Ernest Hemmingway's 'The Snows Of Kilimanjaro'

Anger, Blame, Betrayal—Emotions of Death
Ernest Hemmingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936) is a short story with many themes involving mortality and the accepting of your own inevitable death. The story is told with both flashbacks of the main character’s life played out in his own mind as well as conversations about his mortality with his wife while abandoned on the mountain. Through differing points of view, strong uses of symbolism, and characterizations Hemmingway writes about his own mortality through the lens of his character Harry, and how he will feel when that time comes and what he thinks his regrets will be. The mountain serves as an overarching symbol for his life, with the base representing the beginning and the top representing
The story is written in a 3rd person point of view in which you can both see what Harry is doing and what he thinks in his head. These are depicted as almost different points of view, despite staying in 3rd person. The story shows both what he’s saying and what he’s really thinking afterwards. The passage at the bottom of 1026 starting with “She shot very well this good, this rich bitch” demonstrates what is going though his mind when he thinks of his mortality. He starts to feel conflicted about the choices he has made in his life. This first sentence alone shows the conflict in his mind about his wife how part of him loves her but part of him wants to hate her because he wants to believe she ruined his life. It is clear his life has not turned out as he had planned. He goes on to claim she destroyed his talent but then immediately says he did that himself. Throughout the passage there is a pattern of going back and forth in his own head about his life as he is remembering it right before he dies, and how his wife affected his life. It is unclear if she actually stopped him from achieving his goals, if it was his poor choices or if something else is going on in his head. The passage flows in a pattern of “kindly caretaker” to “destroyer of talent” then back again saying that she “loved him dearly.” This pattern demonstrates
He admits that he was using Helen for her money and feels like she should not love him like she does “it was strange that when he did not love her at all and was lying, that he should be able to give her more for her money than when he had really loved her (1027).” This is showing the guilt that he feels about always marrying rich women so that he didn’t have to work, despite also blaming them for the reason that he didn’t work. This adds to the pattern in his head where he thinks one thing yet behaves in the opposite manner. First he was glad he had all this money and then he realizes that if he hadn’t had all the money that he may have had to focus on his writings so and could be as successful as he hoped he would be by the time that he