The Snows Of Kilimanjaro Summary

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro Summary
About:Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in suburban Oak Park, IL, to Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway. Ernest was the second of six children to be raised in the quiet suburban town. His father was a physician, and both parents were devout Christians. Hemingway's childhood pursuits fostered the interests that would blossom into literary achievements.
Although Grace hoped her musical interests would influence her son, young Hemingway preferred to accompany his father on hunting and fishing trips. This love of outdoor adventure would be reflected later in many of Hemingway's stories, particularly those featuring protagonist Nick Adams.
Hemingway also had an aptitude for physical challenge that engaged him throughout high school, where he both played football and boxed. Because of permanent eye damage contracted from numerous boxing matches, Hemingway was repeatedly rejected from service in World War I. Boxing provided more material for Hemingway's stories, as well as a habit of likening his literary feats to boxing victories.
Hemingway also edited his high school newspaper and reported for the Kansas City Star, adding a year to his age after graduating from high school in 1917.
After this short stint, Hemingway finally was able to participate in World War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. He was wounded on July 8, 1918, on the Italian front near Fossalta di Piave. During his convalescence in Milan, he had an affair with a nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway received two decorations from the Italian government, and he joined the Italian infantry. Fighting on the Italian front inspired the plot of A Farewell to Arms in 1929. Indeed, war itself is a major theme in Hemingway's works. Hemingway would witness firsthand the cruelty and stoicism required of the soldiers he would portray in his writing when covering the Greco-Turkish War in 1920 for the Toronto Star. In 1937, he was a war correspondent in Spain, and the events of the Spanish Civil War inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Summary:
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a short story collection by Ernest Hemingway. Many of the stories deal with classic Hemingway themes, such as death versus life well lived. Hemingway uses the stories collected here to examine the ways that people misunderstand each other’s pain and loss.
In the title story, a man lies dying on a cot in his camp on an African Safari. He and his wife are unable to leave the camp because of trouble with their vehicle, and as Harry lies there, he remembers events in his past interspersed with his current troubles.
He begins to associate death with the circling of an unseen hyena. As he falls asleep, he dreams that he is rescued in a plane with only room for him and the pilot. This plane ascends to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro where Harry sees the legendary carcass of a frozen leopard, and he knows that this place is where he is going. His wife is later woken in the night by the sound of the hyena’s cry and finds Harry unresponsive in his cot.
From this story, Hemingway moves to a subtler examination of the human condition. In “A Clean, Well Lighted Place,” an old man sits alone at a restaurant at night. Two waiters, young and old, are talking together, and when the man orders another brandy, the young waiter expresses a desire for him to finish and leave. The older waiter is more understanding of the old man’s plight, but the second time the man orders brandy, the younger waiter tells him the cafe is closed.
The young waiter wants to get home to his wife, but the older waiter understands that sometimes all people need is a clean, well-lighted place to go. The emptiness of his own life makes him feel a kinship with the old man in that he finds himself wanting a place to stay, such as this cafe, in his older age now that youth has left him.
Hemingway continues the theme of misunderstandings with “A Day’s Wait,” in which a young boy develops a fever, and due to a misunderstanding believes that this fever is fatal. The father is unable to understand the source of his son’s fear and remains detached from his suffering. Just as the young waiter in the previous story was unable to understand the old man’s need for connection, so too, the father in this story is unable to understand that he could alleviate his son’s suffering.
In “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio,” Cayetano lies recovering from a gunshot wound in a small hospital in Montana. The main characters, a nun, Cayetano, and another ill man, Frazer, deal with issues of loneliness and connection. Though Cayetano is physically suffering much more than Frazer, at heart, he’s an idealist and believes in man. Frazer is more critical of man’s philosophies and characters, but he listens to the radio to help him make sense of his own internal suffering. The three of them ponder the need to have a support system in order to make sense of existence.
The next story, “Fathers and Sons,” focuses on the themes of relationships and role models by following three generations of fathers and sons through the memories of the main character, Nick Adams. Nick and his son discuss hunting, which makes Nick think of his own father, and his relationship with him. This was the first time that Hemingway alluded to the suicide of his own father in any of his writings.
Nick makes another appearance in the next story, “In Another Country.” Here, an ambulance driver for WW1 is making a recovery in a hospital filled with cutting edge machines for rehabilitation. Although he is making a recovery, he wonders about the purpose of life. He starts a friendship with a major whose wife has unexpectedly died. Through these conversations, Hemingway explores the pain of loss and whether it is worth it to love at all.
“The Killers” finds Nick Adams crossing into adulthood from his teenaged years. He is caught in a cafe where two hit men are looking to kill a Swedish boxer. When the boxer doesn’t show and the two men leave, Nick decides to warn the boxer. However, the boxer simply says that nothing can be done and tells Nick to forget about things. In this story, Hemingway reaches the peak of his minimalist style, with little plot line and a passive protagonist.
Hemingway revisits Nick one more time in “The Way You’ll Never Be,” in which he recovers from his experiences in WW1. He is plagued by nightmares and trauma, and despite his valiant attempts to deal with his memories, the other characters of the story worry about his grasp of reality.
Hemingway’s love of boxing shows in “Fifty Grand,” the story of a boxer in a fixed match that doesn’t go the way it was intended. A boxer fixes a fight by allowing his brutal opponent to win on a foul after temporarily gaining the upper hand. The emphasis on the boxer’s silence suggests that he finds solace in
doing what is right for his family by allowing himself to lose the fight regardless of what the rest of the world might think.
In the last story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Hemingway returns to Africa, where two men and a woman are on a big game safari. Macomber had panicked the previous day when charged by a wounded lion, and his wife and the guide made fun of him. The next day, Macomber wounds a buffalo, and although he manages to stand his ground this time and kill it, his wife also fires a shot from the car killing him.
This collection represents Hemingway’s interest in loneliness and quiet dignity. The characters deal with difficult but wordless struggles of loss as they fight to understand connection, and what death and life really mean.
Short Summary: The story opens with a paragraph about Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, which is also called the “House of God.” There is, we are told, the frozen carcass of a leopard near the summit. No one knows why it is there.
Then we are introduced to Harry, a writer dying of gangrene, and his rich wife Helen, who are on safari in Africa. Harry’s situation makes him irritable, and he speaks about his own death in a matter-of-fact way that upsets his wife, predicting that a rescue plane will never come. He quarrels with her over everything, from whether he should drink a whiskey-and-soda to whether she should read to him. Helen is obviously concerned for his welfare, but self-pity and frustration make him unpleasant to her.
He 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 a series of 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 are 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 is really thoughtful and a good wife to him, but how his life has been spent marrying a series of women who keep him as “a proud possession” and neglecting his true talent, writing. Helen, he remembers, is a rich widow who was bored by the series of lovers she took before she met him and who married him because she admired his writing and they had similar interests.
Harry then recalls the process by which he developed gangrene two weeks before: he had been trying to get a picture of some water-buck and had scratched his knee on a thorn. He had not used iodine and it had become septic. As Helen returns to drink cocktails with Harry, they make up their quarrel.
Harry’s second memory sequence then begins, and he recalls how he once patronized a series of prostitutes in Constantinople while pining for a woman in New York. Specifically, he had a fight with a British soldier over an Armenian prostitute and then left Constantinople for Anatolia, where he ran from an army of Turkish soldiers. Later, he recalls that he returned to Paris and to his then-wife.
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 neighbors because they were poor. Next, he remembers a ranch and a boy he turned in to the authorities after the boy protected Harry’s horse feed by shooting a thief. Next, he remembers an officer named Williamson who was hit by a bomb and to whom Harry subsequently fed all his morphine tablets.
As Harry lies on his cot remembering, he feels the presence of death and associates it with a hyena that is running around the edge of the campsite. Presently, Helen has Harry’s cot moved into the tent for the night, and just as she does, he feels death lying on his chest and is unable to speak.
Harry dreams that it is the next morning and that a man called Compton has come with a plane to rescue him. He is lifted onto the plane 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 sees Harry dead on his cot.
This story focuses on the self-critical ruminations and memories of a writer dying of a preventable case of gangrene on safari. Its main themes are death and regret, and Harry’s morbid thoughts epitomize a classic case of taking things for granted. Harry takes his blessings, including his caring wife, his full life, and his writing talent, for granted, and on his deathbed muses on how he could have appreciated each more. His main regret, of course, is that he has not reached his full potential as a writer because he has chosen to make a living by marrying wealthy women rather than memorializing his many and varied life experiences in writing. The progression of his gangrene symbolizes his rotting sense of self-worth.
This last regret is made so bitter to Harry because, as he admits, it is his own fault he has not adequately exercised his great talent: “He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in.” In a strange parallel, it is also Harry’s fault that he developed gangrene; by not using iodine on his scratch, he allowed it to become septic and is therefore to blame for his impending death.
Viewed in this light, Harry’s predicament is self-inflicted, and is therefore a fitting punishment for his repeated acts of self-betrayal over the years. The lingering question of the story is how Harry’s situation is resolved by the dream sequence that ends the narration. Does his journey to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro symbolize Harry’s acceptance of
his punishment and acquiescent passage into the afterlife, or does it stand for Harry’s redemption as a character and continuing desire to rise above his past mistakes, even at the moment of his death? What does Kilimanjaro stand for?
There is abundant symbolism in this story, as many scholars have noted. The actual significance and meaning of these symbols has been hotly debated, but generally, the frozen leopard on the summit of Kilimanjaro is associated with death, immortality, and possibly redemption. The hyena and vultures are associated with illness, fear, and death, and Kilimanjaro itself, though its role has sparked the most controversy among scholars and critics, seems associated with a sort of redemptive heavenly afterlife. In addition, throughout the story, low-lying, hot plains areas are associated with difficult or painful episodes in Harry’s life, including the situation in which he begins the story, and snowy mountainous areas are associated with his happier, more uplifting experiences, including his final imagined ascent to the top of Kilimanjaro. In addition, gangrene, the rotting of the flesh, is symbolic of Harry’s rotting soul.
In terms of style, Hemingway narrates the sequences between Harry and Helen in a straightforward third person format and breaks into italicized stream-of-consciousness for Harry’s many memory sequences. These memories are often conveyed using run-on sentences and consist of bewildering pastiches of characters, places, and events which are consistent with Harry’s delirium. According to Hemingway scholars, these memories are mostly autobiographical. Using Harry as a vehicle, Hemingway writes of a log house he visited as a child in Michigan, of his experiences during World War I, of his life in Paris with his first wife and their fishing trip to the Black Forest, of his skiing trips in Austria, and of a location near the Yellowstone River in Wyoming.
Harry, as a character, produces similes and metaphors with regularity as he speaks to Helen (“Love is a dunghill…And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow”; “Your damned money was my armour”). This is also true during his memory sequences (“the snow as smooth to see as cake frosting and as light as powder and he remembered the noiseless rush the speed made as you dropped down like a bird”; “in some way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his body”).
Q&A
1. What's wrong with Harry in the snows of Kilimanjaro?
The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Harry, a writer, and his wife, Helen, are stranded while on safari in Africa. A bearing burned out on their truck, andHarry is talking about the gangrene that has infected his leg when he did not apply iodine after he scratched it.
2. Who is Compton in the snows of Kilimanjaro?
Compton is the pilot of the plane that is going to take Harry back to the city. He is very kind and reassuring, and also fictional-Harry only dreams him. Helen is Harry's wife. She comes from wealth, is an expert in shooting guns, and loves her husband, although he does not seem to return her love.
3. What is the main theme of the story The Snows of Kilimanjaro?
At the end of his life, he... The main theme of this story is facing death, but as with much of Hemingway, the story also explores isolation and alienation. Harry is attended by his wife Helen as he dies of gangrene poisoning in Africa, but he does not love her.
4. Where does the snows of Kilimanjaro take place?
Plot. The story opens with a paragraph about Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, whose western summit is called 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.
5. What does the leopard symbolize in the snows of Kilimanjaro?
The leopard mentioned in the epigraph is primarily a symbol of immortality, although it also represents strength and courage. ... In his final moments, Harry believes that he is achieving the leopard's higher plane of existence, or redemption, as Compton flies him toward the square top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
6.What is Harry's profession in the snows of Kilimanjaro?
The Snows of Kilimanjaro Summary. Stranded on safari in the African plains, Harry apologizes to his wife Helen for the stench of the gangrene eating its way up his leg. The two of them watch the carrion birds that have encircled the camp, waiting for his death.
7. What influenced Ernest Hemingway to write The Snows of Kilimanjaro? ...Hemingway is looking at one of his obsessions, death, again. Those things are reflected in his character, Harry, who is suffering from gangrene from an untreated scratch. It becomes clear that he will not survive.
8. How long does it take to climb Mount Kilimanjaro?
five to nine days
Mount Kilimanjaro routes and their variations take between five to nine days to complete. Although Mount Kilimanjaro is known as a "walk-up" mountain, you should not underestimate it and its risks. The overall statistics show that less than half of all climbers reach the summit.
9. Is it dangerous to climb Mount Kilimanjaro?
Climbing Kilimanjaro is probably one of the most dangerous things you will ever do. Every year, approximately 1,000 people are evacuated from the mountain, and approximately 10 deaths are reported. The actual number of deaths is believed to be two to three times higher. The main cause of death is altitude sickness.