Final Paper Aspiring for the Fabled Mountaintops of Kilimanjaro

8/10/2019 Final Paper Aspiring for the Fabled Mountaintops of Kilimanjaro

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Andrew Moulton

December 14, 2014

LIT 315 20th

Century American LiteratureSouthern New Hampshire University

Jamie Marchant

Final Paper

Aspiring for the Fabled Mountaintops of Kilimanjaro: Fragmentation and Regret in

Ernest Hemingways The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Broadly speaking, following the devastation of World War I and in the midst of the Great

Depression, American society in the 1930s was volatile. Large populations of people were

moving into the mechanized urban environment and to all corners of the United States. Further

estranged from the world around him through a dramatic shift in power, the good ol American

didntquite know what to understand about this new reality. Concurrent with this shift in

psychology, writers were reconsidering the foundations of society; now the trusted name held

nothing, the value in everything was shown to be a falsehood. The writers of this time period

reflected this uncertainty, and becoming known as Modernists, experimented with structure and

form, dialog, and beginnings and endings- all in an effort to creatively represent the lack of

structure underlying this new reality.

Advances in mechanization provided both large and small forum for publication and as a result,

the newly-defined American short story was in high demand. Modernist writers upheld the belief

that writing should be less about profit and more about truth, beauty, ugliness or the abstract.

They saw very little meaning in romanticizing the present and wrote literature that expressed

humanity as a living, breathing, and often times, bleeding organism, creating characters who

were confronting the questions that plagued society at the time. Hemingway capitalized on this


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environment and in 1936 published The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a short story that expresses the

complex modernist themes of fragmentation and regret in an effort to define the blossoming

social reality of America.

The modernist theme of fragmentation is identical to its definition; it involves breaking

something that was once whole into separate parts. In the case of The Snows of Kilimanjaro,

Hemingway breaks up his story visually, through dialog, and through stream-of-consciousness

italicized vignettes. While suggestive of naturalism, Hemingways writingposits the modernist

idea that the external world is incoherent, fragmented, and yields no meaning (Lamb 49), and

in this short story we see the painstaking attention Hemingway gives to actively sculpting the

readers experience through the selection and placing of different component parts in order to

define the social climate of America in the 1930s.

On a merely superficial level readers can see the different parts that construct The Snows of

Kilimanjaro.Hemingway precedes his story with an italicized epigraph about Mount

Kilimanjaro in Africa before dividing the story into a body of regular-font writing juxtaposed

with five italicized-font vignettes. As were other modernists of the time, Hemingway was

experimenting with the shape and feel of the short story, visually representing the fragmentation

belaboring his two characters on the African plains. As Robert Lamb discusses in his bookArt

Matters:Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story, the modernist

techniques that Hemingway was coerced to study under the tutelage of Ezra Pound -

suggestiveness, conciseness, and omission - make this fragmented structure not only possible but

highly successful. The three techniques are the foundation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro; they

suggest the fragmented reality of American society at the time, and they are also exemplary of

the writing techniques typical of early modernist writing.


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In exploring Hemingways use of dialog, readers againseethe fragmentation that splinters Harry

and Helens conversation. In a short, terse, and adjective-free third-person dialog Hemingway

leaves much unsaid that the reader must infer from context or personal experience.

The marvelous thing is that its painless, he said. Thats how you know when it

starts.

Is it really?

Absolutely. Im awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you.(826)

An extremely disorienting beginning but one which in very short time immerses readers in a

reality that requires them to actively participate in the reading experience; many modernist

writers, and Hemingway is no exception, were attempting to portray the lived experience of

people. Everyday people rarely give context in their conversations; instead there is a thread of

remembrance that informs and gives context to a conversation. Of Hemingways dialog

constructions, Robert Lamb states that the characters subjective feelings were the real omitted

element of fiction, present in their absence, evoked by carefully selected details, and filled in by

readers whorecall similar such experiences from their pasts (77).Presenting dialog in this

manner implies that Hemingway was himself trying to actively bestow upon his readers a feeling

of ownership, of power that was otherwise missing in the lives of the American populace.

Lastly, in considering the juxtaposed presentation of the five exuberant, stream of consciousness

italicized vignettes splintering the narrative of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and highlighting the

last vignette for its unique characteristics- the fact that it is while on the cusp of delirium that


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Harry relates it, and that it presents only one single story- readers againseethe difference

marking these vignettes apart from the rest of the story. Jennifer Harding notes that, while the

other vignettes are peppered with linguistic markers that guide the reader in interpreting them as

stories that might have been, (29) this last vignette omits the linguistic cues and is slipped into

at the prompt of recalling a comradespainful death.

He remembered long ago when Williamson, the bombing officer, had been hit by a stick

bomb some one in a German patrol had thrown as he was coming in through the wire

that night and, screaming, had begged every one to kill him. He was a fat man, very

brave, and a good officer, although addicted to fantastic shows. But that night he was

caught in the wire, with a flare lighting him up and his bowels spilled out into the wire,

so when they brought him in, alive, they had to cut him loose. Shoot me, Harry. For

Christ sake shoot me. (840)

This particular vignette covers a topic many modernist writers were grappling with at the time-

war. Hemingway offers no solutions; instead he paints a fatalistic portrait of a morally complex

character failing in his attempt to die on his own terms. Hemingway does not introduce the

vignette in the same manner as the other vignettes, possibly because this vignette does not

represent a valorous character trait and also suggests that Harry is not as committed to sharing

this story as he would be with the others. This vignette is important, however, because it is

suggestive of Harrys current dilemma, his acceptance of, and a foreshadowing of his death.

Hemingway placed these five, easily recognized vignettes in the story in order to suggest the

inherent value in Harrys unwritten storiesbut also to reference the social climate of writers at

the time. In the example above, the writing is rich in minute detail, but it is also choppy, as


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though Harry were a bit unpracticed in his recall. Of the italicized vignettes, Ammary notes that

they are successful at creating Harrys previous life because Hemingway uses all kinds of

sensuous images (olfactory, visual, gustatory, kinaesthetic, and auditory) to dramatize the life

that might have been (131).But since they will fall short of reaching an audience, Mller

belittled the vignettes as pathetically autistic attempts [to convey the] unwritten life (156),

which MacDonald in turn validates as they keep the reader constantly aware of the degree to

which Harry has failed to fulfill his obligations as a writer (71).Whether ineffective or

suggestive, the italicized-font vignettes visually fragment the story into separate component parts

that do communicate some inherent value. Jennifer Harding goes so far as to propose that the

vignettes provide a window into [Harrys] deeply poignant personal regret(29) for the reason

that these vignettes are exemplary of a life well lived and rich in moral, character-building

experiences. MacDonald goes on to propose that in the use of italics Hemingway implies a

contrast between the fate of a fictional character who has lost his moral and artistic integrity and

the achievement represented by his own story, by a work of art which itself gives evidence of the

fact that Hemingways integrity as a writer remains intact (72). In this quote MacDonald is

suggesting that Hemingway is referencing the social climate of writers at the time. Within The

Snows of Kilimanjaro Hemingwayalludes to Gertrude Stein, Tristan Tzara, and F. Scott

Fitzgerald, all of whom it can be inferred are not doing their job as writers and instead easing

into habitual patterns of success and resting on their laurels. Apparently, Hemingway is not. He

is calling upon his peers to do the writers job of developing their skills to the absolute best of

their ability and thereby setting the standard to which they all should be aspiring.


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While not necessarily modernist, regret is a major theme of The Snows of Kilimanjaro.It is

depicted in both Harry and Helen, and when juxtaposed against the descriptiveness of the

italicized vignettes, unites the fragmented components of the story into one whole that reflects

the deep regret belaboring American society in the 1930s.

Harrys character, who with his fast-approaching death laments the tragedy of not having written

his stories, in dialog and in the italicized vignettes, carries the majority of this regret. The self-

pitying refrain that he would never write the things that he had saved to write(828) happens in

both roman and italicized font, and suggests the weight of his personal regret. He lashes out at

Helen, calling her a rich bitch.(831) and then when he recognizes that it was actually he

himself who had destroyed his talent (831), in another form of regret, repents his behavior.

Whereas Harrys regret is deep set and manifests itself in accusations, Helens regretis simple

and based upon, as Jennifer Harding defines, unrealized alternatives [that] are a way to find an

imaginative escape from the hell of their current situation(25). In voicing her regret at the

decision to go on safari in Africa, Helen simply says, I wish wed never come (828). The fact

that Harry is unwell and that it could have been avoided had they gone shooting in Hungary

(828) is upsetting to Helen. Her response is to offer an alternative that was agreeable to each of

them at some point in their shared past- Paris (828), and as a couple consider this more

positive reality as an alternative to the one of their present.

Hemingway presents the theme of regret in both characters and in each of the component parts of

the story in order to unify all of the fragmented parts into a whole that is suggestive of the quest

for an honorable death. Regret is an important and universal theme for society to examine, and

this story raises the question, with death so near, what will a man be judged upon? It seems as


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fragmentation and regret as society-wide phenomenon, Hemingway is thereby unifying the

country under this new found identity. He is, as Soto states in his bookThe Modernist Nation:

Generation, Renaissance, and Twentieth-century American Literature urging sweeping changes

in Americas cultural institutions changes that will create for the first time in U.S. history a

national youth identity (9). Hemingway himself is aspiring for the mountaintops of Kilimanjaro

with his writing, refusing to be considered on par to the other writers of this time but instead

claiming to be someone who is worthy of redemption, worthy of the title author.

Works Cited

Ammary, Silvia. ""The Road Not Taken" in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"."

Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate(2008-9): 123-138. ProQuest. Web. 10

November 2014.

Harding, Jennifer Riddle. ""HE HAD NEVER WRITTEN A WORD OF THAT" : REGRET

AND COUNTERFACTUALS IN HEMINGWAY'S "THE SNOWS OF

KILIMANJARO"." The Hemingway Review30.2 (Spring 2011): 21-35. EBSCOhost.

Web. 10 November 2014.

Hemingway, Ernest. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Baym, Nina and Robert S Levine. The Norton

Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. 8th. Vol. C. New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 826-842. Print.

"Introduction: American Literature 1914-1945." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Ed. Nina Baym and Robert S Levine. 8th. Vol. D. 2012. Print.

Johnson, Kenneth G. ""The Snows of Kilimanjaro" : An African Purge." Studies in Short Fiction

21.3 (1984): 223-227. EBSCOhost. Web. November 11 2014.

Lamb, Robert Paul.Art Matters: Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. ProQuest. Web. 23 November

2014.

MacDonald, Scott. "Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro": Three Critical Problems."

Studies in Short Fiction11.1 (1974): 67-74. EBSCOhost. Web. 8 November 2014.


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Final Paper Aspiring for the Fabled Mountaintops of Kilimanjaro