself, but he blames Helen more for introducing him to such a non-productive way of life.

Now that he is dying, Harry thinks that he has waited too long to write the things he really wants to write, and that he will never be able, now, to write all that he has left for a later time. As the article "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (Wikipedia, August 31, 2006) suggests "This loss of physical capability causes him to look inside himself - at his memories of the past years, and how little he has actually accomplished in his writing." He realizes that although he has seen and experienced many wonderful and astonishing things during his life, he had never made a record of the events; his status as a writer is contradicted by his reluctance to actually write.

As the now pain-ridden and dying Harry thinks to himself bitterly, for example:

So now it [his writing career] was all over... So now he would never have a chance to finish... Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it....

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.