For our Oral Practice Class

E. Hemingway "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

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Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Summary and Analysis

Summary and Analysis "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

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Major Themes Explored

Study Guide

Text and Questions

Study Questions:

1. Read the epigraph again and discuss the significance of the epigraph for the story. What does the leopard stand for, what the “Ngaje Ngai”, the house of Gods?
2. The relationship Harry and Helen: How did it start?
   What brought them together?
   What drives them apart?
   What was/is his role in her life and vice versa?
   Why does he hate her in the end? - Or does he rather hate himself?
   Who or what destroyed Harry's talent? - Who does he blame?
3. The flashback: a narrative technique from the genre film. What is its function in this text? Retreat into the past or escape? - Discuss.
4. Hemingway has always been obsessed with “death” in his writing. So is “Harry” in “The Snows”. What does Harry say about death? Which symbols of death can you find in this story? Is “Snows” a story about “death”?
5. Have a look at “interior monologues” in this story. Try to find out how many there are, what they are about and what their function might be in the narrative structure of the text.
6. What is Harry's attitude and view of his own life: is he frustrated, bitter, dissatisfied, disappointed of himself? Did he meet/ live up to his own expectations? Can you find traces/characteristics of the writer Ernest Hemingway in the writer “Harry” in the story? So, are there autobiographical elements in the text and which ones could you find?
7. You (certainly) have noticed the “double ending” of the story. Try to link the ending(s) with the epigraph at the beginning of the story. What interest/ purpose may Hemingway have had for the ambiguous ending of the story? Try to pin down the point in the text where Harry is dying/ is dead. Perhaps there are not “two” endings but different perspectives of the same event.
8. “Harry -  a typical Hemingway hero”. In which way is Harry an “anti-hero” -  the typical Hemingway-style would-like-to-be-macho, the rather ridiculous than truly “heroic” figure?
9. Another typical Hemingway symbolism is that of the “plain”, where the nagative things happen and the “mountains”, where the good times/ things are. Find out to which extent this also applies to the story “The Snows”.
10. Is “The Snows of Kilmanjaro” a short novel or a longish short-story? List arguments which support your opinion.

 Short Answer Quiz

Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

1. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” consists of a present-tense narration interrupted by various italicized inset descriptions, which are sometimes explicitly related to Harry’s dying moments, but are often left provocatively suggestive. What is the influence of these interruptions on the progress of the story?
   
   

2. “You kept from thinking and it was all marvelous. You were equipped with good insides so that you did not go to pieces that way, the way most of them had, and you made an attitude that you cared nothing for the work you used to do, now that you could no longer do it” (1988 [full ed.] 2248 [shorter ed.]): this is Hemingway’s “code” of masculine conduct, often having to do with bravely facing war, danger, or other adversity. In this story, the protagonist faces impending death and ultimate failure as an artist. Paraphrase the understatement of these lines: what does Harry find most important? What comes naturally to him, and what has he had to construct with great effort?
   
   

3. Apart from the fact that Harry and his lover are on safari in Africa, not much is said about Mt. Kilimanjaro besides its square white head. No one climbs it or refers to it explicitly; it serves the action of the story mainly as a backdrop for the psychological drama of Harry’s final memories. Why do you think Hemingway set this story in Africa, in front of this famous mountain, and how do you see the setting functioning in this story?
   
   

4. The final part of the story narrates the death of a character much like Hemingway himself (in many respects). With Harry passed out of the story, the narration provides the perspective of his lover who has been left behind: “Just then the hyena stopped whimpering in the night and started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound. The woman heard it and stirred uneasily. She did not wake. In her dream she was at the house on Long Island and it was the night before her daughter’s debut. Somehow her father was there and had been very rude” ( 1999 [full ed.] 2259 [shorter ed.] Consider that Harry’s perspective has dominated most of the story, and then interpret what we learn of the woman from these lines: how much do we know about her from her own perspective? How does what we learn here match up to Harry’s thoughts about her earlier in the story?